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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

July 12, 2012

Each Massacre Breeds New Boycotts

Boycotting Apartheid Israel

by BLAINE COLEMAN

You may have noticed that Israel is getting hit with more boycott campaigns, not less.

It started on April 17, 2003.

That night, the Wayne State University Student Council approved a resolution against all university investment in “companies doing business in Israel”.

More divestment resolutions were approved by the University of Michigan-Dearborn Student Government Senate, and by the faculty senate at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

Then, on July 9, 2005, Palestinian Civil Society itself called for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, but they can’t blow this humanitarian campaign off the map. After every Israeli massacre, more boycotts are launched against Israel.

A recent example is the 2012 divestment resolution approved by the Arizona State University student government.

Before it’s over, you will see Israel clamoring for a “two-state solution” to preserve some kind of apartheid state.

Yet, in the end, no Israeli state, big or small, will be allowed to exist. It would only keep bombing and invading the Arab world. South Africa’s experience is instructive.

In 1994, international boycotts had killed the South African apartheid state.

Yet die-hard whites still pushed for a two-state solution. They called it a ‘Volkstaat’, a white state carved out of South Africa. That would have been a nightmare. It would have meant a resurrected white apartheid army, white nukes, and the resumption of white bombing raids all over Africa. So the people of South Africa never allowed any white-supremacist state to be resurrected. Thank goodness.

Today, in July 2012, we see that South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, is calling for an increased boycott on Israeli products. South Africans have not forgotten their suffering under the white dictatorship, and how tightly Israel was allied to the dictators.

Never again should an apartheid state be allowed to exist.

Blaine Coleman has urged the Ann Arbor City Council to boycott Israel since 2002 and is the plaintiff in Coleman v. Ann Arbor Transportation Authority.

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