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An important victory

January 20, 2009

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News From Europe: The Grand Hotel Intercontinental cancels the Israeli Tourism Fair

01.13.2009 | EuroPalestine.com/

Confronted with the indignation expressed by so many people in France and abroad who had heard about the scheduled Israeli Tourism Fair in this great Parisian hotel, the management of this establishment has made the decision to cancel this event, which was supposed to open on January 15.

The hotel’s management, as the Paris police prefecture has confirmed to us, has indicated that it has disinvited the 50 Israeli exhibitors who had planned to present their tourism products.

We express our profound appreciation for all the individuals and associations in France and abroad that made the effort to express their arguments to the hotel management, arguments that were certainly taken into account in the decision to cancel the event. We also thank the management of the hotel for this decision, and we stress that commercial relations and all other interactions should be guided by basic ethical rules.

As long as Israel makes martyrs of an entire people in order to annex their lands, defying all international conventions as well as the most fundamental human rights, we must avoid any acts that would turn us into accomplices.

Holding an Israeli tourism fare would have been especially obscene while the Israeli army continues its massacres in the Gaza Strip. But it is the web of relations and collaboration with Israel which we have the moral duty to freeze, as long as there is a continuation of the occupation and enslavement of a whole people, deprived of liberty for more than 60 years.

Together, we have not only the duty but also the power to reject the impunity enjoyed for so long by Israeli state terrorism. Impunity which encourages it to increase the violence carried out against Palestinian men, women and children, and to multiply, here in France, provocative actions such as the benefit galas for the Israeli army and the attacks by the thugs of Betar or the JDL (Jewish Defence League) who last week wounded two students of the Janson de Sailly high school.

Please stay mobilized ! At the present time we are publishing information almost by the hour on our site http://www.europale stine.com. That is how we announced the entry, yesterday, into Gaza of a surgical mission led by Prof. Christophe Oberlin, and we praise the courage of the French, Greek, German and Egyptian specialists who have broken the siege in order to aid the wounded.

Have a look at the short video on our site showing the big demonstration for Gaza that gathered 100 000 people in Paris streets last Saturday : http://www.europale stine.com/ article.php3? id_article= 3620

With best wishes,

CAPJPO-EuroPalestine