Experts Call for the Boycott of Israeli Products in Protest of Gaza Genocide

Is peace in Palestine nothing more than a mere illusion? This is the question on everyone’s mind as the Israeli army pursues its violent military action in Gaza. The answer hinges on whether the international community is willing to rally behind a sustained wave of protests and boycotts against Israel and its allies – a strategy that proved effective in bringing down the racist regime in South Africa, according to experts.

On Wednesday, October 30 2023, Friends of Aqsa organised a discussion at the Port-Louis town hall to debate the prospects for peace in the Middle East. Panelists included Cassam Uteem, Linley Couronne, Alain Ah-Vee and Vijay Makhan.

Jean-Marie Richard, a member of Friends of Aqsa who chaired the discussion, pointed out that “whenever anyone criticises Israel on the Palestinian issue, this country supported by the United States and European nations brands them as terrorists. But when Hamas served Israel’s Machiavellian designs, as well as those of the Americans, against the Palestinian Authority, they were perfectly presentable. “What moral or ethical authority permits labelling an organisation as ‘terrorist’? What about the 75 years of brutal occupation by the State of Israel in Palestinian territory and Gaza?”

Richard lengthily argued on the systematic expulsion of Palestinians from their land and the appropriation of it by Jewish settlers.

On May 14t1948, the day the British mandate over Palestine ended, David Ben-Gurion, head of the national Jewish council, proclaimed the independence of the State of Israel in the presence of Zionist movements. 

The new state was founded on the “Law of Return,” which meant that every Jew in the world had the right to settle in the country. “It was only natural that the Arabs, who were in the majority with 1.2 million inhabitants in this territory, would see it as an insult,” said former President Cassam Uteem.

Starting in 1967, with the outbreak of the “Six-Day War,” followed by fifteen years of conflict marked by annexations, Israel transformed the Gaza Strip into a “real concentration and extermination camp,” added Jean-Marie Richard.

The Palestinian cause is poorly understood among Mauritians, who tend to conflate it with religious issues, noted Vijay Makhan, a career diplomat and former Secretary-General of the African Union.

“The Palestinians are seeking freedom and a state, and we need to understand the circumstances that led to Hamas’s action on October 7 by tracing the history of Palestine,” he says, citing the Balfour Declaration, “a 67-word phrase” that created a “homeland” for Zionist Jews in what is During the war surrounding the creation of Israel, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Two decades later, during the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel annexed the West Bank, which it still occupies, and East Jerusalem, which Palestinians claim as the capital of their future state.

Thanks to the unwavering support of the United States and the West, Israel has always been able to ignore all UN resolutions condemning its actions, including the illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, noted Vijay Makhan.

“There has been (in Palestine) land grabs, as happened in the Chagos. And it’s the same people. Those who lecture us on human rights today say they cannot do a ceasefire. They have all been to Tel Aviv but not to Gaza.”

How to achieve peace?

“I’m somewhat optimistic. If apartheid could be dismantled and slavery abolished, then nothing is impossible. There was a fundamental violation of human rights on October 7 when civilians were attacked, but we compounded the injustice by imposing a blockade and bombing Gaza. The Jews had a right to a state, but they repaired one monstrous injustice with another,” nuanced Linley Couronne, director of Dis-Moi Droits Humains, Indian Ocean.

Leftist party Lalit has long been part of the “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” (BDS) network, which calls for international mobilisation to end the “genocide” in Gaza.

Alain Ah-Vee, a Lalit spokesperson, used the gathering to reiterate his call to boycott and sanction Israel. Without naming Hamas directly, he argued that Palestinians, with the means at their disposal, have the right to resist the colonisation of their land and the apartheid system imposed by Israel, which is “worse than in South Africa.”

“When the people of Mauritius boycotted Outspan oranges to protest the apartheid regime in South Africa, it showed solidarity. This is not new in Mauritius, and there is an urgent need to act to end the genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Source: Defi Media