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<td valign="top"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLhtRA45Ac"><img alt=""
src="cid:part1.04020100.05010005@mynas.com" align="right" border="2"
height="244" hspace="20" width="350"></a><font color="#ff0000">[ see
also <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://mondoweiss.net/2010/05/chomsky-and-other-scientists-condemn-boston-museums-israeli-celebration.html">scientists
condemn Boston's Museum of Science's Israeli celebration</a><br>
~Phiullip Weiss]</font><br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLhtRA45Ac">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPLhtRA45Ac</a><br>
<br>
the down arrow to the left of 'views' show a short description; in it
there's a link to this<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/210522/index.php">press,
on Indymedia, Boston:</a><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.”<br>
<br>
<big><b>Across the street from the Museum, demonstrators also
prominently
displayed a large Palestinian flag from the adjacent East Cambridge
Lechmere Viaduct Bridge</b></big>. 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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: <a moz-do-not-send="true" linkindex="45"
href="http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449973.html">http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449973.html</a>.<br>
<br>
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:<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" linkindex="46"
href="http://www.bdsmovement.net">http://www.bdsmovement.net</a>/
- site of the global BDS movement; you can read the call for BDS here<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" linkindex="47"
href="http://www.pacbi.org">http://www.pacbi.org</a>/
- site of the Palestinian campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" linkindex="48"
href="http://www.endtheoccupation.org">http://www.endtheoccupation.org</a>/
- site of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation </td>
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<p><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.bdsmovement.net/">boycott
apartheid Israel</a> <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C3bzPMArSc">video</a> </p>
<p> <font color="#c0c0c0">pf soto </font> <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://rule19.org"><br>
rule19.org</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://upandout.org"><br>
UPandOUT.org</a>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://azapoi.org"><br>
AZAPOI.org</a> </p>
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