The Spark February 2010

“…no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of
Israel on trial” – Ariel Sharon

On May 15^th 1948 the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel stated that due to a “natural and historic right” a “Jewish state” would be established in the former British Mandate Palestine.

Benjamin Netanyahu

Current Israeli Prime Minister recently echoed that in order for there to be “peace” Palestinians must recognise Israel as a “Jewish State”. Both were seemingly ignorant of an ever increasing Israeli Arab population.

In 1948 Zionist leaders attempted to cleanse their soon to be “Jewish State” of its indigenous population through a campaign of terror that triggered the flight of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land and homes, making them refugees. Yosef Weitz , a high official of the Jewish National Fund, explained that the solution was “the land of Israel without Arabs”, continuing “they must be completely removed…leaving not one village, not one tribe”. The ethnic cleansing campaign was only partially successful and when the State of Israel was established it included 180,000 Palestinian Arabs within its borders. New laws were passed, such as the Absentee Property Law of 1950 and the Land Acquisition Law of 1953, which enabled the Israeli state to take land without the consent of its owners for “security, settlement or essential development purposes.” This land was then expropriated by the state and handed over to organisations such as the Jewish National Fund for settlement by new Jewish immigrants. [Read more…]

John Edmundson

The arrests of activists attempting to disrupt the appearance of Israeli Tennis player Shahar Peer has brought the issue of politics and sport back into the public eye.

At the time of the anti-apartheid struggle, the issue was of great importance in New Zealand because here, it was sporting contact with racist South Africa that became the focus of protest action. New Zealand and South Africa had longstanding sporting rivalries, particularly in rugby, so attempting to end sporting contact between the Springboks and the All Blacks became a major part of the New Zealand anti-apartheid movement’s work throughout its history.

During the 1981 Springbok tour, a major thrust of the pro-tour lobby was that sport and politics should not mix, that the purity of sport should not be sullied by its being immersed in the murky business of politics, and that sports people should be left to get on with the serious business of playing their sport and entertaining the spectators. Often, such arguments were simply a disingenuous attempt by apologists for the racist South African regime to weaken the campaign against the white South African state. [Read more…]

On December the 11th 1967, in the wake of the Arab defeat in the 6 day war, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was founded with the catch cry “Resistance until Victory”. On the 42nd anniversary of its founding the PFLP released a statement calling for an official announcement from the Palestinian Leadership to declare the “utter failure of the ‘negotiations’ and the entire Oslo process, the reliance on the United States and the so-called roadmap”. Recent opinion polls would indicate that this position is supported by over 70 percent of the population in the West Bank and Gaza, who believe that OSLO has either harmed, or made no difference to the Palestinian cause. A clear condemnation, from Palestinians, of over a decade of negotiation with the occupier.

[Read more…]