Dear Friends,
On May 27, 2006 CUPE Ontario (Ontario’s largest Canadian labor union) decided to “Support the international campaign of
boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable
right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law, including the right of
Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”
This followed in the wake of other CUPE Ontario actions in recent years, as, for instance, calling for the end of
Israeli military action and withdrawal from the occupied territories. The executive of the Canadian Labour Congress, in
a 2002 resolution, compared Palestinians in the occupied territories to blacks living under apartheid rule in South
Africa.
Sid Ryan, the Canadian Union of Public Employees' Ontario president, said 896 members voted unanimously at its
convention in Ottawa on Saturday, to support the campaign, and declared that the boycott ''is not an attack on Jewish
people. It's (an objection to) the State of Israel's policies on Palestinians.”
Ryan’s statement notwithstanding, CUPE is being accused of anti-Semitism and massively attacked by Jewish and other
groups.
Israeli support for CUPE Ontario’s act can aid the union to ward off the attacks and encourage the National union to
adopt the Ontario policy. The following petition expresses Israeli support for CUPE’s act and also furnishes the union
with concrete material to counter condemnations of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism.
For the present we ask individual Israelis to sign the petition. Organizations are also welcome, and will be added
later. Please inform me if your organization is willing to sign.
The letter appears also at:
Hebrew can be read at:
Signatories (daily updated) at:
Dorothy
[The complete CUPE statement : http://tao.ca/~CUPE3903/web/?q=node/372]
[CUPE National statement regarding the CUPE Ontario act: http://CUPE.ca/humanrights/CUPE_National_statem ]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letter of support from Israelis to CUPE
As Israelis we express our support of the CUPE boycott of Israel, honor your courageous initiative, and fervently hope
that it will set an example for many others to follow.
We assure CUPE that it is no more anti-Semitic to criticize and oppose Israeli government policies than it was
anti-American to oppose the Vietnam war or is anti-Canadian to oppose the present war in Iraq. It is never anti-Semitic
to oppose injustice, destruction, gross inequity, and inequality. We also assure CUPE that Israel, having the 4th most
powerful military in the world, is in no existential danger.
As citizens devoted to the promotion of peace and democracy in the region, we denounce the international community’s
continued economic investments in our country, which directly and indirectly support Israel's daily violations of
international law and accelerated colonization of the occupied territories. We fear the potentially irreversible damage
created by Israeli occupation, by Israel’s unilateral plans, and by the international community’s impotence in ending
Israel’s occupation. We realize that Israel’s Occupation of Palestinians and their lands will very likely not end
without international sanctions.
Israelis, as well as Palestinians, will benefit from ending the Occupation. Symmetry does not exist between occupier and
occupied, oppressor and oppressed. Yet Israelis suffer from loss of life, increase in militarism, and a steady
devaluation of human life. This latter is particularly evident from the socio-economic sphere and the affliction of
post-traumatic distress.
Successive Israeli governments have spent enormous amounts of money on expansion, to the detriment of social benefits
for the Israeli population. While it is true that had there been no Occupation, Israeli governments might not have spent
the money on social benefits, the fact that expansion continues a pace reveals Israel’s intention to rid the West Bank
of as many Palestinians as possible and to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.
To this end, money is spent on maintaining a large military presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, on
erecting the apartheid wall at 4 million dollars a mile, with 400 miles planned (twice the length had it been built on
the ‘green line’), and constructing 6,000 more units in highly subsidized settlements (this past year alone, some 12,000
new settlers moved into the West Bank, 4,000 more than were evicted from the Gaza Strip). Much money goes also for
constructing super-highways for Israelis-only in the Occupied Territories, as well as for new lookout towers (that can
double as sniper towers), and checkpoints galore (mainly separating Palestinian communities).
