> Boycott Israel...now!

[nosrat-sunna]

Allah the Almighty says in the Noble Qur'an what can be translated as "and in case they ask you (help towards) victory in (the name) of the religion, then you have (to help them) towards victory, except against a people between whom and you there is a compact; and Allah is Ever-Beholding whatever you do." ( 8:72)

Our Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was reported to have said, "The similitude of believers in regard to mutual love, affection, fellow feeling is that of one body; when any limb of it aches, the whole body aches, because of sleeplessness and fever."

The Prophet's Defense site (www.rasoulallah.net)has recently launched 'Boycott Forum' that aims to strengthen the culture of economic boycott for those who wage wars against Muslims and Islam all over the world and those who insult the Prophet (PBUH). The said Forum plans to launch a campaign to activate boycott of Israel-supporting companies and organizations.

In light of the above, I call you, all dear brothers and sisters to join hands with us in order to achieve our aims and to defend our main issues and primarily that of wronged and oppressed Palestine.


It seems ironic and illogical that while Zionists in Israel and their supporters in the West are killing the innocent in Gaza we keep consuming the products of those aggressors and give them the price of the bullets they cold-bloodily use to kill our children in Palestine. Have our hearts turned into stone?! Have we stopped thinking?!

I know that we cannot do much to free those surrounded to death in Gaza. However, at least we can boycott the products that feed their oppressors and killers, especially that such companies and organizations declare unashamedly that they support this criminal state.

Link of the Prophet's Defence site:
www.rasoulallah.net

Link of the Prophet's Defence Forum:
http://montada.rasoulallah.net/index.php?act=idx

Link of the Boycott Forum:
http://montada.rasoulallah.net/index.php?showforum=105

[nosrat-sunna]

Economical boycott, contrary to what they want us to believe, is an effective weapon in our noble fight to regain our rights. It puts pressure on the decision makers in the supporting states and raises the cost of their support to the occupying state of Israel.

They want us to believe that such boycott is nothing. However, let us think logically enough away from emotions. Muslim states are more than 60 and Muslim population is more that one billion and three hundred million. Imagine that only half a million of each one of these states boycotts, that is, about 30 million people and imagine that the average number of each family is 5 members, that means we have 150 millions who boycott. Economically speaking, isn't this an inevitable economic loss?! You decide.

It is well known that the previous boycott campaigns had achieved significant effects on both American and Israeli economies. Coca-Cola Egypt had twice called for the convention of extraordinary meetings to discuss whether it should continue its operations in Egypt or stop them. Coca-Cola, the intimate friend of Israel, declared this in 2003 after the courageous Palestinian Intifada and in 2006 after the Israeli assault against Lebanon. Coca-Cola tried hard to evade the consequences of the boycott, but it failed. Does this mean that boycott is not important?! You decide.

In 2003, McDonalds, one of the prime supporters of the Zionist state, declared it closed 675 of its restaurants after it had lost 343.8 million dollars compared to a profit of 271.9 million dollars in the previous year 2002. The reason was the boycott of Muslims. Does this mean that boycott is not important?! You decide.

If you still think that boycott is not that important let us mention one more example to help you get rid of the effects of psychological defeat.

Once it was realized that NIKE, the sportswear company that has been supporting Israel, has put something like an engrave of the word Allah in the soles of its snickers and once Muslims in the United Sates warned they would boycott its products, the reaction was as follows:

Apology in more than one American newspaper;

Withdrawal of the whole quantity of the said product from the markets despite the material loss incurred.

Generous donations for Islamic centres.

American Muslims are only 8 millions. What do you think about one billion and three hundred million Muslims? Does this mean that boycott is not important?! You decide.

[nosrat-sunna]

In the absence of the possibility of Jihad,boycott has become in the opinions of many prestigious Muslim scholars, an obligation and not only a desirable action. Such boycott is also an educational approach. It helps us to prioritize and give more importance to the issues of our ummah and forget our selfish desires.


Let us always remember the pictures of the innocent being bombed brutally by the Zionists.

Let us always remember the pictures of the land being burnt by the Israelis.


Let us always remember that Allah the Almighty will ask us about our reaction on the Day of Judgment.


Let us always remember that we are Muslims.


Let us always remember that as every Jew all over the world tries hard to support Israel, every Muslim has an obligation to support the Palestinian issue in every possible way until we free al-Madjid al-Aqsa from the hands of the children-killing Zionists.

[nosrat-sunna]

Please follow this link!

http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.html
<tt>
it contains the BOYCOTT ISRAEL COMPANY LIST</tt>
what is intresting about this list is that it gives proofs of the mentioned brands support for Israel as well as their references (for sceptical people!)

[nosrat-sunna]

Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction

By Naomi Klein - January 8th, 2009

It's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloo.. occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa.

In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era." The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—BDS for short—was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause, and talk of cease-fires is doing little to slow the momentum. Support is even emerging among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors stationed in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the antiapartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves.… This international backing must stop."

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can't go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. And they simply aren't good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tools in the nonviolent arsenal. Surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counterarguments.

1. Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.
The world has tried what used to be called "constructive engagement." It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures—quite the opposite. The weapons and $3 billion in annual aid that the US sends to Israel is only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first non–Latin American country to sign a free-trade deal with Mercosur. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45 percent. A new trade deal with the European Union is set to double Israel's exports of processed food. And on December 8, European ministers "upgraded" the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.*

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's flagship index actually went up 10.7 percent. When carrots don't work, sticks are needed.

2. Israel is not South Africa.
Of course it isn't. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves that BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, back-room lobbying) have failed. And there are indeed deeply distressing echoes of South African apartheid in the occupied territories: the color-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said that the architecture of segregation that he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was "infinitely worse than apartheid." That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

3. Why single out Israel when the United States, Britain and other Western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the BDS strategy should be tried against Israel is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

4. Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.
This one I'll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus's work, and none to me. In other words, I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Coming up with our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, e-mails and instant messages, stretching from Tel Aviv to Ramallah to Paris to Toronto to Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start implementing a boycott strategy, dialogue increases dramatically. And why wouldn't it? Building a movement requires endless communicating, as many in the antiapartheid struggle well recall. The argument that supporting boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at one another across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don't I know that many of those very high-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel's Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, the managing director of a British telecom specializing in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax. "As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company."

Ramsey says that his decision wasn't political; he just didn't want to lose customers. "We can't afford to lose any of our clients," he explains, "so it was purely commercially defensive."

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it's precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

*On January 14, in response to Israel's aggression in Gaza, the EU called off its plans to upgrade the EU-Israel Association Agreement, a sign of growing understanding that political sanctions can be brought to bear to bring an end to the war.


from: Israel: Boycott, Divest, Sanction | Naomi Klein

for more information about the author (a canadian activist): Naomi Klein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia