TWO HOURS AGO: an incredible photo taken by a ut austin student capturing something deeply poetic in my opinion, a line of state troopers eagerly waiting to arrest student protesters standing just behind a sign that reads "what starts here changes the world. its starts with you and what you do each day."

London’s biggest screening party for the Eurovision Song Contest finals has been canceled, the venue Rio Cinema and organizer Eurovision Party London have said. “Following discussion with the organizers of Eurovision Party London, we have collectively decided not to screen the Grand Final of the Eurovision Song Contest this year while Israel remains in the competition,” the Rio Cinema said in a statement on X. “The Eurovision Party London has been a beloved partner of The Rio Cinema for many years, and we will continue to work with them in the future. We firmly believe that the Eurovision Song Contest has the power to bring people together across the world, and when its core values of inclusivity, equality and universality are upheld, it can be a genuine force for good. With its own slogan in mind, we hope that we can all be United By Music again soon. We will continue to organize fundraising events for the charities we support, including Doctors Without Borders and Medical Aid for Palestine.”

🇵🇸 From BDS - What to Boycott:

Fruits, vegetables and wines from Israel are often wrongly labelled as “Produce in Israel” when they come from stolen Palestinian land. Boycott all produce from Israel in your supermarket and demand they are removed from shelves.

thank you @leandra-winchester for making the graphic above! if any of you are active on other social platforms, you have her permission to use the image however you want (no credit required)

keep in mind, though, that this isn't a complete list: you should still check the origin labels on other types of fruit and veggies, and see if any local orgs have produced a more complete breakdown of israeli produce that's specific to your country

The Israeli army is just shooting anyone they think is Palestinian, much the same way that Israel is indiscriminately bombing all of Gaza, including the “safe zones” where they have directed noncombatant civilians to go right before they bomb them anyway. It’s war crimes, plain and simple.

Spain lied about not selling weapons to Israel.

Even after October 7th, Spain has sold more than 1 million € of weapons to Israel. Norway and Finland make it possible.

In January, Spain made headlines word-wide when the government's Minister of Exteriors, José Manuel Albares (PSOE), claimed in Congress and later again in a radio interview that Spain had stopped selling weapons to Israel ever since October 7th. Israel's intensification of violence in Gaza following October 7th meant that, on top of decades of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, between October 7th and January 23rd Israel had already killed 28,000 people and forced 2 million out of their home. In this context, many people were demanding their governments stop arming and funding the genocide of the Palestinian people, and here on Tumblr and other social media sites like Twitter I think we all saw the many posts praising the Spanish government for this.

Well, it turns out it was a lie.

According to Albares, "Since October 7th there are no more weapons exportations [from Spain] to Israel". But in November alone, Spain exported weapons to Israel for 987,000€, as was published on the Spanish Government's official website dedicated to exterior commerce (Comex). A researcher from Centre Delàs (an independent centre for peace studies) found it and published it, and it has also been verified by newspapers such as elDiario.es.

This 987,000€ worth of weapons in November was not the only ammunition that Spain has sent to Israel in 2023. In 2023, Spain exported a total of 1.48 million € in war material to Israel.

All of the weapons sent in November come from the factory of Nammo Palencia (Castilla y León), a corporation that is 50% property of the Government of Norway and 50% owned by a public Finnish business. However, even if the owners are foreigners, the ammunition was sent from Spain and thus it had to be authorized by the an organism of the Spanish Government named Junta Interministerial de Defensa y Doble Uso, whose deliberations on whether a weapons exportation is accepted or denied are kept secret. The only cases where they have denied exporting weapons to Israel have been when they thought that Israel would re-sell these weapons to the Philippines.

Spain has had a close relation with Israel for years. As published by the Spanish Government, Spain has sold 20 million € of weapons to Israel between 2012 and 2022. Spain also buys weapons and military software from Israel (for example, the Spanish Intelligence Service has been using the Israeli software Pegasus to illegally spy on Catalan activists, journalists, politicians and civil society members and their relatives to attack the Catalan independence movement), and Spain has continued buying from Israel and allocating defense contracts to Israel even after the October 7th attacks. It is very difficult to track the concessions of public contracts such as buying weapons, but some contracts have been known. For example, on November 24th 2023, Spain bought 287.5 million € of missiles from Israel. This is not unusual: between 2011 and 2021, it is publicly known that Spain bought war material from Israel for at least 268 million €, but experts say that the real number could be two or three times as much.

Spain has also continued allocating concessions to Israel. For example, on December 15th 2023 Spain allocated a contract worth over 576 million € to Israel for a rocket launcher programme. On November 22nd, Spain allocated another another Israeli company to provide missiles for 237 million € at the same time as the Spanish army bought Israeli inhibitors for 1.4 million €. The very next day, November 23rd, Spain signed another military allocation to Israel for 82,600€. The following week, Spain signed yet another allocation with a different Israeli military corporation for 3.7 million €.

Spain also allows Israeli weapon manufacturing companies to produce weapons through their branches located in Spain. This way, Israeli weapons make their way to markets with which Israel doesn't have diplomatic ties but Spain does, like Saudi Arabia. And since Spain is a member of NATO, Israeli weapons produced in Spain are approved according to NATO standards and access it easily. In the same way, these Israeli weapons manufacturers also access European Union defense funds through their branches in Spain. (source).

