Israeli apartheid ad campaign comes to MUNI buses

(NEW YORK CITY 05/09/2013) – The American Muslims for Palestine, a national grassroots organization educating the public about Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage, today announced its nationwide outdoor advertising campaign has come to San Francisco public transportation. The ads call for an end to Israeli apartheid and to unconditional American aid for Israel.

The ads, which will appear on buses from the Presidio garage, will run for four weeks before moving to Chicago, Washington DC and elsewhere in the nation. 

“Our ads critique Israeli and American policies in efforts to raise awareness about how American taxpayers fund Israeli apartheid and oppression of the Palestinian people,’ said AMP Chairman Dr. Hatem Bazian, who is also a senior lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. 

While Israel denies its policies constitute apartheid, one who knows the colonial, racist policies best, Nobel Peace Prize winners Desmond Tutu, recognizes Israel as an apartheid state. 

AMP’s ad quotes Tutu asserting, “I’ve been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa.”

A study by the South African Human Science Research Council in 2009 used several international laws such as the Hague Regulations of 1907, the Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Law of Armed Conflict and the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination of 1965 to prove its case comparing apartheid in South Africa and Israel. Among similar tactics used by both regimes are the use of murder, indefinite detentions without charge, torture, extrajudicial killings, the study found. The report also underscored how Palestinians are governed by a network of military orders and are subject to a military court system while Jews are under the jurisdiction of civilian laws and court system. 

President Obama told a group of American Jewish  leaders in a private meeting on March 7 that prospects for peace are bleak, according to published reports. And instead of working to shift US foreign policy to one that is more fair and balanced for everyone living in the Middle East, Mr. Obama chose instead to visit the gravesite of Theodore Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. It’s a message of dispossession and discrimination not lost on Palestinians.

Each year, the US gives Israel more than $3 billion in unconditional military aid, even with this year’s sequestration cut. AMP asserts that our financial support, as well as our unconditional political and diplomatic support of Israel, in light of its continued and flagrant violations of international law, weaken America’s position throughout the international community and hurts our national interests.

Apartheid runs counter to every principle Americans hold dear. Israel’s military occupation violates the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in our own Declaration of Independence.

Therefore, AMP is calling on President Obama and Congress to end US aid to Israel, which only enables and supports Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies against oppressed Palestinians. 

The American Muslims for Palestine is a national, grassroots organization whose mission is to educate the American public about issues related to Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage. For more information, go to www.ampalestine.org.