Tulkarem to boycott Israeli goods starting 1 March

Tulkarem – Ma’an – The city of Tulkarem will begin a total boycott of Israeli goods starting March, the chamber of commerce announced Thursday.

The chamber, in conjunction with several local merchants and organizations, decided to launch the campaign, called “Keeping Tulkarem Clean of Israeli Goods.” The city will have assistance in organizing popular awareness of the efforts from coordinators from the popular anti-wall campaigns including Jamal Jum’ah.

Member of the local coordination committee Jamal Barham stressed the importance of unifying efforts to ensure the success of the campaign. This will include helping shop owners identify non-Israeli goods to replace common items like milk, flour, juice and chocolate.

The goal of the Tulkarem project is to increase the production of Palestinian goods from supplying 15% to 25% of consumer goods in Palestinian areas. They anticipate that this jump will provide at least 100,000 jobs in the production sectors.

Palestine is the second largest consumer of Israeli goods and imports 2.6 billion US dollars of Israeli made products per year.

French academics join the call to boycott Israel

Israel’s impunity must end

Reports have made it clear that Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to war crimes: a population denied all possibility of escape or self-defense has been starved, deprived of medical care, and massacred beyond the view of the media. Images and accounts of the results of these actions are now reaching us, and they are frankly unbearable. It is not a matter of “excesses” committed by a few soldiers, but rather of a deliberate policy that borders on ethnic cleansing. To quote a letter signed by 300 British-based academics and published in the Guardian January 16, “The goal of this war has never changed: to use overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians as a political force, one capable of resisting Israel’s ongoing appropriation of their land and resources.”

Israel’s impunity must end. Neither humanitarian aid nor a call to extend the ceasefire will suffice. The blockade of Gaza must be lifted and Israel, together with its political and military leaders, must be tried for war crimes. We ask the French government and the French population to take all practical measures to force Israel to accept these demands, and, first of all, to define and apply to Israel a program of boycott, divestment, and sanctions.

We who have signed this text commit ourselves to cease all collaboration with Israeli institutions participating in the occupation, and declare our solidarity with those who in Israel struggle courageously for the human, social, and political rights of Palestinians.

Read the French version signed by French academics  on the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel blog.

and check these links:

Latest Guardian Article on Occupations and Sit-Ins

Israel used experimental weapons in Gaza developed at UC

UPDATE: Call on Israeli Soldiers to Stop War Crimes published in Haaretz

A fellow Egyptian blogger was sexually harassed

Another Blogger Detained For Gaza

World gets its first gay leader

My father once heard MLK denounce Israel

and don’t forget to check Mondoweiss blog for updates on Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, the first American college to divest from Israel.