After international pressure from the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, Honda has decided to move a motorcycle racing show from an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.
Honda’s distributor in Israel had launched plans to hold the MotoGP event on a race track partially built inside of a “live firing zone” near the Petzael Israeli settlement.
The BDS movement and other Japanese human rights organizations wrote an open letter to Honda asking to them reconsider the Israeli chapter’s decision to carry out the event at such a controversial site where the violation of the human rights continues to take place and warned them that they could face an international boycott.
We welcome the decision by @Honda to cancel an Israeli government-sponsored Moto GP race, following a campaign from BDS organisers. Being complicit in Israeli occupation and apartheid is not only unethical and illegal, it is increasingly becoming financially reckless. pic.twitter.com/ubBBjKn24i
— PACBI (@PACBI) February 22, 2018
“The announcement from Honda that the motor race it sponsors will no longer take place in an illegal Israeli settlement shows the BDS movement’s growing impact on international corporations that are complicit in Israel’s regime of occupation, colonization, and apartheid,” Jamal Juma, a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), told The Electronic Intifada.
Honda Israel has decided to relocate the event to Arad, a city in southern Naqab within the internationally accepted Israeli borders.
The BDS movement thinks the decision is not enough since Arad is a city involved in many human rights violations that incite racism against African immigrants.
Palestinians say @Honda's decision to move race from Israeli settlement "shows the BDS movement’s growing impact on international corporations" https://t.co/XQa6yP22Fz
— Electronic Intifada (@intifada) February 22, 2018
The racing star, the 20-year-old motorcyclist Joe Roberts, said he didn’t know he would participate in an event in an Israeli settlement illegal under international law.
“I wasn’t given a lot of details in the beginning, other than that the track was in Israel,” Roberts wrote to the publication. “I would not have attended the event had it been in the West Bank.”
His representative agency APEX Motorsport declared Roberts “will NOT under any circumstances” participate in events programmed in the occupied West Bank.
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Thisvicki move is important as it indicates that business doesn’t want to aid Israel in its illegal and violent occupation of Palestinian land!!
This story has a major flaw: It gives the impression that the only thing Israel is doing wrong or ever did wrong was occupy the West Bank. Joe Roberts refuses to race in the West Bank? Great. What about the rest of Israel, which is actually 48-occupied Palestine? This article reduces BDS to an issue of Israel’s crimes in a limited area and only since 1967. Journalists should make clear in all such articles that the Call is to boycott Israel until 3 demands are met, 2 of which have not to do with the West Bank but with its apartheid rule over the Palestinians in Israel and its refusal to let 6 million Palestiniany return. Thank you.