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Victory to the Intifada News!

Boycott Israeli Goods Action - November 10

As part of The Fifth International Week of Action against Israel’s Apartheid Wall between 9 and 16 November 2007 (www.stopthewall.org), protesters held a rolling picket in London raising awareness of the Apartheid Wall and calling on the public to boycott Israeli goods.

The Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and its popular committees have called on the world to protest against the illegal occupation of Palestine. In 2004 the International Court of Justice ruled that the Apartheid Wall is illegal. Despite this, the British government has continued to support Israel economically, politically and militarily. Join the movement to boycott Israeli Apartheid.

The protest was called by Victory to the Intifada and Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!

Israel destroys Palestinian lives, livelihoods and homes daily, refuses to stop building its illegal apartheid wall, denies Palestinian refugees their right of return, grows produce and sets up industrial zones on stolen Palestinian land, and operates an apartheid, racist system against Palestinian people.

Meanwhile illegal Israeli settlements are continuing and growing, in defiance of international law. Already, 40% of the West Bank is taken up with Israeli infrastructure including settlements, outposts, roadblocks, checkpoints, military areas, nature reserves and the parts of the Apartheid Wall built so far. There are now 450,000 Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the last 20 years the settler population has increased by 150%.

29 September 2007 marked the seventh anniversary of the start of the second Intifada. In those seven years the Israeli Occupation Army has killed more than 4,600 Palestinians, including 967 children and has injured a further 32,000. In August 2007 alone, the Israeli Occupation Army killed 52 Palestinians, 12 of them children.

The rolling picket began at Marks & Spencer in Edgware Road. M&S is one of the biggest British corporate sponsors of Israel and the occupation of Palestine. Marks & Spencer is not just interested in trading with Israel for profit like other companies; it IS and ALWAYS has been a supporter of Israeli apartheid – ‘aiding the economic development of Israel is one of our main objectives’ (Marcus Sieff, M&S chairman, Management: The M&S Way, 1990) and sells food and clothing manufactured in colonial settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank Palestinian Territories.

The protest then moved on to Sainsbury’s in Marble Arch, calling for the public to boycott Israeli goods, and picketed Marks and Spencer’s flagship store on Oxford Street, using street theatre to demonstrate the reality of the daily brutal oppression Palestinian People face. We continued to Selfridges, which sells goods produced in Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Under pressure from pro-Palestinian campaigners they initially withdrew these products from their shelves only to stock them again.

Finally a lively demonstration was held outside John Lewis because they sell Caterpillar products. Caterpillar’s armoured bulldozers have been used by the Israeli army for the destruction of thousands of Palestinian homes, schools, wells and olive groves, and have also been used in the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

The aim of the campaign to Boycott Israeli Goods is to raise awareness of the economic links between British business and Israeli Apartheid and build economic pressure on Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestine. We aim to get people active on Britain's streets in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their national liberation struggle.

We call on the public to:

• Demand that British companies stop supporting Israel’s brutal occupation and apartheid by selling Israeli goods and goods made by companies directly involved in the destruction of Palestinian land, lives and livelihoods.

• Demand that the British Government stops supporting and funding Israeli racism.

• Join our campaign in support of the Palestinian Liberation Struggle. There is a demonstration every Thursday, 6 – 8 pm outside Marks & Spencer’s flagship store on Oxford Street (Marble Arch end), London. We urge everyone to boycott M&S as a focus of the boycott Israeli goods campaign in order to dent the profits of the British retailing company that has repeatedly stated their support for Israel and thus send a shock wave through the whole establishment.

End the Occupation of Palestine! Victory to the Intifada! Free all Palestinian Political Prisoners! Tear down the Apartheid Wall!

Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism!

Victory to the Intifada contingent on ENOUGH Palestine demo - June 9

On Saturday 9th June a lively and angry contingent from the Victory to the Intifada campaign joined the national demonstration called by the ENOUGH coalition to demand an end to the 40 year occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Organisers claimed 20,000 people participated in the march, although the actual figure was closer to 5,000.

Following is an excerpt from leaflets we handed out on the day.

Defend the Palestinian people!
End Labour backing for Zionist terror!

The national demonstration on 9 June commemorates 40 years of illegal Zionist occupation of the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza. Those 40 years have been ones of continuous resistance which have pitted the Palestinian people against the Zionist state and its imperialist supporters – principally US and Britain. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have died as they fought Zionist terror to establish an independent and sovereign state: 25,000 during the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, over 1,000 in the first Intifada, and now over 4,000 in the second Intifada. This excludes those who have been killed in the years in between as the Israeli state attempted in vain to crush the national liberation struggle.

Today Zionist terror continues unabated. In 2006, Zionists forces murdered 550 Palestinians including 141 children, three times as many as the previous year. This followed the election of the Hamas government in January 2006. 23 Israelis died as a consequence of Palestinian actions. The economic and financial blockade that the Zionists and western imperialism have maintained on the Palestinian people for nearly 18 months is causing desperate suffering. According to a recent Oxfam report:
• The number of Palestinians living on poverty has risen 30% since April 2006,
• Over 70% of 161,000 PA workers with an estimated one million dependents live in poverty;
• The number of Palestinians living in absolute poverty (on less than 50 US cents a day) nearly doubled to over one million in 2006
• 46% of Palestinians now do not have enough food to meet their needs

Meanwhile imperialism is arming Fatah-dominated security forces associated with Palestinian President Abbas with the intention that they take on Hamas. Recent fighting in Gaza has cost the lives of more than 50 Palestinians; Israeli air strikes in support of Abbas forces killed a further 48.

Labour backs the Zionists
The imperialist British Labour government has zealously and unconditionally backed Israel throughout the years of the second Intifada. One of Blair’s early steps after winning the 1997 election was to appoint Lord Levy, a prominent Zionist in the Israeli Labour Party, as his special adviser on the Middle East. Labour has supplied arms to the Israeli state which have been used against the Palestinian people. It has repeatedly condemned Palestinian resistance to occupation as ‘terror’. It has never called for action against the continuously expanding Zionist settlements on the West Bank, nor the building of the apartheid wall. Nor has it raised the Zionists’ continued detention of one-third of the democratically-elected Palestinian Legislative Council in any international forum. Along with the US and the EU it maintains the financial and economic blockade that is creating so much suffering for the Palestinian people.

Building a movement here
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! has always supported the Palestinian people. We have consistently opposed the racist and imperialist Labour government as it defended and excused Zionist terror. We have also taken action against the most prominent corporate backer of the Zionist state, Marks and Spencer. M&S is the principal company behind the British-Israeli Chamber of Commerce. It has maintained its founders’ support for Zionism and today imports over £240 million of Israeli goods, including some illegally imported from the Occupied Territories. FRFI backs a boycott of M&S as a means of giving focus to the campaign to boycott Israeli goods. Those who suggest this campaign could be seen as anti-semitic ignore the fact that it has been a public limited company for 80 years and use it as an excuse for their own inaction. Today more than ever we need an active movement in support of the Palestinian people, one which opposes Labour and British imperialism and asserts the right of the Palestinian people to take whatever steps they consider necessary to free themselves from the Zionist yoke.

Boycott Marks and Spencer!

For some video clips, click on these links;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqWBz5T5hyg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-S90AXdxlg

VTI stands for Victory to the Intifada!