Gaza Freedom March: Cairo Declaration of Jew Hatred and Persecution

——–
"We don't just want to tell people, 'Don't
buy Israeli vegetables'; we want to go to the workers who are involved in
selling these vegetables. We want to go to the people who are running the
warehouses where they're stored [and] to the people who are transporting
them."
——–

CAIRO, January 1—This morning, a couple of
hundred Gaza Freedom March (GFM) participants ringingly endorsed the
“Cairo Declaration,” the founding document of a new initiative for deepening
opposition to Israel’s apartheid policies and increasing the reach and impact of
the Palestine solidarity movement. Hammered out over the past week by a Gaza
Freedom March committee led by the South African delegation, the declaration
centers on a plan for recruiting international trade union support for the
campaign for boycotts of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel.

Entitled “End Israeli Apartheid,” the
declaration:

• Spells out Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people—from the
  occupation of the West Bank and the construction of illegal settlements there to
  the building of the separation wall and the siege of Gaza;
• Identifies Zionist ideology as the fundamental basis for those acts;
• Reaffirms participants’ commitment to Palestinian self-determination, the
  end of the occupation, “equal rights for all within historic Palestine,” the
  Palestinian right of return, and the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment
  and sanctions; and
• Calls for and commits to working on an international “mass democratic
  anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil
  society to implement” the call for BDS

  .

Greg
Dropkin and COSATU's George Mahlangu presented the Cairo Declaration to GFM
participants Jan. 1. Photo by Ellen Davidson

The document proposed
concrete steps, including “an international speaking tour … by Palestinian and
South African trade unionists and civil society activists to be joined by trade
unionists and activists committed to this program within the countries toured”;
“coordination of citizens arrest bureaus to identify, campaign [and seek] to
prosecute Israeli war criminals”; and “campaigns against charitable status of
the Jewish National Fund (JNF),” whose charter
mandates it to purchase land
for Jewish settlement.

Two of the seven action points are
specifically aimed at bringing trade unions into the effort: “campaigns to
encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies
directly implicated in the occupation and/or the Israeli military industries”
and “a systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products involving
consumers, workers, and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and
transportation sectors.”

Said Greg Dropkin, who carefully laid out
the declaration’s provisions to the group of 100 or so crowded into the
restaurant of the Lotus Hotel, “We don’t just want to tell people, ‘Don’t buy
Israeli vegetables’; we want to go to the workers who are involved in selling
these vegetables. We want to go to the people who are running the warehouses
where they’re stored [and] to the people who are transporting them. We want to
go to everybody in a unified way and make clear what we’re doing here.”

The GFM delegates adopted the declaration
with minor changes and resoundingly thanked the committee that had worked to
draft it, in particular the representatives of the Coalition of South African
Trade Unionists, which had generated the initiative.