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Tangible achievements of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine

January 27, 2016 at 10:37 am

Ireland’s second-largest company announced earlier this month that it had entirely sold-off its 25 per cent stake in the holding corporation of Israel’s only cement-making firm. This withdrawal followed a decade-long campaign by Irish activists calling on the company, CRH, to divest from Israeli cement-maker, Nesher.

The Irish company had admitted “in all probability” that cement from the firm had been used to build Israel’s apartheid wall in the West Bank (which the World Court declared illegal in 2004). Nesher’s cement is also used in the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank – which are build on land belonging to dispossessed and expelled Palestinians and are illegal under international law.

The sale was the largest of 13 divestments CRH made in 2015, totalling €260 million, according to a new report released by the company. While CRH denied that there was anything other than purely business motives behind their decision to divest, the sale of the huge stake in Nesher is part of a growing trend.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the sustained campaign by Irish activists (detailed in a press release by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign) made a huge difference over time, and contributed significantly to this victory for the BDS movement – the campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel until it starts to recognise and implement basic Palestinian human rights.

The BDS movement is now more than a decade old, and it’s easy to forget just how much it has achieved in that time. It’s not for nothing that Israel has declared “war” on BDS, in increasingly desperate terms – even deploying its spy agencies against the movement.

Israel’s defenders like to argue that the claims of BDS activists are exaggerated, and that the movement is making little real economic impact. But there is no doubt that, after a decade and more of dedicated and patient campaigning, the strategy is beginning to bite. In October, the heads of four major Israeli arms firms warned their government of a “major crisis” in the country’s arms industry.

In their letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they warned that “military exports have dropped from $7.5 billion in 2012, to $6.5 billion in 2013, and further to $5.5 billion in 2014. This year [2015] we are expecting exports to total $4-4.5 billion.”

Even for arms-buyers, being associated with Israeli war crimes is more trouble than it’s worth, it seems.

The CRH divestment is part of a growing trend: firms targeted by BDS caving in and pulling out altogether. In 2010, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine held its London session, which I did some press work for. After the session deliberated and came to its conclusions, myself and the Tribunal’s organizer (Frank Barat) edited a book compiling the evidence.

Activists used the detailed information and research the Tribunal put together to help them campaign for those companies to withdraw from Israel – or to withdraw from their complicity in the case of Israeli companies. (In its concluding press conference on the last day of the London session held at Amnesty International in Shoreditch, the Tribunal called for the legal defence of BDS activists.)

CRH was one of the companies targeted by the Russell Tribunal, and named as being complicit with Israeli war crimes. Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign officer John Dorman gave a testimony to the Tribunal. So it is gratifying to now to see that years later all the hard work has paid off.

French multinational Veolia was also highlighted by the Tribunal, for its involvement in providing transport and infrastructure to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including in occupied eastern Jerusalem. The trend continued in August as, after years of hard-fought BDS campaigning against Veolia’s involvement there, the company finally sold off its last investment in Israel and its settlements.

Israeli company Sodastream was also targeted by the Russell Tribunal. It has been forced into retreat after retreat, after an exceptionally brilliant BDS campaign – Sodastream’s woefully inept PR didn’t help either with the 2014 Scarlett Johansson ad scandal entirely backfiring.

Its main production facility in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank finally closed down in September 2015. The company claimed to be bringing jobs to Palestinians in the area. But in fact, the settlement the plant was situated in had been built on land stolen from local Palestinians, and (speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals) one Palestinian factory worker told The Electronic Intifada that Sodastream “treats us like slaves.”

However, the company remains a BDS target. As Palestinian BDS leader Rafeef Ziadah said in 2014 (when the West Bank closure was announced) Sodastream’s “new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred … Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights.”

And there are indications that Ahava may be the next company to follow this trend. The Israeli cosmetics company was another major target of the London session of the Russell Tribunal, due to its location in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, its pillaging of Palestinian natural resources (Dead Sea minerals) and its part-ownership by two settlements. After a long and sustained BDS campaign against Ahava, the company announced in June that it is contemplating withdrawal from its settlement base. In September, a company announcement seemed to show that it had been unable to find a European or American buyer, after a Chinese company bought a majority stake. Changes to the way the business operates are expected.

Those campaigns took years to show tangible results, but now they finally have. BDS gets the goods.

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London and an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.