Palestinians, Thurston Moore call on Dinosaur Jr. to cancel apartheid Israel concert by PACBI

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

I have received offers whilst the boycott has been in effect – it’s alluring as it can fund your entire tour! – but have reneged. The violence perpetrated against the Palestinian community is entirely out of balance with any history of the Israel/Palestine conflict and is glaringly designed as racial genocide.

Continue reading at https://bdsmovement.net/news/dinosaur-jr

Leonard Cohen and the Concert That Never Was on The MIT Press Reader

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

For me, somebody who in 2009 had already been a signatory of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) for three years, and had been critical of Zionism as an ideology that purports to speak for world Jewry and as an ideal to which we are supposed to adhere, the Zionist ideology of people like Sharon was something that I had long ago divested myself from. So, seeing my newfound idol sitting next to Sharon, who is like the symbol of everything that has gone wrong (in terms of Jewish nationalism, the displacement of people, and the genocide being waged against the Palestinian people), on the receiving end of Cohen’s art put me into a state of panic. 

Continue reading at https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/leonard-cohen-and-the-concert-that-never-was/

Update: PACBI writes to UN genocide prevention chief over complicity with Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem on BDS National Committee

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Mr Adama Dieng has ignored PACBI’s appeal and his talk at Israel’s settlement university, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, continues advertised at the website of INoGS.

Continue reading at https://bdsmovement.net/2016/pacbi-writes-genocide-chief-complicity-israels-ethnic-cleansing-jerusalem-14187?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bdsmovement+%28Palestinian+BDS+National+Committee%29

Palestinians call for boycott of genocide conference in Jerusalem by Rania Khalek

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has called for a boycott of this year’s conference of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) in Jerusalem… The title of this year’s conference is, ironically, “Intersections: Holocaust Scholarship, Genocide Research and Histories of Mass Violence.”.. One of the scheduled speakers is Adama Dieng, special adviser on the prevention of genocide to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

… The conference is scheduled to take place from 26 to 29 July at Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, some of which was constructed on land that Israel illegally expropriated from Palestinians in East Jerusalem after Israel militarily occupied the West Bank in 1967… “The conference is sponsored by five deeply complicit Israeli academic institutions,” PACBI states. “Israeli universities are profoundly complicit in developing weapon systems and military doctrines deployed in Israel’s recent war crimes in Lebanon and Gaza; justifying the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land, rationalizing the gradual ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians; providing moral justification for extrajudicial killings and indiscriminate attacks against civilians; systematically discriminating against ‘non-Jewish’ students in admissions, dormitory room eligibility, financial aid, etc.; and many other implicit and explicit violations of human rights and international law.”

… At the very least, says PACBI, “Whether Israel’s decades-old crimes against the Palestine people meet the UN definition of genocide or not, they should make any honest scholar think twice before participating in a conference on genocide organized by Israeli universities on occupied Palestinian land.”

Continue reading at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/rania-khalek/palestinians-call-boycott-genocide-conference-jerusalem

Germany: Do not collaborate in Israel’s Cultural Crimes in regards to the Looted Palestinian Dead Sea Scrolls and respect international law by PACBI

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The confiscation and theft of Palestinian cultural heritage are part of Israel’s attempts to erase Palestinian memory and cultural identity… 

As US legal expert David Nersessian notes:

“Cultural genocide extends beyond attacks upon the physical and/or biological elements of a group and seeks to eliminate its wider institutions… Elements of cultural genocide are manifested when artistic, literary, and cultural activities are restricted or outlawed and when national treasures, libraries, archives, museums, artifacts, and art galleries are destroyed or confiscated.”

Continue reading at https://bdsmovement.net/news/germany-do-not-collaborate-israel%E2%80%99s-cultural-crimes-regards-looted-palestinian-dead-sea-scrolls

Colonized Land is No Place for an International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS) Conference

The “Israel Genocide?” campaign adds its voice to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) call to UN officials, academic associations and scholars, to boycott the 2016 conference of the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS).

We maintain that Israel is in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in particular Article II, which defines the crime:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

We view the holding of the conference in a colonial state that violates the genocide convention, not only as a cynical act, but an act that lends Israel legitimacy to continue violating the convention, thus harming the global community’s ability to prevent genocide. There should be no exceptions to a rule that strives to protect humanity from the most heinous crimes.

While Israel and Israeli officials have yet to be tried for the crime of genocide in courts of law that has authority to deliver punishment, we recognize the fact that genocide is the least tried crime in the category of Crimes Against Humanity. We trust that genocide scholars know first hand the frustration of watching crimes on a mass scale being committed while legal bureaucracies fail to implement solutions.

Israel is no stranger to scholarly debates over its systematic violations within the field of genocide, and we believe academics are not only theorists, but also moral agents who have impact on the real world. You are now in a position to act against genocide. Please boycott the INoGS Conference unless this conference is relocated from Israel and its colonies, and its organizers reject institutional Israeli sponsorship of this event.

Background analysis: PACBI’s boycott call of International Network of Genocide Scholars 2016 conference (BDS National Committee, 2016)

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

Many legal scholars and human rights advocates have debated whether the UN’s definition of the crime of genocide applies to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. While many scholars dismiss the charge due to the lack of intent, a key condition for genocide, others argue that the duration of the crimes, policies adopted by Israel that led to them and the general atmosphere of racist incitement in Israeli society and in the army in particular may prove the intent.

Continue reading at https://bdsmovement.net/2016/background-analysis-pacbis-boycott-call-of-international-network-of-genocide-scholars-2016-conference-13821

PACBI to Gregory Porter: “Live up to your words and do not commit musical genocide”

In your latest album Liquid Spirt, you sing ‘I do not agree, this is not for me, no musical genocide. I will not commit, nor will I submit to a musical genocide, I will not let it be’.
We are writing to you from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in Palestine, to urge you to cancel your Tel Aviv gig of March 20th [1] and not to play for Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid, as lending your name to this regime is tantamount to committing what you call a “musical genocide.”

 

Continue reading at http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=2684

TAKE ACTION now and write a letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Make sure to post a copy of the letter in our comments as well, so we can publish it.

PACBI Salutes All People of Conscience who Have Recently Adopted BDS: Accelerate the Boycott! End Israeli Colonialism and Genocidal Aggression!

Please TAKE ACTION RIGHT NOW and send your letter to the UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the International Criminal Court Prosecutor.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) salutes the growing number of academic associations, professional organizations, scholars, artists, political leaders and movements that have joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement since Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the 1.8 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip began on July 8, 2014.

Continue reading at https://bdsmovement.net/news/pacbi-salutes-all-people-conscience-who-have-recently-adopted-bds-accelerate-boycott-end