[act-ma] video & press: Boston Activists Disrupt Israeli Propaganda Event at Museum of Science]

[pf soto]

    <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLhtRA45Ac>[ see also scientists 
condemn Boston's Museum of Science's Israeli celebration 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2010/05/chomsky-and-other-scientists-condemn-boston-museums-israeli-celebration.html>
 ~Phiullip Weiss]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLhtRA45Ac

the down arrow to the left of 'views' show a short description; in it 
there's a link to this
press, on Indymedia, Boston: 
<http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/210522/index.php>

Boston, MA, May 3, 2010 – Local activists protested the so-called 
“Israeli Innovation Weekend” (IIW) at the Museum of Science in Boston 
through multiple, disparate actions on Sunday. IIW’s sponsors, including 
the Consulate General of Israel to New England, were left flummoxed by 
the activists’ efforts and largely unable to prevent their successful, 
multi-pronged disruption of the event.

Protesters targeted IIW because it was part of a state-sponsored 
campaign to “greenwash” Israel’s discriminatory, apartheid regime and 
atrocious human rights record. IIW was officially sponsored by the 
Israeli Consulate, which also played a major role in funding and 
planning the event; nearly half of IIW’s steering committee was composed 
of Consulate staff and the Consulate was one of the top donors.

Throughout the day, protesters maintained a visible public presence 
outside the Museum. Protesters held signs drawing attention to Israeli 
“innovation” in technologies of death such as white phosphorus and 
cluster bombs, parodying the exhibit’s slogan, “Healing the World 
Through Technology.”

*Across the street from the Museum, demonstrators also prominently 
displayed a large Palestinian flag from the adjacent East Cambridge 
Lechmere Viaduct Bridge*. The protesters’ message was seen by hundreds 
of Museum visitors and passing tour groups, many of whom called out or 
honked horns in expressions of solidarity.

Meanwhile, inside the Museum, lone activists stealthily replaced the IIW 
program with a duplicate program, virtually identical in appearance but 
which highlighted themes of the Israeli science and technology sectors’ 
complicity in water theft and other abuses [brochure attached]. The 
front of the program named Israel “The World’s Leader in Cutting-Edge 
Apartheid Technologies,” while inside the program, titles of IWW 
lectures were re-printed with altered titles. For example, “Sunshine and 
Sustainability: Israeli Leadership in Solar Technology” was renamed 
"Sustainable Darkness: Israeli Innovations in Torture Technology and 
Extra-Legal Maneuvering,” while “Sharing Water in the Middle 
East—Israel’s Cross-Border Water Resource Strategy” became “Strategic 
Water Appropriation in the Middle East: Might Makes Right.” IIW 
organizers were overheard multiple times expressing anger and 
frustration at their inability to determine who was “plastering” the 
exhibit with this literature.

Activists surreptitiously distributed this material for more than two 
hours before finally being discovered and asked to leave the Museum. Yet 
Museum staff were observed reading the alternative program and several 
expressed sympathy with the activists’ cause as they were escorted out 
of the Museum.

Finally, yet another group of activists infiltrated the last panel 
lecture of the day, entitled “Israeli Technology: An Investor's 
Perspective.” As the panel began, two participants unfurled a giant 
banner reading “Don’t Invest in Israeli Apartheid.” After the activists 
were shouted down by the audience and removed by Museum security, others 
continued to disrupt the session every five to ten minutes, individually 
standing up and interrupting the lecture by condemning investment in 
Israeli technology, calling for justice for Palestinians, or singing 
liberation songs.

One disrupter referred the audience to the report about war crimes in 
Gaza by the UN inquiry commission led by South African jurist Richard 
Goldstone if they truly wanted to know more about Israeli technological 
innovation. Another declared that investing in Israel was investing in 
the dispossession and genocide of indigenous people. Yet another sang a 
re-written, Palestine-specific version of Sweet Honey in the Rock’s 
Chile Your Waters Run Red Through Soweto. In sum, the activists made it 
impossible for the event to proceed and visibly agitated the audience. 
Video of the disruption will be made available online this week.

In another positive sign of Israel’s increasing marginalization, there 
were so few people in actual attendance of the lecture that after all 
the activists had been removed, there was more security present in the 
auditorium than attendees.

The Boston-area activists were pleased to be part of a larger, 
international campaign that refuses to let the Israeli government 
“greenwash” its occupation and devastation of Palestinian life by 
presenting itself as a leader in scientific innovation and green 
technology, a campaign that is part of the larger movement for boycott, 
divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Just days earlier, 
activists in Scotland held a three-day protest of a similar such 
exhibition of Israeli science and technological innovation at their 
national Parliament building, a demonstration that included 400 tiny 
coffins to represent the children massacred in the 2009-2010 war on 
Gaza: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449973.html.

The BDS movement is an international response to the call from 
Palestinian society to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Israeli 
government until it ends its occupation and dismantles the Wall inside 
the West Bank, recognizes the equal rights of Palestinian citizens, and 
respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees. To learn more 
about the call for BDS, and to read about other organizations engaged in 
BDS work who also support the protest of the greenwashing of Israel, see:

http://www.bdsmovement.net/ - site of the global BDS movement; you can 
read the call for BDS here
http://www.pacbi.org/ - site of the Palestinian campaign for Academic 
and Cultural Boycott of Israel
http://www.endtheoccupation.org/ - site of the U.S. Campaign to End the 
Israeli Occupation





-- 

boycott apartheid Israel <http://www.bdsmovement.net/>   video 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3bzPMArSc>

pf soto 
rule19.org <http://rule19.org>  
UPandOUT.org <http://upandout.org>  
AZAPOI.org <http://azapoi.org>

	<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3bzPMArSc>

 








-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20100506/394d3f48/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 22451 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20100506/394d3f48/attachment.jpe>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 191349 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://act-ma.org/pipermail/act-ma_act-ma.org/attachments/20100506/394d3f48/attachment.gif>