Israeli bloggers have recently released a new Android application that informs users whether their potential purchases were manufactured in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Activism
October 2, march on DC with One Nation: March to Rebuild America and End War!
Do you love The Daily Show as much as we do? Maybe like a lot of us, you go to bed with Jon Stewart four nights a week, and find him a fun, smart companion at the end of the day… he included CODEPINK among the “loud folks” getting in the way of civil rhetoric. He also equated progressives calling George Bush a war criminal with right-wingers calling Obama Hitler! Jon, seriously??
A report by the Electronic Intifada covering the most recent BDS activities against Israel’s settlement program.
The BDS campaign continues to pick up steam.
The National Lawyers Guild, in coordination with other legal and grassroots human rights organizations, addressed this letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling upon the State Department to act on the case of Ameer Makhoul, Palestinian human rights advocate and leader.
Peace Now’s interactive West Bank settlement activity map and database. Now available also as an iPhone/iPad app.
Please join us for the launch of the Haymarket Books edition of Midnight on the Mavi Marmara. Panel Discussion with editor Moustafa Bayoumi and contributors Max Blumenthal, Arun Gupta, Adam Horowitz, Rashid Khalidi, Alia Malek and Phil Weiss on the Impact of Gaza Freedom Flotilla Attack.
28 Sept 2010, 7:00pm; Alwan for the Arts – 16 Beaver St. NYC
Israeli Foreign Ministry: “We will send well-known novelists and writers overseas, theater companies, exhibits… This way you show Israel’s prettier face, so we are not thought of purely in the context of war.” While efforts to promote a positive image of Israel abroad persist, Palestinians continue to suffer from Israeli state policies.
The motion called for the General Council to work closely with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign to actively encourage affiliates, employers and pension funds to disinvest from, and boycott the goods of, companies who profit from illegal settlements, the Occupation and construction of the Apartheid Wall.
In a recent, quietly circulated letter from the desk of Yaacov Ellis, CEO of Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories—a company at the center of a growing international boycott campaign—and directed at the company’s retail partners, Ellis deploys specious information about his own company’s business practices, contradictory claims about Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, and unfounded innuendo about boycott campaign supporters.
Folk music icon Pete Seeger has been urged by over 40 organizations, along with musicians close to him, to cancel his participation in a November internet event organized by Israeli groups, including the Jewish National Fund.
I have often spoken out in opposition to cultural boycotts … but in the political arena, artists make a statement by their presence or their absence.
It’s thrilling to think that these Israeli theatre artists have refused to allow their work to be used to normalize a cruel occupation which they know to be wrong, which violates international law and which is impeding the hope for a just and lasting peace for Israelis an Palestinians alike. They’ve made a wonderful decision, and they deserve the respect of people everywhere who dream of justice. We stand with them.
Imprisoned Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat will be returning to court in
mid-October 2010 challenging his isolation and the isolation of Palestinian
political prisoners in Israeli prisons. Write letters today and take action
from October 5-15, 2010 in support of Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for
freedom – demand an end to isolation!
27-28 Sept 2010 Conference on the geographies of aid intervention in Palestine – Birzeit University. The aim of the conference is to critically explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes the socio-political, spatial, economic, and environmental relations, in addition to thinking about alternatives forms of aid that respond to Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also elsewhere.
I am doing a lot of efforts to bring hope and steadfastness to freedom prisoners. It is one of my missions inside prison. I have to keep in contact with Ittijah and the community and all solidarity movements, groups and persons, but most of all I have to correspond intensively as much as possible with my daughters Hind and Huda, who have become mature fighters for freedom, justice and dignity and mostly bringing back the happiness of life which was hijacked on 6 May at 2:30am. My wife Janan is leading in a heroic way the whole campaign as well as facing huge tasks at home.
Israeli academe, which was once considered a bastion of free speech, has become the testing ground for the success of the assault on liberal values. And although it is still extremely difficult to hurt those who have managed to enter the academic gates, those who have not yet passed the threshold are clearly being monitored.