As I said, I saw a lot of positive posts around when Albares said Spain was going to embargo, but I haven't seen any post about how they didn't do it. I also (personally) haven't seen anything on international media, and barely anything on Spanish media, which is already busy with the PSOE covid material corruption scandal. So I share this in the hope of helping put pressure on Spain to cut all ties with Israel immediately.

SHAME ON EVERYONE WHO GIVES ISRAEL THE MATERIAL AND MONEY THAT WILL BE USED TO MASSACRE THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE. SHAME ON SPAIN, NORWAY, AND FINLAND.

Y'all still boycotting, right? Still following the BDS movement, right? You still remember that Boycotts are for life, right?? You read that the Israeli Zionist Occupation is connected to other ongoing genocides, e.g. in Congo, right???

reminder: the boycotts are working. so keep up the ongoing boycott movement because we have the power to reduce the unscrupulous companies to nothing. also, be sure to unfollow anybody and anything that still supports them, and educate the people around you on the importance of doing the same.

at this point I think at a personal level we need to look at the BDS movement carefully and try to implement it in our lives. your local cafe can make a starbucks quality caramel macchiato without co-signing genocide. learn how to pirate if you wanna watch Disney+ shows. lots of other shoe brands than puma! you've never needed a sodastream water in your life. instead of hungover mcdo beef grease fries, order some delicious latkes. and so on and so forth....... the power of the US dollar, and the euro/pound is quite unparalleled. so use it! make it publicly embarrassing to be seen with these brands, for influencers to advertise it, force their hand until they publicly cut ties with an apartheid regime, or watch their stock price plummet.

i think its so funny that alumni from schools like harvard and columbia that were there during the protests in the 60s-80s are expressing support for students currently protesting against the genocide in palestine, and random zionists that were NOT at these protests in the 60s-80s have the never ending audacity to tell these alumni "well thats different, what you protested was good and what they're protesting is bad." as if protesters against the vietnam war and apartheid south africa were not also demonized, arrested, brutalized, and even killed for their activism. history only remembers them fondly after the damage has already been done.

"It's not that deep, let people drink coffee" It's not that deep? more than 30k people have been killed over the course of six months. the next generation of Palestinians is going to have birth defects because on average, 10 kids a day become amputees. premature births have increased by 20-30 percent. 13 libraries containing old and important texts have been burnt down. people are actively trying to erase a whole culture and drive them away from their homes. a university that is more than 1000 years old has been reduced to a pile of rubble. more children have been killed daily than in the holocaust. Palestinians, even if they don't currently live in Palestine, are going to have trauma over this. this is the most well-recorded genocide ever witnessed and yet it is still going on.

all this but you can't stop buying far-too-expensive and shitty coffee from a multimillion-dollar company that is funding the group responsible for this genocide? grow up and start to realise that you, even as one person, have the power to affect a company because when you start, you will somehow influence the people around you. and there are way better and cheaper places to buy coffee from.

so, yes. it is that deep.

🇵🇸 From Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA):

This Ramadan make sure you’re not breaking your fast with the taste of apartheid. All you need to do is check the label to avoid buying dates from apartheid Israel. This includes dates labelled from Israel, the West Bank and the Jordan Valley or if the country of origin is not shown. Ramadan is a time of reflection and self-improvement. During this month we are more conscious of our actions and how they affect others. Israel is the world’s largest producer of Medjoul dates. Let's be conscious of not buying dates that support Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and apartheid regime. * Major UK supermarkets like ASDA, Tesco, Iceland and Waitrose all sell dates from apartheid Israel as well as local grocery stores * The UK is the second-biggest importer of Israeli dates in Europe 50% of Israeli dates are exported to Europe, where the UK, Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy import huge quantities of the dried fruit. In 2020 the UK imported over 3000 tonnes of dates from Israel, worth roughly 7.5 million pounds. There are two peaks of date consumption in Europe. One is during the month of Ramadan and the other is during New Year’s Eve and Christmas. Boycotting Israeli dates in Ramadan is a concerted community effort that can show we are not powerless. It would be brilliant to see all Israeli dates still left on shelves across the UK and Europe at the end of the blessed month. This would reflect our strength as a community to stand together with a very important message: We will not support the oppression of Palestinians and we will not be complicit in Israeli apartheid. So, this Ramadan #CheckTheLabel and boycott Israeli dates.

With Ramadan approaching, please consider sharing!

If you're in the UK, they also have leaflets available for order on their webpage. These tie into their upcoming campaign #CheckTheLabel, with a national day of action on the 16th of February.

Again, check their webpage for more info.

Palestinians deserve better than to have us westerners complain about "boycott fatigue".

BDS has outlined and stated which companies they are targeting primarily, we can at least do this for them.

https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-to-boycott

S 🇵🇸 O 🇵🇸 L 🇵🇸 I 🇵🇸 D 🇵🇸 A 🇵🇸 R 🇵🇸 I 🇵🇸 T 🇵🇸 Y 🇵🇸