Time for a Non-Violent Global Resistance Movement to End Israeli Occupation

This single word captures the growing revulsion developing around the world at the bloody Israeli military action unleashed on the people of Gaza.

Gaza has become the world’s largest open air prison.

People of conscience are speaking out and calling for a global movement to put an end to the occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

“It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa,” Naomi Klein, writes in The Nation Magazine.

Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of the international and New York Times bestseller, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

The principles and framework for such a global movement has been outlined by Tariq Ramadan in an appeal he recently launched through his website (tariqramadan.com).

Ramadan, who is a Professor of Islamic Studies at Oxford, is one of the most renowned Muslim intellectuals in Europe and was named by Time magazine as one of the 21st Century’s great innovators.

“Because we cannot stand idly by while the Palestinians are being humiliated, while their rights are being trampled, while they are victimized by atrocities, we are launching the Non-Violent Global Resistance Movement,” Tariq Ramadan reasons.

The Appeal is asking signatories to agree to a minimum program of seven principles and then build local, regional and national collectives and platforms that will work on resistance strategies such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign that Naomi Klein favors.

The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine campaign (www.bdsmovement.net) was launched in 2005 by Palestinian activists and civil society organizations and urged people of conscience around the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.

The BDS Movement is renewing its call in light of the current crisis in Gaza.

“Without sustained, effective pressure by people of conscience the world over, Israel will continue with its gradual, rolling acts of genocide against the Palestinians, burying any prospects for a just peace under the blood and rubble of Gaza, Nablus and Jerusalem,” the BDS Movement said in a press release.

Tariq Ramadan in his appeal is calling for a comprehensive global movement that would connect existing campaigns, platforms and collectives and mobilize people around the world.

It is calling ‘upon public personalities (intellectuals, artists, etc.) to join the Movement; we appeal to activists and ordinary citizens around the world, to organizations committed to the defense of individual rights and dignity; we summon to our cause all those who refuse to tolerate the silent complicity of governments East and West, while in Palestine civilians are being slaughtered, or relegated to the new Bantustans that the Occupied Territories have become under Israel’s policy of colonization and apartheid.’

This appeal for a non-violent Global Resistance movement has been gaining momentum through the internet and has already been endorsed by a number of well-known academics, leaders, and activists from around the world.