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=BDS court victory in London: ‘Ahava four’ found not guilty of trespass in Israeli store
BDS court victory in London: ‘Ahava four’ found not guilty of trespass in Israeli store
Four campaigners against Israeli apartheid were acquitted yesterday (August 10th) of all charges related to two direct action protests against the Israeli cosmetics retailer Ahava in Covent Garden, London. The campaigners locked themselves onto concrete-filled oil drums inside the shop, closing it down for two days in September and December of 2009.
The campaigners insist that they are legally justified in their actions as the shop’s activities are unlawful. All cosmetics on sale in the shop originate from Mitzpe Shalem, an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, and are deliberately mislabelled “Made in Israel”.
To date, no campaigner has been successfully prosecuted and Ahava has consistently refused to cooperate with the prosecuting authorities.
On the first day of trial, prosecutors dropped aggravated trespass charges. This would have required the prosecution to demonstrate Ahava was engaged in lawful activity. Significantly, the CPS decided that this was not something they would attempt to prove.
The primary witness for the prosecution, Ahava’s store manager, refused to attend court to testify despite courts summons and threats of an arrest warrant leading to the activist’s acquittal on all remaining charges.
Ms Crouch, one of the four acquitted today said: “This is a small victory in the wider campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. We’ll continue to challenge corporate complicity in the occupation and Israel’s impunity on the international stage.”
Mr Matthews, another acquitted campaigner, added: “The message is clear. If your company is involved in apartheid and war crimes and occupying Palestinian land, people will occupy your shop.”
The British government, the European Union, the United Nations and the International Court of Justice all consider Israel’s settlements to be illegal, as they are in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention are also criminal offences under UK law (International Criminal Court Act 2001).
For more information please contact the defendant’s solicitor Simon Natas on: 0208 522 7707 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 0208 522 7707 end_of_the_skype_highlighting (UK)
NOTES FOR EDITORS
1. In December 2009, the UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) issued guidance to retailers concerning produce grown in the occupied Palestinian territories.
It states that: “The Government considers that traders would be misleading consumers and would therefore almost be certainly committing an offence, if they were to declare produce from the OPT (including from the West Bank) as ‘Produce of Israel’. This would apply irrespective of whether the produce was from a Palestinian producer or from an Israeli settlement in the OPT. This is because the area does not fall within the internationally recognised borders if the state of Israel.”
DEFRA Technical advice: labelling of produce grown in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, 11 December 2009
2. The BDS initiative [7] was born in 2005 through a call by Palestinian civil society groups and organisations seeking a global non-violent means to challenge the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. It has been taken up by numerous groups and organisations internationally and has become a unifying global movement for those seeking justice for Palestine.
The rationale for the conception and creation of www.easi-piesi.org lies in the belief that few people would, knowingly, seek to benefit through theft from others. Likewise, few would consider taking advantage of the victims of terror and ethnic cleansing. Few would want to reward a military occupier where brutality and wanton killing, the demonising and brutalising of a subjugated people is the hallmark of the occupation
Increasingly there is awareness that trade has an ethical dimension -as witnessed by the plethora of ethical and corporate responsibility statements to be found in the literature of the UK’s major supermarkets. The formation of the Ethical Trading Initiative by the supermarkets is one manifestation of this.
However the defining of ethics as applied to international trade is not the monoply of the UK’s supermarkets. UK shoppers should have a say in the matter, should have a facility whereby they can sensitise the supermarkets to their feelings and demands - with the bonus of knowing that they are helping the supermarkets formulate policy based on what the customer really wants.
Crucially, shoppers should be able to identify products and produce on the supermarket shelf which originates from stolen land or from land under military occupation. Shoppers should be free to shop with a clear conscience knowing they have made an ethical decision to avoid such produce.
By making such an ethical decision they are telling the supermarket, in the most direct manner possible, to cease selling the goods they have chosen to boycott.
Palestine - a stolen land
It was on the 16th September, 1948 that the United Nations appointed mediator, Count Folke Bernadotte, completed the report which outlined his plans for the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who, in the space of a few months, had either been ethnically cleansed from their land or had fled to safety.
