Vermonters - Stop the Machinery of Occupation: Boycott Israel

Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel

“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even tacitly take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop.” - Mario Savio, Student Leader of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, 1964

More than four decades of Israeli military occupation have passed, eviscerating the dream of building a viable, sovereign Palestinian state. 500,000 Jewish settlers now live in segregated, heavily fortified colonies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in violation of international law. They control most of the territory’s best land and water resources—land and water stolen from Palestinians. In Gaza, 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them refugees and terribly poor, are trapped in the world’s largest “open-air prison.”

Closures, checkpoints and roadblocks, targeted assassinations and settler terrorism, home demolitions, military incursions and arbitrary detentions, an economic blockade and massive “Separation Wall,” razed farm land, olive groves and fruit orchards, poisoned wells and livestock, interminable delays in movement—these measures of collective punishment, colonization and ethnic-racial separation make normal life impossible for Palestinians in the occupied territories.

To Vermonters who cherish justice and liberty, who are inspired by the state motto—“Freedom and Unity”—it is time to unite in the cause of freedom for the Palestinian people and send an unequivocal message of nonviolent resistance to the state of Israel, just as we did to South Africa’s Apartheid regime in the 1980s.

It is time to BOYCOTT Israel and all businesses, academic centers and cultural institutions that support, maintain or benefit from the occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In 2005, over 170 civic organizations representing the breadth of Palestinian society issued a historic joint call to the world:

"We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace...."