RAMALLAH, In an appeal to Miss Universe contestants who are gathering in Israel for the Miss Universe Pageant, the ruling Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Fatah, today called on the contestants to oppose Israel’s apartheid regime and withdraw from the contest.
“In the name of humanity, justice, equality, and peace,” said the appeal, “We appeal to your conscience and humanity to withdraw today your participation in the Miss Universe pageant contest in Israel.”
“The State of Israel is an apartheid state at the core. By participating in the forthcoming Miss Universe Beauty Pageant you are actively partaking in a sustained effort of a rogue State, the apartheid State of Israel, to cover its apartheid core by the forthcoming Pageant,” said the appeal, calling on the contestants “not to take part in this regime of oppression, genocide and ethnic cleansing.”
Following is the full text of the appeal:
An Appeal to Conscience:
A Call to Miss Universe Contestants
On behalf of the Palestinian victims who died under the Israeli occupation’s brutal shells and fire,
On behalf of all the Palestinian children who cried for their lives under Israel’s killing mass bombs,
On behalf of every Palestinian refugee who lived homeless all his life and denied going back by Israeli forces,
On behalf of every suppressed Palestinian woman who could not be a model, artist, or scientist under the blockade and injustice of the Israeli apartheid,
In the name of humanity, justice, equality, and peace
We appeal to your conscience and humanity to withdraw today your participation in the Miss Universe pageant contest in Israel, on the following grounds:
* The State of Israel has been established in 1948 as an apartheid State anchored in the ethnic cleansing of some 80% of the Palestinian-Arab rural and urban population ordinarily resident in the territories that came under its sovereignty and control, aka the Palestinian Catastrophe (al-Nakba), reducing some 800,000 Palestinians to stateless refugee existing outside the territories that came under its sovereignty and control, and many of the some 200,000 who survived the Palestinian Nakba to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) inside territories that came under its sovereignty and control;
* The State of Israel has maintained the belligerent occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967, the longest belligerent occupation in modern history, and is the only state that is a Member State in the UN that continues settler-colonizing Palestinian properties both inside its 1948 ethnically cleansed territories and in its 1967 occupied territories;
* The State of Israel is an apartheid state at the core. By participating in the forthcoming Miss Universe Beauty Pageant you are actively partaking in a sustained effort of a rogue State, the apartheid State of Israel, to cover its apartheid core by the forthcoming Pageant, just as it has been trying to veil its criminal-against-humanity apartheid core by planting Jewish National Fund (JNF) forests and by developing therein recreational areas open to all “irrespective of religion, race or sex” over the ruins and on the lands of some 550 Palestinian rural and urban localities ethnically cleansed in the course of and in the wake of the 1948 war (the Palestinian Nakba).
* Under international law, the crime of Apartheid is defined as a crime-against-humanity ((https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/D oc.10_International%20Convention%20on%20the%20Suppression%20and%20Puni shment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Apartheid.pdf);
* After the demise of the apartheid regime in the Republic of South Africa, beginning with the release (in 1990) of the late President Nelson Mandela after 27 years of incarceration, Israel remains the only member state in the UN that is an apartheid state, namely: A State where in terms of its land tenure apartheid regime just over 90% of its territory is reserved in law and in practice to “Jews” only, that is to those of its citizens defined as “Jews: in term of the Law of Return of the year 1950 (Amendment of the year 1970). In former apartheid South Africa just under 90% of its territory was reserved in law and in practice to “Whites” only;
* Thus, we call upon you to join together the international anti-apartheid and Palestine Solidarity movements based on the strategy of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against the rogue State of Israel aiming at fostering the emergence of a global international Palestine anti-apartheid solidarity movement, at facilitating the work of international anti-apartheid and end-occupation advocacy, and at contributing to the achievement of a just peace solution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict correlative to the achievement of the return of Palestinian refugees and to Palestinian self-determination in conformity with standards of international law (informed by the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) enhanced by the implementation of all UN Resolutions relevant to the Question of Palestine, notably all UN resolutions on the question of Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine.
* The ethnically cleansed Palestinian village name before it was settler-colonized as Eilat is: Umm al-Rashrash.
We urge you not to take part in this regime of oppression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing.
The essence of beauty is in the humane acts… And the ultimate manifestation of beauty is attained when standing side-by-side with the oppressed!
Please, boycott Israeli apartheid occupation.
#Free_Palestine
Palestinian National Liberation Movement (FATAH)
International Relations Commission
State of Palestine
Source: Palestinian News & Info Agency