Friday, July 23, 2010
Well, if past experience is any indicator, this is positive, as these BDS people have a tendency to discredit anything they associate themselves with: Linking Palestine Solidarity to Arizona Boycott
Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace (PJJP) activists are taking lead from Palestinian-led organizations, such as US Palestinian Community Network and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, in connecting Palestine solidarity work to the support of communities in Arizona. It is becoming increasingly clear that the struggle against Arizona's recent xenophobic and racist legislation--SB 1070 and SB 2281--is fundamentally linked to the struggle for justice in Palestine.
We believe that groups working in solidarity with Palestine should move forward in this crucial time to show their support for the Arizona boycott, while at the same time supporting Palestinian and Arab organizations already working on issues of immigration, racial profiling and Islamophobia in the U.S. We believe that supporting the boycott of Arizona is linked to the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel because of the clear parallels in struggle. These include:*
- The use of legal and extra-legal racial profiling to inhibit and limit movement (Arizona's SB 1070)
- The silencing of indigenous history and voices (Arizona's SB 2281)
- The militarizing of immigration enforcement
- The use of border walls to regulate the movements of indigenous and immigrant people
- The fact that the Israeli company Elbit Systems built both the wall along U.S.-Mexico border and the Israeli apartheid wall
- The use of identification papers as a tool for policing and monitoring communities
- Widespread support to use boycott campaigns as a key tactic of resistance...
Take note Jewish Communal organizations: Jewish Community Condemns Arizona Law, Urges National Comprehensive Immigration Reform [PDF]
Oh the company we keep. I am looking at you in particular, Boston JCRC/Nancy Kaufman. When you get into issues you have no business being into, you risk being used by unsavory characters. Better to stay on mission, no?
Update: For more in the pointless gestures department, aka, "People who can't just focus on their own jobs", the Andover Teachers' Union is back in the news: Editorial: Teachers union weighs in on Arizona law
We're sure that residents of Arizona, fed up with federal inaction on illegal immigration, will be shaken to the core to learn that the teachers of Andover do not approve of their actions.
In a pointless, purely political gesture, the executive board of the Andover Education Association voted to disapprove of the Arizona law that permits police officers in that state to question those they stop about their immigration status. The board suggested that its 800 members boycott traveling to Arizona "until such time that the state stops racial profiling which may adversely impact members of this association," according to union President Tom Meyers.
Political gestures are a particular forte of the Andover teachers union, which several years ago supported a teacher's effort to indoctrinate students with pro-Palestinian propaganda on the Middle East, without an accompanying Israeli perspective...
That's right. And yes, that's Tommy "The Commie" Meyers, still up to his old tricks. This is the same man that aided and abetted Ron Francis in his efforts to bring a group of anti-Israel radicals into the Andover High School (who proceeded to collect emails from the students to be contacted later).
