The authors of the following appeal are Israeli citizens and Jews of other nationalities whose families have been victims of racism and genocide in past generations, and who feel they cannot remain silent.

The appeal below was posted in April of 2001. Since then, the situation in the Israeli-occupied territories (OTs) has progressively worsened.

As the Israeli government continues to make life with honour and freedom impossible for all Palestinians, reducing their existence to bare survival and depopulating more territories, it is now more important than ever for world public opinion to put the pressure of grass-roots boycott on Israel.  We call on all decent-minded people all around the globe to support our call for a boycott of Israeli exports and tourism. (17 October 2006)

Appeal (April, 2001)

After six months of relentless military oppression of Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories, the government of Israel has made daily life even more intolerable for the Palestinians by imposing a physical siege on their villages and towns. This siege has brought upon the Palestinians a complete cessation of "normal" life. For the majority of them there is no going to work, no shopping for food and other necessities, no medical services, and in many cases no water or electricity.

In 1948 the state of Israel dispossessed the Palestinians, evicted hundreds of thousands of them from their homes into refugee camps and did not allow them to return when the war ended. The same state is now preventing the victims of 1948 from having even the most basic services in their refugee camps and remaining villages and towns.

The inhumane oppressor hopes that starving will help force the Palestinians to surrender, without having any "negative public opinion problems" that live ammunition may have had in Western media. Indeed, public opinion in the West has largely relaxed any protest against the Israeli government's policies of killing civilians --men, women and children-- since much of the killing is now being done away from the TV cameras. Human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority have also helped Israel to falsely portray itself again as the righteous victim.

We call on the world community to organize and boycott Israeli industrial and agricultural exports and goods, as well as leisure tourism, in the hope that it will have the same positive result that the boycott of South Africa had on Apartheid.

This boycott should remain in force as long as Israel controls any part of the territories it occupied in 1967. Those who squash the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians must be made to feel the consequences of their own bitter medicine.

We urge every recipient of this appeal, irrespective of origin and nationality, to:

1. Start practicing the boycott on a personal level immediately, and make sure that the steps taken are known in the community (for example: tell your shopkeeper why you will not buy Israeli products; avoid leisure travel to Israel).

2. Add your name to the appeal, circulate it to your friends, and do whatever you can to have it endorsed by groups concerned about human rights.

3. Organize activities to put pressure on your government to cut economic and commercial ties with Israel and to rescind preferential economic treaties with Israel.

Other links:

Join a boycott discussion group

A letter by Palestinian intellectuals

Appeal by Palestinian Emergency Committees

Shulamit Aloni: Murder of a population under cover of righteousness

To Members of Global Civil Society and Academia

"IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there." (Uri Avnery, Gush Shalom Site).

Read the article

Academic Freedom in the "only democracy in the middle east":

"The Hebrew University of Jerusalem demands that Palestinian citizens of Israel who wish to visit its campuses present a character reference from the police as a condition for entrance..."

Read the article

Ours is not a boycott against individuals!