Dear friends,
As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it's not enough just to call for another ceasefire. It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.
Our governments have failed -- while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and our companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence. The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, Hamas firing rockets, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.
We know it works -- when pension fund PGGM and two other Dutch companies withdrew their investments from initiatives that finance activities in Israel’s illegal settlements, citing legal concerns, it caused a political storm in Israel. But Dutch pension fund ABP is one of the world’s biggest, and it still invests in three of the same Israeli banks that PGGM did. If enough of us raise the alarm we could get ABP to uphold the law and pull out.
This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace. Click to call on ABP and 5 other key businesses to pull out -- If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/israel_palestine_this_is_how_it_ends_nl/?bLlPxdb&v=42703