Barcelona (EFE).- Four Nobel laureates and fifty international figures, including scientists, Hollywood actors and directors, activists and intellectuals, have signed a manifesto in which they support the mayoress of Barcelona, Ada Colau, in her decision to temporarily suspend relations between the Catalan capital and Israel.
Signatories to the manifesto include Nobel laureates Annie Ernaux, George P. Smith, Jody Williams and Mairead Maguire, actors Mark Ruffalo, Miriam Margolyes, Viggo Mortensen, Alia Shawkat and Susan Sarandon and activists Angela Davis, Arundhati Roy and Naomi Klein .
Last week, Ada Colau announced the suspension of relations, which includes the temporary cancellation of Barcelona’s twinning agreement with Tel Aviv, “until the Israeli authorities put an end to the systematic violation of the rights of the Palestinian population and fully comply with the right international”.
In a letter addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, the mayoress explained that the measure was produced in response to a request from a hundred social organizations and thousands of residents of the city, within the campaign ‘Barcelona says NO to apartheid, Barcelona says YES to human rights’.
The manifesto signed by the four Nobel Prize winners and also signed by film directors Fernando Meirelles (City of God), Cherien Dabis (Ozark, Only Murders in the Building) and Ken Loach (I, Daniel Blake) supports the mayor’s initiative from Barcelona.
The text, which also has the signatures of musicians Marianne Faithful, Peter Gabriel, Seun Kuti and Brian Eno, criticizes governments for “failing to react to breaches of international law and violations of the rights of the Palestinian people by Israel for decades, with empty gestures… while arming, financing and protecting the impunity of the Israeli regime”.
The manifesto applauds Ada Colau because it “reminds us of the brave municipalities that pioneered cutting ties with apartheid in South Africa in the past,” according to the text, which is also signed by Angela Davis and South African MP Nkosi Zwelivelile ‘Mandla’ Mandela, grandson by Nelson Mandela.
In a personal message to the mayoress, the signatory to the letter Ronnie Kasrils, a veteran of the fight against apartheid in South Africa and a former minister in the Mandela government, added that he has been “enthusiastic about the decision” which, according to what he has said , “resonates beyond Barcelona. It inspires the international community and those of us who live in a free and democratic South Africa.”
Palestinian lawyer and author Mana Shehadeh, legislators Hanan Ashrawi and Mustafa Barghouti, and Ruchama Marton, founder of Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, philosopher Judith Butler, and Nuera Cortinas, co-founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, are among others. the fifty signatories of the manifesto.
“The current Israeli government is the most far-right, racist, sexist and homophobic in the country’s history and we must press harder than ever to end its impunity and force it to respect the rights of Palestinians under international law,” reads the manifesto. , which concludes: “You all give us hope that justice, freedom, equality and dignity for everyone can prevail.”