THE LEAST WE COULD DO!

The following is an excerpt from brother Ku Keng's latest entry:

*Mel pertama dari Pucuk Manis, amat menarik kerana di samping mengandungi senarai barangan yang ada kaitan dengan Yahudi, juga mengandungi satu pengajaran tentang seekor burung yang cuba memadamkan api yang begitu menyemarak sewaktu Namrud mencampakkan Nabi Allah Ibrahim ke dalam api.

Jadikan kisah si burung kecil yang cuba untuk memadamkan api yang dinyalakan untuk membakar Nabi Ibrahim sebagai iktibar. Burung ini telah cuba memadamkan api tersebut dengan mengambil dan mencurahkan air hanya dengan menggunakan paruhnya yang kecil. Tetapi apabila ditanya malaikat kenapa dia berbuat begitu, burung itu menjawab bahawa (di akhirat nanti, bila di tanya Allah S.W.T kelak), dia (walaupun mengerjakan perkara yang mustahil untuk memadamkan api), sekurang-kurangnya telah melakukan sesuatu untuk menolong seseorang yang mempercayai Allah, sewaktu ianya dalam keadaan bahaya!!!

Alangkah malunya kita di akhirat nanti sekiranya tidak dapat menjawab sama ada kita pernah melakukan ikhtiar sebegitu. Sedangkan burung yang tak berupaya itu, seakan-akan mempunyai banyak keupayaan dan kelebihan cuba membuat sesuatu. Amat berbeza sikapnya jika di bandingkan kita yang masih berdiam diri...

Masihkah kita akan berdiam diri?
Masihkah?

e-Mel kedua dari Ku Kelak Klang ("KKK") pula mengandungi makalah Case for Boycotting Israel, yang ditulis oleh Virginia Tilley. Virginia Tilley pula bukanlah beragama Islam!:

It is finally time. After years of internal arguments, confusion, and dithering, the time has come for a full-fledged international boycott of Israel. Good cause for a boycott has, of course, been in place for decades, as a raft of initiatives already attests. But Israel's war crimes are now so shocking, its extremism so clear, the suffering so great, the UN so helpless, and the international community's need to contain Israel's behavior so urgent and compelling, that the time for global action has matured. Read more...

What to Target

Fortunately, from the South African experience, we know how to go forward, and strategies are proliferating. The basic methods of an international boycott campaign are familiar. First, each person works in his or her own immediate orbit. People might urge (1)divestment from companies investing in Israel by their colleges and universities, corporations, clubs, and churches. (2)Boycott any sports event that hosts an Israeli team, and work with planners to exclude them. Participate in, and visit, no Israeli cultural events - films, plays, music, art exhibits. Avoid collaborating with Israeli professional colleagues, except on anti-racist activism. (3)Don't invite any Israeli academic or writer to contribute to any conference or research and don't attend their panels or buy their books, unless their work is engaged directly in anti-racist activism. (4)Don't visit Israel except for purposes of anti-racist activism. (5)Buy nothing made in Israel: start looking at labels on olive oil, oranges, and clothing. (6)Tell people what you are doing and why. Set up discussion groups everywhere to explain why.

For ideas and allies, try Googling the "boycott Israel" and "sanctions against Israel" campaigns springing up around the world. Know those allies, like the major churches, and tell people about them. For more ideas, read about the history of the boycott of South Africa.

Second, don't be confused by liberal Zionist alternatives that argue against a boycott in favor of "dialogue". If we can draw any conclusion from the last half-century, it is that, without the boycott, dialogue will go nowhere. And don't be confused by liberal-Zionist arguments that Israel will allow Palestinians a state if they only do this or that. Israel is already the only sovereign power in Palestine: what fragments are left to Palestinians cannot make a state. The question now is not whether there is one state, but what kind of state it comprises. The present version is apartheid, and it must change. However difficult to achieve, and however frightening to Jewish Israelis, the only just and stable solution is full democracy.

Third, be prepared for the boycott's opposition, which will be much louder, more vicious, and more dangerous than it was in the boycott of South Africa. Read and assemble solid documentable facts. Support each other loudly and publicly against the inevitable charges of anti-Semitism. And support your media against the same charges. Write to news media and explain just who the "Israel media teams" actually are. Most pro-Israeli activism draws directly from the Israeli government's propaganda outreach programs. Spotlight this fact. Team up to counter their pressure on newspapers, radio stations, and television news forums. Don't let them capture or intimidate public debate. By insisting loudly (and it must be sincere) that the goal is the full equality of dignity and rights of everyone in Israel-Palestine, including the millions of Jewish citizens of Israel, demolish their specious claims of anti-Semitism.

Finally, hold true to the principles that drive the boycott's mission. Don't tolerate the slightest whiff of anti-Semitism in your own group or movement. Anti-Jewish racists are certainly out there, and they are attracted to these campaigns like roaches. They will distract and absorb your energies, while undermining, degrading, and destroying the boycott movement. Some are Zionist plants, who will do so deliberately. If you can't change their minds (and don't spend much time trying, because they will use your efforts to drain your time and distract your energies), denounce them, expel them, ignore them, have no truck with them. They are the enemy of a peaceful future, not its allies - part of the problem, not the solution.

Boycott the Hegemon

This is the moment to turn international pressure on the complicit US, too. It's impossible, today, to exert an effective boycott on the United States, as its products are far too ubiquitous in our lives. But it's quick and easy to launch a boycott of emblematic US products, upsetting its major corporations. It's especially easy to boycott the great global consumables, like Coca-Cola, MacDonald's, Burger King, and KFC, whose leverage has brought anti-democratic pressures on governments the world over. (Through ugly monopoly practices, Coke is a nasty player in developing countries anyway: see, for example, http://www.killercoke.org.) Think you'll miss these foods too much? Is consuming something else for a while too much of a sacrifice, given what is happening to people in Lebanon? And think of the local products you'll be supporting! (And how healthy you will get).

In the US, the impact of these measures may be small. But in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and the Arab and Muslim worlds, boycotting these famous brands can gain national scope and the impact on corporate profits will be enormous. Never underestimate the power of US corporations to leverage US foreign policy. They are the one force that consistently does so.

But always, always, remember the goal and vision. Anger and hatred, arising from the Lebanon debacle, must be channelled not into retaliation and vengeance but into principled action. Armed struggle against occupation remains legitimate and, if properly handled (no killing of civilians), is a key tool. But the goal of all efforts, of every stamp, must be to secure security for everyone, toward building a new peaceful future. It's very hard, in the midst of our moral outrage, to stay on the high road. That challenge is, however, well-known to human rights campaigns as it is to all three monotheistic faiths. It is what Islam knows as the "great jihad" - the struggle of the heart. It must remain the guiding torch of this effort, which we must defend together.

Virginia Tilley is a professor of political science, a US citizen working in South Africa, and author of The One-State Solution: A Breakthrough for Peace in the Israeli-Palestinian Deadlock

Dan KKK berpesan:

Please pass it on.
But please don't read while drinking in Starbucks
pretending to be cool,
or shopping in Tesco's trying to be that too.
There's nothing cool about drinking or shopping for Israel...

Well, while you're at it,
boycott Nestle too.
They're as Israel as you can be.
Will we be dead from that?
Not likely,
but the Palestinians and the Lebanese people would thank you.*

List of products to be boycotted:

Nestle
Nokia
McDonald
Loreal
intel
IBM
Estee Lauder
Danone
Johnson-Johnson
Revlon
Coca-Cola
Sara-Lee
Timberland
Starbucks
Mark & Spencer
Kimberly-Clark