1. Israel applies to join the OECD

Israel has applied to join the rich nations club, the OECD. The Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC) has called for the OECD to freeze Israel’s membership application. The OECD”s stated values include: “a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights”; clearly Israel should be ineligible for membership. OECD rules say any application must be approved unanimously so each OECD member country has a veto. The application will be discussed at the start of May.

Urge your Government to exercise their veto by writing to your Foreign Minister and elected representatives.We urge all UK supporters to write to the Foreign Secretary, the shadow Foreign Secretary and all their parliamentary candidates.

Read more at http://www.bricup.org.uk/#036

2. Tell Amitav Ghosh – do not accepted tainted prize

Amitav Ghosh is being offered the Israeli Dan David prize jointly with Margaret Atwood (http://www.bricup.org.uk/#034). BRICUP has issued an open letter to him calling on him to refuse the prize. We said:

“It”s surprising to have to raise Israeli colonialism with a writer whose entire oeuvre seems to us an attempt to imagine how human beings survived the depredations of colonialism. Gosh, even the Dan David judges like the way you evoke “the violent dislocations of people and regimes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries”.”

Read our open letter at http://www.bricup.org.uk/documents/cultural/AmitavGhosh.pdf
Send you own message to Ghosh at http://www.amitavghosh.com/contact/index.php

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Keep up to date with the academic boycott at www.bricup.org.uk