Galway : Floggers of Israeli goods flagellated and picketed yesterday

galway | rights, freedoms and repression | news report

Sunday June 14, 2009 19:07

by TD - Free Palestine Campaign

Activists are doing it for themselves

Heartened by recent successes in the ongoing Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions campaign in the field of corporate responsibility and ethical compliance, , http://www.bdsmovement.net/ where giant French multinational company, Veolia Environnement SA, following a global campaign over its activities in the West Bank, is poised to withdraw from its participation in the construction and management of the illegal light railway in Occupied East Jerusalem and the announcement of Belgian-French financial group Dexia that it will no longer finance Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories through its Israeli branch Dexia Israel ...

activists with the Free Palestine Campaign took to the streets of Galway, yesterday, in the form of a flying picket to further this campaign during the course of which fraudulent Aldi was flagellated and tongue lashed through our loud hailer for attempting to palm off Israeli red grapefruit as: Produce of Cyprus http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=44677&archive=1 and Boots the high street chemist for - flying in the face of its stated policy to “respects international human rights within the Company's sphere of influence. We are committed to ensuring that Alliance Boots is not complicit in human rights abuses” - for seeking to purchase more goods from Israeli pharmaceutical companies and also investigating the possibility of setting up franchises through Israels second-largest pharmacy chain; New Pharm.

Elsewhere, the tackling of unethical companies profiteering from Israeli war crimes continues apace in legal actions where, besides the ongoing court case in France against Veolia and Alstom for their involvement in the East Jerusalem tramway, this month villagers from the embattled West Bank community of Bil'in in a Canadian court, will be bringing to task, two Canadian corporations; Green Park International and Green Mount International of aiding and abetting the colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.through its building of residential buildings and related infrastructure in Matityahu East. for Israeli colonists on stolen Bil'in land http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10591.shtml

In Ireland this weekend, this battle was joined with the formation of Irish Friends of Palestine Against Lisbon (IFPAL) "a group of concerned citizens from all over Ireland who support the political and human rights of the Palestinian people" who "believe that the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union is inherently inimical to those rights ... Israel's actions were in blatant violation of the human rights clause of an EU-Israel trade agreement which affords Israel generous trading concessions with the EU - its largest export market ... The EU has resisted repeated calls from civil society and from the European Parliament itself (twice in 2002) for the suspension of the EU-Israel trade agreement in view of Israel's flagrant and ongoing violation of its human rights clause. Nonetheless, the EU is about to consider further upgrading that status, at the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers on Monday, June 15th. We demand not alone that our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Michael Martin, should oppose any such upgrade, but that on the contrary he should call for the suspension of the Association Agreement until such time as Israel complies with international law and international humanitarian law and ends its criminal policies against the Palestinian people" (Press Release).

It's clear, following the spineless inaction of countries and institutions such as the contemptible UN in bringing rogue state Isael to heel, activists all over the world are effective in doing it for themselves.?