[Boycott - Cultural] Human Rights Groups ask the Beatles to boycott Israel’s Anniversary
Muslim News 8 February 2008 Over 40 Human Rights organisations from around the world who campaign for peace and justice for the Palestinian people are today sending an open letter to the surviving Beatles, Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney, and to the families of George Harrison and John Lennon, asking them not to accept any invitation to join in this year’s 60th Anniversary celebration of the birth of the state of Israel. An invitation was delivered last week by the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, during a visit to the Beatles Museum in Liverpool.
We are asking the Beatles to boycott these events [Israel's 60th Anniversary celebration] because they are a celebration of the denial of the human rights of the Palestinian people.. Professor Steven and Hilary Rose, founder members of Bricup (The British Committee for Universities in Palestine)
The letter describes what happened in 1948. This was not a peaceful legally conducted creation of a safe haven for Jews escaping Europe but a brutal ethnic cleansing and massacre of Palestinians and theft of their land. The Zionist movement had set out to claim the whole of Palestine for the creation of a Jewish state long before the Nazi atrocities had occurred. In 1948 they took 78% of the land and brutally exiled or killed 750,000 Palestinians and destroyed over 400 villages- policies and actions that would never have had the support of the Beatles while they were together singing ‘all you need is Love’ and ‘give peace a chance’ .
Professor Steven and Hilary Rose, founder members of Bricup (The British Committee for Universities in Palestine) say ‘We are asking the Beatles to boycott these events because they are a celebration of the denial of the human rights of the Palestinian people- inalienable rights established in the 1948 UN Declaration. These were enacted on the wave of revulsion at the Nazi Holocaust and the other atrocities of the Second World War. It is to our shame that the West does not insist that the Declaration really is universal and is enforced in The Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel. Human rights apply to all governments, and not only to those that lack the powerful friends that Israel has. This cuts in to the heart of International Law which underpins all our rights and freedoms.’
Source: http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=13905
Also Of Interest
Page URL: http://inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10237
|