Date: Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Time: 5:30pm – 7:00pm
Location: Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Ave.
Reject business as usual with Israel and protest Israel’s participating in the Chicago Sister City International’s Consular Corps Ball!
WHEN: Wednesday, 2 June 2010, 5:30pm
WHERE: Hilton Chicago, 720 S. Michigan Ave.
Join the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago’s protest of Israel’s participation in the Chicago Sister City International’s (CSCI) Consular Corps Ball. The CSCI will host an inaugural ball to mark the program’s 50th anniversary, with honorary chairs Mayor Richard M. and Mrs. Maggie Daley. Join the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago’s protest of Israel’s participation in this event and say, “No business as usual with apartheid Israel!”
This action is part of our ongoing campaign calling on CSCI to drop Petach Tikva and Israel from its program. Heeding the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS), the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago rejects an official relationship between the City of Chicago and the Municipality of Petach Tikva in Israel. Under the guise of promoting cultural and education ties, and with the false premise of a people-to-people program, Petach Tikva’s inclusion in the Chicago Sister Cities International promotes Israel-US business ties while it simultaneously whitewashes Israel’s occupation and human rights abuses.
Palestinian civil society leader in Israel and BDS advocate Ameer Makhoul, arrested by secret police at his home on 6 April 2010, is the latest Palestinian grassroots activist to be held and interrogated at Petach Tikva. It is bitterly ironic that the chairperson of the Chicago Sister Cities International’s Petach Tikva program, Daniel B. Shure, is also president of the America Israel Business Chamber of Commerce, which earlier this year advertised on its website a “Fight Back Against the Boycott” to undermine the movement strugglers like Ameer Makhoul are being arrested and persecuted for leading.
So long as Israel continues to occupy Palestinian and Arab land, so long as Palestinian refugees are refused their right to return home, and so long as Palestinians are denied their right to self-determination, we demand that there be no business as normal with Israel.
Join our campaign and directly challenge Israel’s supporters in Chicago, and demand real policy change!
TAKE ACTION: contact Leroy Allala – Sister City Program Executive Director (leroy.allala[at]cityofchicago.org, 312.744.1372) and demand an end to the Sister City partnership between Chicago and Petach Tikva!
