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UK Bans Citizens from Boycotting Companies for
“Ethical Reasons”
United Kingdom — It’s been another bloody week in Palestine. A horrific video of a disabled man beingtipped out of his wheelchair by an Israeli officer went viral, while equally graphic footage emerged of a14-year-old girl lying in her own blood after being shot by the Israeli army. At the same time, Palestinian journalist Mohammed al-Qiq is dying in an Israeli hospital on his 83rd day of hunger strike as he protests being held without trial.
Wherever there is injustice, look to Britain
Here in Britain, we are used to our government rolling out the red carpet for dictators. We roll our eyes at the propping up of brutal regimes and the unrestricted flow of arms to global human rights abusers — all while sighing at our historical meddling in foreign affairs and the turning of a blind eye to Israeli settler colonialism. Our government’s allegiance to militarism goes without saying, and it often seems we are powerless to do much about it.
But we have tools at our disposal to express our dissent. If we believe that public money should be spent on the good of the people — and not thrown at war profiteers — we can choose how we spend it. Right? We can elect those who are free from the central government’s political control to represent us. These are all things within our power as citizens of a democracy. Right?
On February 14th, the U.K. Government announced a proposal to restrict the right of local authorities to use ethical principles when drafting strategies for what they do or don’t spend their money on. The assault on political freedom will ban local councils, public bodies, and some university student unions from boycotting “unethical” companies, and is expected to be formally announced by Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock during an upcoming business trip to Israel.
In short, publicly-funded institutions will no longer have the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products, or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to ministers, those that continue to pursue boycotts will face “severe penalties.”
Palestine
Over the years, many councils in the U.K. have adopted fair trade principles or excluded fossil fuel, tobacco, and arms companies from their investment portfolios amid public pressure. In addition, a number of councils have stated they will not purchase services from companies that support Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian territory.
Designed to prevent councils from boycotting Israeli companies or public institutions in response to calls by the BDS campaign, campaigners fear the new move could stop councils from divesting from companies operating in illegal settlements (even though the Foreign Office advises businesses against trading with or investing in such companies).
Regardless of your opinion on Israel, Palestine, fossil fuels, or the arms trade, this is a democracy issue. Using a ban on ethical boycotts as a vehicle to shut down dissent is simply further evidence of the moral bankruptcy of the British government. U.K. citizens wanting to add their voice to a governmental consultation on the issue can do so via this simple e-tool, and sign a Freedom to Divest petition here.
This article (UK Bans Citizens from Boycotting Companies for “Ethical Reasons”) is an opinion editorial (OP-ED). The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Anti-Media. This article is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Michaela Whitton and theAntiMedia.org.Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.
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font redaction http://anonhq.com/uk-bans-citizens-from-boycotting-companies-for-ethical-reasons
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Brazil will not accept settler leader Dani Dayan as Israel’s next ambassador, a senior official in Brasilia said.
Following diplomatic protocol, Brazil will simply not respond to Israel’s months-old request to confirm Dayan’s nomination, waiting until Jerusalem gets the hint and proposes a different envoy to its capital, the official said this week. Dayan was named as envoy in August, and endorsed by the Israeli cabinet in September, but Brazil has maintained a frosty silence on the appointment rather than issuing the customary confirmation.
The South American country is rejecting Dayan not only because of his senior positions in the Yesha Council, a committee representing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but also due to the unorthodox way in which his appointment was announced, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
An agrément is usually given within two to three weeks. When an agrément is not received after two months, a government is meant to understand that its choice of ambassador was not approved by the host country.
Brazil rejects Dani Dayan as ambassador, official says
BRASILIA ANGRY AT CHOICE OF SETTLER LEADER, AND AT ISRAEL FOR ANNOUNCING APPOINTMENT WITHOUT INFORMING ITS FOREIGN MINISTRY
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| July 22, 2008 | David Rabkin |
Dany Dayan
Yesha Council Chairman Dany Dayan
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Brazil will not accept settler leader Dani Dayan as Israel’s next ambassador, a senior official in Brasilia said.
Following diplomatic protocol, Brazil will simply not respond to Israel’s months-old request to confirm Dayan’s nomination, waiting until Jerusalem gets the hint and proposes a different envoy to its capital, the official said this week. Dayan was named as envoy in August, and endorsed by the Israeli cabinet in September, but Brazil has maintained a frosty silence on the appointment rather than issuing the customary confirmation.
The South American country is rejecting Dayan not only because of his senior positions in the Yesha Council, a committee representing Israeli settlements in the West Bank, but also due to the unorthodox way in which his appointment was announced, said the official, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his nomination of Dayan as Israel’s new ambassador to Brazil on August 5, only one year after the current envoy, Reda Mansour, took up his post in Brasilia.