While all this is taking place at considerable economic cost, poverty in Israel has increased sharply. Israel now has
the dubious notoriety of having the worst poverty level in the Western world. Over ¼ of Israelis now live under the
poverty line. 1 of every 3 children goes to bed hungry. And every 4th elderly person is poor. No wonder, then, that
Israel's elderly are “Suicidal,” as Yedioth Ahronot revealed in a report showing that over 50 percent of suicides in
Israel every year are committed by people aged 65 and over. There are additional worrying trends. Not only are the few
rich getting richer and the numerous poor getting poorer, but also many in the middle class who have jobs are sliding
into poverty due to low wages.
One result of the increased poverty is that now 25% of Israelis forego medical care because they cannot afford it. 75%
of the poor cannot afford medication. But of all the sad statistics, one of the more shocking is that 40% of Holocaust
survivors—170,000 aged individuals--now live in desperate straits. It is shameful that of all places in the world, in
Israel, Holocaust survivors live in dire poverty and misery.
The worsening economic conditions contribute, in turn, to escalation of violence. Thus, for instance, one of every five
elderly Israelis is subject to abuse, mainly by spouses or children. And the Israeli police recorded a 24% increase in
violence among youth the first months of 2006.
A direct cost of Occupation and a threat to Israel's welfare is post-traumatic stress, which can result in addiction to
drugs and alcohol, and can also contribute to violence.
A counselor at a rehabilitation center terms the malady “a ticking bomb," Help, he relates, is unavailable for many
soldiers who have gone "into terrible distress of drugs, beatings, violence, impatience, ... soldiers who clashed with a
civilian population, and when they were discharged understood that they had been wrong." Hundreds, he reveals, "are
roaming about with the feeling that there is no point to living, and the path to suicide and drugs is very easy. We are
afraid that former soldiers will commit criminal acts as a result of their distress."
On the Palestinian end of the Occupation, the situation is far worse both economically and security-wise. For
Palestinians, Occupation means a loudspeaker in the middle of the night ordering residents out of their homes,
regardless of winter or summer, hot or cold, wet or dry. Occupation means long waits at checkpoints, even in
emergencies. Occupation means that one needs permits to go to one’s fields, permits that are often not given, and even
when given, the Palestinian farmer often finds that the military gates that control accessing his fields are closed and
fail to open, and, for that matter, fail to open also for children on their way to school. Occupation means land theft
and the uprooting of olive trees, some of which are 100s of years old, all of which are means of sustenance, some now
the only means. Occupation means curfews, during which sick people can and do die. Occupation means that one’s home can
turn into rubble in minutes, as bulldozers or explosives demolish it, along with its furnishings, toys, family
photograph albums, computers, and all else. Occupation means imprisonment. In January 2006 as many as 9,000 Palestinians
were incarcerated in Israeli facilities. Israeli Occupation means apartheid. Four instances of this are water, roads,
home construction, and checkpoints. Of 960 million cubic meters of water that is generated in the West Bank,
Palestinians are allowed to use only one-tenth of it. The rest goes to Israelis. On average, a Palestinian citizen in
the West Bank is allowed to use no more than 36 cubic meters of water per year, while Israeli settlers in the West Bank
can use up to 2,400 cubic meters. Palestinians are not allowed to use ‘settler’ roads, which are highly superior to
Palestinian ones in the Occupied territories, are not allowed to build houses or even to add rooms, while Jewish
settlement building continues uninhibited. Checkpoints have also recently become separated. Israelis, tourists, and Jews
from abroad can go from the Territories to Israel via many checkpoints, but Palestinians having permits are allowed to
enter Israel through but 11 of them, forcing Palestinians fortunate enough to have a permit to enter Israel to travel
far out of the way on their way to work or to medical care.
For all the above reasons, we Israeli Seekers of Peace and Justice express our sincere gratitude to CUPE’s boycott
initiative. Boycott and divestment are non-violent means of pressuring governments to change their policies--means now
sorely needed to compel the Israeli government to end its occupation of Palestinians and their lands.