PRESS ALERT: Gold Reef City Protest of Yom Ha'azmaut (Monday, 15 April at 6pm)

Time: 18h00

Venue: Gold Reef City Casino, Corner Northern Parkway & Gold Reef Road, Ormonde, Johannesburg

More info: http://tinyurl.com/cmgbvvk

Endorsed by: BDS South Africa, Cosatu, South African Communist Party, Young Communist League, Kairos Southern Africa, Coalition for a Free Palestine, SA Artists Against Apartheid, South African Students Congress, South African Council of Churches Youth Forum, StopTheJNF, MRN, MSA, PSA, PSC and others

Supporters of Israel are holding a music concert (sponsored by the controversial Israeli airline company, EL AL) titled, "The Miracle of Israel: A Symphonic Celebration", at Gold Reef City in Johannesburg to celebrate Israeli Independence Day tomorrow, Monday the 15th of April. Pro-Palestine protesters claim that this Israeli celebration is essentially a "celebration of murder, expulsion and continued Israeli oppression against the indigenous Palestinian people". Protesters have also called on artists that are scheduled to perform at tomorrow's Gold Reef City Israeli Independence Day celebration to cancel their acts as the concert violates the international boycott of Israel.

Uyanda Mabece of BDS South Africa explains the motivation for tomorrow's protest: "The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is directly linked to several massacres, deliberate expulsions, the destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages and the systematic dispossession of the indigenous Palestinian people. More than 700 000 Palestinians became refugees in neighboring countries due to Israel's establishment in 1948 in Palestine. Palestinian refugees and their descendants are the largest population of refugees in the world, who have for the last 65 years been denied the "right to return" to their homes by the State of Israel. While Israeli supporters "celebrate" Israeli Independence Day, Palestinians, progressive Israelis, supporters of justice and peace-loving peoples of the world mark the day as Al-Nakba (meaning the "catastrophe")."

In 2008, several senior South Africans issued an open letter rejecting Israeli Independence Day, the open letter read: "We, South Africans who faced the might of unjust and brutal apartheid machinery in South Africa and fought against it with all our strength, with the objective to live in a just, democratic society, refuse today to celebrate the existence of an Apartheid state in the Middle East. While Israel and its apologists around the world will, with pomp and ceremony, loudly proclaim ... the establishment of the state of Israel this month, we who have lived with and struggled against oppression and colonialism will, instead, remember 6 decades of catastrophe for the Palestinian people. We who fought all our lives for South Africa to be a state for its entire people, demand that millions of Palestinian refugees must be accorded the right to return to the homes from where they were expelled...Apartheid was a gross violation of human rights. It was so in South Africa and it is so with regard to Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians."

Signatories to the 2008 open letter rejecting Israeli Independence Day, included Zwelinzima Vavi (General Secretary of COSATU), Derek Hanekom (Minister of Science and Technology), Rob Davies (Minister of Trade and Industry), Blade Nzimande (Minister of Higher Education), Jeremy Cronin (Deputy Minister of Public Works), Enver Surty (Deputy Minister of Basic Education), the late Roy Padayache (Former Minister of Public Service), Dr Essop Pahad (Former Minister in the Presidency), Ronnie Kasrils (Former Minister of Intelligence), Mosibudi Mangena (Former Minister of Science and Technology), Sydney Mufamadi (Former Minister of Provincial and Local Government), Pallo Jordan (Former Minister of Arts and Culture), Frene Ginwala (Former Speaker of Parliament), Ben Turok (Member of Parliament), Max Ozinsky (African National Congress), Mosioua Terror Lekota (Leader of COPE), Costa Gazi (Pan Africanist Congress), Adam Habib (Vice-Chancellor Designate at Wits University), Professor Steven Friedman (University of Johannesburg), Sam Ramsamy (International Olympic Committee), Yasmin Sooka (Executive Director of the Foundation for Human Rights), Pregs Govender (South African Human Rights Commission), Andile Mngxitama (Foundation for Human Rights), Elinor Sisulu (Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition), Allan Horwitz (Jewish Voices), Jackie Dugard (Human Rights Lawyer), Shereen Mills (Centre for Applied Legal Studies), Bobby Peek (Environmental activist at Groundwork), Stiaan van der Merwe (Kairos Southern Africa), Eddie Makue (Former General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches), Reverend Basil Manning (United Congregational Church of Southern Africa), Jonathan "Zapiro" Shapiro (Satirist and Political Cartoonist), Ahmed Kathrada (Robben Island Prisoner) and Denis Goldberg (Rivonia Trialist).