Why I blocked my listings on Airbnb

[Claudio48]

As host of 
AIRBNB, having known that Aibnb is  listing rentals in illegal
Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine I have blocked the
availability of my listings from  end of July on.  

Airbnb allows Israeli settlers to list their properties without mentioning
that they are located on illegally occupied Palestinian land.

In Palestine, land grabbing through ethnical cleansing and apartheid
policy by Israeli government go on day by day in spite of UN
Resolution 446.(*) 

A few days ago  the Stolen Homes coalition pulled off seventeen actions across
the globe demanding that Airbnb  to abandon its profiteering from
Palestinian displacement.  #StolenHomes coalition members organized
rallies in Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, San Francisco, Durham, Los
Angeles, Austin, Madison, St. Louis, Twin Cities, New Haven,
Amsterdam, Palestine, Dublin and Paris 

If AIRBNB insists in listing   rentals in illegal Israeli settlements in
occupied Palestine I will cancel me completely as host of AIBNB.  

(*) In the Resolution 446, the Security Council determined: "that the
policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the
Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no
legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a
comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East"

[Dan541]

its your own decision but i dont see a connection between florence italy and israel unless ofcourse you have hidden motive like antisemitism maybe ? btw how come you are still on the market? 

[Nigel86]

Just a follow up.... Here's what Jonathan Schanzer says of the accusation of anti-Semitism:

"Personally I think that anti-Semitism, as a smear, is not what it used to be."

Schanzer is senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an Israel lobby group. He is active in targeting and smearing BDS campaigners as anti-Semites. His admission strikingly highlights the weaponisation of the anti-Semitic smear. 

This documentary of an undercover British Jewish journalist shows Schanzer speaking that quote. It's at about 40 minutes into the documentary.  https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6wivtg

[Nigel86]

There it is again Dan. Trying to deflect attention from the real reasons for pulling out of trading in the occupied Palestinian Lands - by crying anti-Semitism. Airbnb pulled out because those settlers live in illegal colonies obtained by force. It's theft, and the world knows it. You may cow some people into silence with the anti-Semitic smear, but not others. We'll speak out. 

[Melvyn3]

Claudio, let's discuss the inflamatory word "apartheid" you used in your post. It's offensive (to the victims of apartheid in South Africa) when it is misused like this and the way it is thrown around so casually is the result of hatred; not in pursuit of peace.

Nigel speaks of his belief that "antisemite" is a missused smear. There is no shortage of people who are against Israel who share this belief.

The apartheid smear is definitely misused and plain wrong. The smear went global when anti-Israel activists hijacked the UN’s World Conference against Racism, Racial Intolerance and Xenophobia in Durban, South Africa in 2001 to launch a global campaign to label Israel as an ‘apartheid state.’ South Africa’s then Deputy Foreign Minister, Aziz Pahad, responded: ‘I wish to make it unequivocally clear that the South African government recognises that … [the Durban Conference] was hijacked and used by some with an anti-Israel agenda to turn into an antisemitic event.’

As HonestReporting quotes the rebuttal of this hateful language: "being a ‘Jewish state’ does not make Israel an apartheid state. Israel is not a theocracy (rule by clerics) or a state exclusively for Jews, but a democracy, governed by the rule of law as drafted by an elected parliament, the Knesset. All faiths vote and all enjoy freedom of worship. The Declaration of Independence explicitly provides for the protection of minorities." (Source: https://honestreporting.com/the-apartheid-smear-debunked/)

Here's a 2 minute video entitled "Is Israel an Apartheid State?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfeJHt91cWw

In 2011, the NYTimes carried a piece called "Israel and the Apartheid Slander' in which Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court said "In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute" (Source https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/israel-and-the-apartheid-slander.html).

In 2015, The Guardian (a paper that typically takes a very critical view of everything to do with Israel) carried a piece by Benjamin Pogrund who spent 26 years as a journalist in South Africa investigating and reporting the evil that was apartheid. "I saw Nelson Mandela secretly when he was underground, then popularly known as the Black Pimpernel, and I was the first non-family member to visit him in prison."
He writes: "I knew apartheid up close. And put simply, there is no comparison between Israel and apartheid." (Source https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/22/israel-injustices-not-apartheid-state).