What Martin Luther King, Jr. Could Have Said to Netanyahu and US re Mordechai Vanunu

Whilst Israel plans to prosecute anyone for commemorating the Naqba, Mordechai Vanunu is denied the right to leave Israel. Anyone who now criticises Israeli policy face being prosecuted and stripped of their citizenship, accused of being spies and traitors.Across the region, millions are fighting for democratic rights and the zionist state shows its true colours. Perhaps Netanyahu and Lieberman are more comftable having Gaddafi and other despots as friends, after all they have much in common ironically. Yet doesn't Israel claim to be the only true democracy in the Middle East?

The good news is that the University of Johanesburg  took the momentous decision last week to break off institutional relations with Ben Gurion University. Hopefully others will follow with the international academic boycott.

Matthew Kalman, March 24, 2011

In a written statement, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel working group lauded the move, saying it set a “worldwide precedent.”

The Senate vote followed a decision last September to end links with its Israeli counterpart if it found “direct or indirect military implications” to the relationship. The Senate had called on Ben-Gurion to form partnerships with Palestinian universities and ordered a review of the ties between the two institutions before April.

A fact-finding mission of officials from Johannesburg visited Ben-Gurion in February to see conditions on the Israeli campus for themselves. Ben-Gurion officials believed the visit had been a success. They are proud of the praise heaped on the university by Nelson Mandela when he accepted an honorary doctorate there, in 1997. The university conducts a number of joint projects, particularly on water and desert research, with Palestinian and Jordanian institutions and scholars.

The Ben-Gurion Student Association’s chairman, Uri Keidar, who met the delegation from South Africa, wrote to its members afterward, saying, “I find it difficult to believe that BGU, the home of 20,000 free-thinking students of different religious and ethnic backgrounds, is under this brutal attack. These accusations, although faulty, are being presented as scholarly facts, which I find very disturbing.”

But University of Johannesburg officials told the Senate before Wednesday’s vote that no Palestinian university had been found to team up with Ben-Gurion on the algae project. Sixty percent of the Senate voted to cancel the research agreement in a secret ballot.

The University of Johannesburg’s Petition Committee, which led the campaign, said in a prepared statement that the Senate had also found “significant” evidence that Ben-Gurion’s research and other projects supported the Israeli military and, in particular, its occupation of Gaza.Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but tensions and cross-border violence persist, including rocket fire from Gaza in recent days that was met with Israeli airstrikes.

The University of Johannesburg “is the first institution to officially sever relations with an Israeli university—a landmark moment in the growing boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel campaign,” said the committee, hoping that it would trigger “a domino boycott effect.”

http://jfjfp.com/?p=22384

Excerpted from OpedNews:
What Martin Luther King, Jr. Could Have Said to Netanyahu RE: Vanunu

...So, Bibi, did you see Mordechai Vanunu's comment regarding the law the Knesset passed last week to strip particular Israelis of citizenship?

Vanunu wrote, "Israel's parliament has passed a law that allows courts to revoke the citizenship of anyone convicted of spying, treason or aiding its enemies. http://ansible.causes.com/external/redirect/eyJyZWRpcmVjdCI6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cuYmJjLmNvLnVrL25ld3Mvd29ybGQtbWlkZGxlLWVhc3QtMTI4OTc0NTYiLCJzaGFyZF9pZCI6NDg4LCJyZWNpcGllbnRfaWQiOjYwMjk4NDJ9 No loyalty no citizenship, Freedom Now! Now they can take my citizenship and send me totally free from Israel. Freedom Now!" [4]

On 28 March 1988, Mordechai Vanunu was convicted by an Israeli court for treason and espionage, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Under your new law Vanunu should be the first deported back to Morocco.

On April 21st it will be 7 years that Vanunu has been denied his right to leave Israel. The longer Israel holds him the greater his legend will grow, and as Dylan sang, "you don't need a weather man to see which way the wind blows."

Bibi, the cover is blown on Israeli authorities who are intent on silencing dissent from within and without. Gandhi said; first they ignore you- then they laugh at you-then they fight you-then you win- but that takes time.

The good news is that the times have a'changed and nobody and no government can stop a train of values rooted in international law and human rights driven by the power of nonviolent people seeking universal rights and freedom for all...

The Rest @
http://ansible.causes.com/external/redirect/eyJyZWRpcmVjdCI6Imh0dHA6Ly93d3cub3BlZG5ld3MuY29tL2FydGljbGVzL1doYXQtTWFydGluLUx1dGhlci1LaW5nLUotYnktZWlsZWVuLWZsZW1pbmctMTEwNDAzLTI5Lmh0bWwiLCJzaGFyZF9pZCI6NDg4LCJyZWNpcGllbnRfaWQiOjYwMjk4NDJ9