Ending MEC’s support for Israel’s war machine
March 30 was the Global Day of Action for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid and in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Activists across Canada targeted Mountain Equipment Co-op, calling on MEC to end it’s “partnerships” with Israeli factories, including Israeli military designer and contractor Source Vagabond.
In Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver and Victoria dozens of activists held information pickets and protests at MEC stores, giving out thousands of leaflets to MEC members.
In Victoria, protesters performed an anti-apartheid rap routine inside the MEC store while in Toronto a flash mob urged MEC members and MEC itself to “drop” Israeli apartheid by dropping made-in-Israel products on the floor. In Vancouver many members signed and delivered letters calling on MEC management to stop using Israeli factories for MEC brand products. Watch the Toronto Flash Mob at:
The first Global day of BDS in 2009 was established in the wake of Israel’s military assault on Gaza that killed over 1000 Palestinian civilians, according to the Israeli human rights group B’tselem (http://btselem.org).
Judge Goldstone’s report to the UN concluded that Israel’s attack constituted war crimes and was “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population.” More than one year later, Israel continues its suffocating blockade of humanitarian and reconstruction supplies to the Gaza Strip which has been described by Jimmy Carter as “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth.”
Source Vagabond, which supplies water reservoirs for MEC brand hydration packs, brags on it’s website (http:/source-military.com) about its close relationship with the Israeli military and it’s sale of 50,000 hydration systems to Israel’s armed forces — some of which were certainly used in the assault on Gaza.
March 30 also coincides with Palestinian Land Day, which commemorates the day in 1976 when Israeli security forces shot and killed six young Palestinian citizens of Israel protesting Israel “s expropriation of Palestinian land to build new Jewish-only colonies. The international campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid has become an essential part of the resistance to Israel “s ongoing policies of illegal land expropriation, colonization, occupation and apartheid.
For more information on the March 30 Global Day of Action, including report backs from around the world go to: http://bdsdayofaction.wordpress.com