According to diplomatic sources in Jerusalem, Mansour’s wife did not want to move to Brasilia, and he therefore decided to inform Jerusalem that he wanted to quit. As soon as Netanyahu — who is also foreign minister — heard that Mansour was planning to vacate the post in December, he publicly nominated Dayan, without first informing the Brazilian Foreign Ministry of what had transpired.
According to diplomatic sources in Jerusalem, Mansour’s wife did not want to move to Brasilia, and he therefore decided to inform Jerusalem that he wanted to quit. As soon as Netanyahu — who is also foreign minister — heard that Mansour was planning to vacate the post in December, he publicly nominated Dayan, without first informing the Brazilian Foreign Ministry of what had transpired.
What next?
Officials in the Israeli Foreign Ministry have refused to comment on the matter on the record. But in private conversations, they describe different scenarios of what might now transpire. Some diplomats say that if Brazil does not formally accept Dayan by the end of the month, Jerusalem will get the hint. Others say they are confident that the Argentinean-born Dayan will yet get the nod and move into the ambassador’s residence in Brasilia.
One top official told The Times of Israel that a very high-placed Brazilian official a few months ago signaled to Jerusalem that Dayan’s appointment would go through. He was likely referring to a conversation Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon reportedly conducted with his Brazilian counterpart, Jaques Wagner, in late September, in which Ya’alon tried to convince the government to confirm Dayan’s appointment.
Immediately after Netanyahu announced Dayan’s appointment in August, some left-leaning Brazilians and Israelis — including a group of former senior diplomats — started lobbying the government in Brasilia against accepting Dayan. They argued that were Brazil to accept Dayan, this could be understood or presented as tacit approval for Israel’s settlement enterprise. Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff reportedly informed Jerusalem that she disapproved of Dayan’s appointment.
Wagner, who is Jewish, is said to have told Ya’alon that “Dayan’s appointment process should continue,” the Israeli daily Haaretz reported in late September. Since then, Wagner has been promoted to the chief of staff of the Presidency, one of Brazil’s most senior positions.
However, if Wagner really supported Dayan’s appointment, sources in Brazil said, the ministry would have long since confirmed it.
Dani Dayan, next to PM Netanyahu, meeting a delegation of eight Brazilian parliamentarians, November 2015 (GPO)
The Israeli cabinet approved Dayan’s appointment on September 6, paving the way for the Foreign Ministry to request what is called in diplomatic parlance an agrément — a host country’s confirmation of another state’s envoy to its capital.
An agrément is usually given within two to three weeks. When an agrément is not received after two months, a government is meant to understand that its choice of ambassador was not approved by the host country.
Governments rarely give negative replies to other countries’ requests to accredit an appointed ambassador. Rather, they simply do not respond to the request for an agrément, thus signaling that they disapprove and hope the host country will withdraw the nomination.
In Dayan’s case, no agrément has been forthcoming.
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UNPRECEDENTED EAST JERUSALEM BUILDING IN PIPELINE
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2012 AT 12:24PM
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel is planning its biggest construction surge in east Jerusalem in decades in a move that critics argue would cement its grip on the contested territory, further complicate any prospects for peace with the Palestinians, and badly rattle Israel's already rocky relations with the rest of the world.
The Palestinians, who hope to establish a future capital in the holy city's eastern sector, say there can be no peace accord without partitioning Jerusalem. They claim the construction push proves Netanyahu isn't serious about establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Within the space of a single week, Israeli officials have moved more than 5,000 apartments in east Jerusalem close to the stage where construction can begin, including a project that would build the first new Jewish settlement there in 15 years. With some other 4,000 apartments already being built or about to start, the pace is unprecedented, says Daniel Seidemann, an expert on Jerusalem construction.
Those 9,000 apartments would add almost 20 percent to the existing stock of 50,000 apartments built for Jews in east Jerusalem in the 45 years it has been occupied.
"In the last three months, we're looking at a surge like nothing we've seen in the past since 1967," when Israel captured east Jerusalem, said Seidemann, who views the construction as an obstacle to peace.
Israel annexed east Jerusalem, with its Palestinian population, immediately after capturing the territory from Jordan and began building housing developments for Jews there. The annexation has not been recognized internationally. Today, more than 200,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem alongside some 300,000 Palestinians.
Polls show a majority of Jewish Israelis favor holding on to all of Jerusalem, and construction in east Jerusalem has not stirred passionate opposition among Jewish Israelis. Most don't see the Jewish areas of east Jerusalem as illegitimate settlements - preferring to call them "Jewish neighborhoods" - whereas some in Israel vehemently oppose settlements in the West Bank.