Twenty four hours later, the UN mediator was assassinated at the hands of the terrorist Stern Gang. It is worth noting that two prominent members of this terrorist group, Yitzhak Shamir (directly implicated in the murder) and Menachem Begin, both became prime ministers of Israel.
It is the legacy of this act of murder which resonates throughout the Middle East and the wider world to this day. And this legacy is summed up in the two words “stolen land.”
“Legal” theft
With the assassination of the UN mediator. The question of land ownership and looted Palestinian property was quietly dropped. Crucially, at this point in time, about 94% of land in Palestine was owned by Palestinian Arabs, churches and religious trusts. The remainder was Jewish owned. (In current circumstances, within Israel itself, these statistics are now reversed.)
And how did the state of Israel acquire Palestinian owned land?
Quite simple. In parallel with ignoring international law, it used (and still uses) any convenient laws dating from the days of the Ottoman Empire
- if land remains uncultivated for 3 years or more - regardless of the reason - it beomes the property of the state
- laws and military regulations used by Britain - under the Defence Emegency Regulations for example, Israel can and does carry out draconian collective punishments such as house demolition - as did the British during its time of authority over Palestine.
Israel used its own laws and Military Orders
- At the end of June 1948, for example, the first “Abandoned Areas Ordinance” was issued giving the theft, looting and seizure of thousands of Palestinian homes and businesses a first coat of legal gloss.
- For those Palestinians who fled even a few miles from their homes and land, for safety, they lost their right to ownership - even if they returned a few weeks later.
- Those so-called “present absentee” Palestinians can still look at their rightful property and land - but cannot enter. As for Palestinian refugees, Israel refuses outright any responsibility for their situation, never mind any guilt over stealing their land
- land declared “abandoned” was designated “state land”, passed to a Development Authority, transferred to Israel Land Administration and administered by the Jewish National Fund (the UK charity, JNF Charitable Trust, is a member of the extended Jewish National Fund family) for exclusive Jewish use.
If all else fails the excuse of “security” is invoked
By such means the Palestinian people were robbed, and continue to be robbed, of their land.
Continuing robbery
Every act of violence towards the Palestinian people, whether they be refugees in the Lebanon or residents of the West Bank and Gaza, contains the same message - we, Israel, have your land and have no intention of giving it up, so you give up your struggle.
Every act of resistance by the Palestinian people, violent or non-violent, conveys the message to Israel. We demand our rights, our land.We will never give up.
And Israel has become adept at responding to this message in an uncompromising manner.
The visit to Israel towards the end of 2008 by Gordon Brown and Barack Obama produced the usual pleas to halt settlement construction. Israel’s response was typical. A few days later the government announced plans to build settlements on Palestinian land in the Jordan Valley.
For 10 year-old Ahmad Husam Yousef Mousa, land theft by Israel was very much a reality. On 29th July 2008 he demonstrated with his friends against the separation fence which is being constructed on the lands of his village, Nilin, taking away the lands and sole source of livelihood of many of its inhabitants. At a distance of about 10 metres, as they were retreating from armed soldiers, he was shot in the head and murdered by a bullet from an M16 rifle.
Palestine Israel Ethical Shopping Initiative
At www.easi-piesi.org there is the belief that the international community, as represented by individual governments, has totally failed the Palestinian people. The responsibility now lies with civic society to show the way.
We believe that any solution to the question of Palestine and its people must be a rights based solution, based on international law. We believe that all aspects of Israeli society which give the state a civilised veneer should be boycotted until as such times as Israel ceases to boycott the rights of the Palestinian people
With the UK importing at least two thirds of Israeli produce, civic society within the UK has the responsiblity to consider the ethics of purchasing such produce. At www.easi-piesi.org we take this responsibility seriously. .
www.easi-piesi.org will be a vibrant, interactive site. It will, initially, encourage the shoppers of the UK to make the ethical decision not to purchase Israeli goods on the shelves of the supermarkets. It will, with the assistance of the shopping public, clearly identify these goods and publicise them.