Non-violent protest organizer Abdallah Abu Rhamah from Bil’in was convicted of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations today, after an eight months long military trial, during which he was kept behind bars. He was acquitted of a stone-throwing charge and a vindictive arms-possession charge.
Tel Aviv University was partially built on the lands of the Palestinian village of Sheikh Muwanis… Zochrot, an organization that encourages the Israeli state and its institutions to recognize the moral debt for the injustices caused to the Palestinian people during the establishment of the state of Israel, has started a campaign requesting that Tel Aviv University acknowledge the history of Sheikh Muwanis.
PLEASE HELP this effort by sending a letter to Tel Aviv University President Itamar Rabinowich.
A primer on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), its history, participants, and recent successes.
IOA Editor: An Appeal from April 2001, which predates by several years actions covered in the summary presented here by IMEU, can be found on the Matzpun website. A co-author of the Matzpun Appeal reports that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first call for boycott of Israeli products and tourism, covering both Israel and the occupied territories. At the time, the initiative was very isolated, not receiving support from organizations that now support BDS.
For 62 years, the Palestinian people have been misunderstood and oppressed, and in a small way, we hope to change that. It is in the spirit of justice that we found the inspiration to compile The Veritas Handbook.
FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE VERITAS HANDBOOK
A group of Israeli women smuggled 12 Palestinian woman and four children, among them a year-old baby, into Tel Aviv for a day of fun about two weeks ago. The women, among them writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the women from their villages, following two earlier meetings with them.
RELATED: Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation
I would like to remind [Israelis] that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.
Henning Mankell, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla: “We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates … The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.”
The Popular Resistance Campaign marched toward Israel’s no-go zone Monday in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in protest over land confiscation and prohibited access to farm land.
Emily Henochowicz, the very talented art student who lost her eye after being shot by Israeli tear gas canister in a West Bank protest, discusses her life, art, and why she plans to return.
ALSO — Mondoweiss: ‘Democracy Now’ and ‘Village Voice’ grant Henochowicz sympathy the ‘Times’ begrudged her
Boycott is the primary tool of those engaged in nonviolent resistance to systematic injustice. Boycott targets unjust policies. It is not about ‘the right to exist’; Everyone has the right to ‘exist’… Israel inside the green line is the agency of occupation and [it] conducts, plans, prepares and executes aspects of the occupation from inside the green line.
Tony Blair’s term as envoy of the Quartet (US, UK, Russia, UN) has been marked by many photo opportunities but few, if any, accomplishments. Indeed, research shows that Blair’s relationship with one of the world’s richest men poses a clear and significant conflict of interest with his duties as Quartet envoy.
Amnesty International: “Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well-known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel” and “his arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work.”
Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual is an Israeli human rights organization whose main objective is to assist Palestinians of the Occupied Territories whose rights are violated due to Israel’s policies. At Hamoked, we work to expose and publicize essential truths about the occupation, in its manifold modes of operation.
Like the physical assault on the boat, the Israeli media assault was also reckless, clumsy, malicious, and dangerous… I am a firm believer that actions speak louder than words, and in this spirit I thought it might help to take a closer look at IHH, and judge this group based on their actions, rather than empty words.
Board member: “I am trying to be realistic – the Olympia Food Co-Op boycott is not going to change the Israeli policy, but I believe that these small drops will eventually have an effect. I would like to see more co-ops joining the boycott and more voices involved.”
Almost immediately, Shapira related, she began talking about his activity in Global BDS Movement: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine, which supports measures against Israel… The agent reminded Shapira the Knesset was expected shortly to outlaw calls for sanctions against Israel.
“I came to save lives, but also because it’s important to me to show that Israel is not the Flotilla Country that it is painted out to be,” said the Israeli doctor… “International aid organizations here are very pro-Palestinian and not too friendly to Israelis,” said an American training specialist.
Israeli border police destroyed several Palestinian fields in Al Beqa’a Valley just east of Hebron on 6 July 2010, directly affecting the livelihood of more than one hundred Palestinians.
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