Yet there is growing nervousness in Israel about the new east Jerusalem plans, with some fearing the current diplomatic woes could blossom into economic isolation as well, driven by the world community's clear impatience with Israel's settling of occupied land.
In the longer term, some in Israel warn, if a division is rendered impossible by filling the occupied sector with Jews, there will be no way to reach a deal on the West Bank as well. The area would be in effect absorbed into the Jewish state, rendering it more bi-national and - unless the Palestinians are given the vote - less democratic.
Palestinians have increasingly framed the issue in those terms, suggesting to Israelis that the construction runs against their own interests.
"The Israeli government is making the two-state solution impossible with this unprecedented settlement building," senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said this week.
Netanyahu is forging ahead - and polls show that he remains poised for reelection next month. If anything, he is currently feeling heat from a surging religious party on his right.
"With God's help, we will continue to live and build in Jerusalem, which will remain united under Israeli sovereignty," he said at the campaign launch event of his Likud-Yisrael Beitenu list Tuesday night.
Such tough talk aims to assuage those on Netanyahu's right who are skeptical that everything in the east Jerusalem pipeline will be built, noting that some construction projects were unofficially frozen in the past under international pressure.
If officials do push ahead, the 9,000 could be built within a few years. Other major construction projects in east Jerusalem were either smaller or strung out over a decade, said Seidemann. Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group, also said the pace was unmatched.
According to Seidemann's figures on the major projects, the big push of the last decade was the Har Homa neighborhood, with 3,200 units built. In the 1990s, 2,200 apartments went up in Ramat Shlomo. In the 1980s, 11,000 apartments were built in Pisgat Zeev. In the 1970s, Israel started building the Neve Yaakov, Gilo, east Talpiyot and Ramot areas, and Seidemann estimates that around 20,000 apartments were built in those areas throughout that decade.
The Jerusalem municipality did not respond to multiple requests for its statistics on planned and actual construction
Netanyahu put settlement construction plans into high gear to punish the Palestinians for winning U.N. recognition of a de facto state of Palestine in east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip last month. Israel withdrew settlers and soldiers from Gaza in 2005, but still controls the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
In peace talks, Palestinians privately have accepted former U.S. President Bill Clinton's 2000 proposal that Jewish areas of Jerusalem would remain under Israeli sovereignty under a peace accord, and Palestinian neighborhoods would become part of a Palestinian state.
At the same time, they have spent four decades watching Israeli construction permanently change the face of the city, and see every new housing project in east Jerusalem as yet another obstacle to building their capital there. Building for Arabs in the eastern sector has been limited since 1967, something Palestinians see as an attempt to stifle their presence in the city, though the current municipality denies any discrimination.
The expanding Jewish footprint in east Jerusalem also tightens Israeli control around the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the Old City, home to the most sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian religious sites in the Holy Land. A hilltop compound there is Islam's third-holiest site, revered as the place where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven in a nighttime journey told in the Quran. The same complex is the holiest site in Judaism, home to two biblical temples, with the Western Wall at its foot.
Palestinians have refused to return to the negotiating table unless Israel stops all construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, a condition Israel rejects. Talks deadlocked four years ago.
The renewed construction push in east Jerusalem has drawn international condemnation, as have plans to build more than 6,000 more homes for settlers in the adjacent West Bank, where more than 340,000 Jews live among 2.3 million Palestinians.
Last week, the United States used unusually blunt language to criticize the settlement activity, accusing its top Mideast ally of engaging in a "pattern of provocative action" and saying plans of new construction "run counter to the cause of peace."
The most contentious of these plans involves development of a corridor in the West Bank linking east Jerusalem and the Maaleh Adumim settlement. The Palestinians say this project, known as E1, would make it impossible for them to create a viable state because it would sever east Jerusalem from its West Bank hinterland and drive a deep wedge between the West Bank's northern and southern flanks.
Israel shelved the project for years under U.S. pressure, but started acting on plans to build 3,400 apartments there earlier this month. Netanyahu's aides have said construction is years away and his rivals have questioned whether he really intends to build. But the very fact that plans there are advancing has drawn ferocious criticism from Israel's closest Western allies.
Some of the projects closer to fruition would similarly hinder access from the West Bank. Following action last week, the government can soon ask developers to submit bids to build 2,610 apartments in the Givat Hamatos project - the first new settlement to be built in east Jerusalem since 1997. Once a bid is awarded, construction can begin, though it could take months, if not longer, to reach that point.
Within the following week, officials pushed two other projects totaling up to 2,700 apartments to that same stage.
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font redação http://apjp.org/unprecedented-east-jerusalem-b/
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