Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Professionals said to be behind hack attack on Russell Tribunal website

By Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 11/08/2011

As the second day of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine’s South Africa session was underway in Cape Town on Sunday, the tribunal’s website was taken offline by a sophisticated cyber attack.

The internet consultant who founded the Russell Tribunal website says the attack was “no amateur attempt”.

He said attackers targeted the company which domain name www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com is registered with. They appear to have used a technique known as a DNS (Domain Name System) attack. This has rendered the domain name useless for the time being, automatically redirecting all visitors straight back to their own computers.

This means that since Sunday, journalists and members of the public visiting the Russell Tribunal website will see nothing but an obtuse error message (see screen shot above). Nevertheless, the live internet stream from Cape Town went ahead as it was hosted by another site, and the tribunal continues to release news via its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Harry Fear, who built the site last year, told me the attack had been “executed, quite extraordinarily, without any ostensible compromising of the settings” that control the domain name. The attackers “penetrated the DNS system at a deeper level, showing their degree of sophistication and will,” said Fear.

In other words, the attackers appear to have compromised the domain registrar company itself, even covering their tracks as they went.

Fear has reported the attack to 1&1, the German company russelltribunalonpalestine.com is registered with. Fear says 1&1 are now investigating but are “currently stunned” and saying little. The website remains inaccessible as I am writing this.

1&1 is one of the biggest internet hosting companies in the world. It claims to handle over 11 million domain names. Fear thinks this alone is significant: “that this monolith of a company has been hacked (it seems) is quite something”.

The cyber attack comes as part of a wider Zionist campaign against the tribunal’s South Africa session. Russell Tribunal coordinator Frank Barat wrote on Facebook last week that “Zionists in South Africa are going mad. Every newsroom in the country has received [a] gift box and anti Russell Tribunal material”.

Zionist groups have set up “Russell the kangaroo” Facebook and Twitter accounts especially to attack the tribunal. However, this campaign seems much less successful than the cyber attack, with only 184 Facebook followers (as I write this).

The now-infamous op-ed by Richard Goldstone denying Israel practices apartheid also appears likely to have been timed (at least in part) to coincide with the tribunal. The South Africa session examined the question: “is Israel an apartheid state?”

Until the website is back up, you can find out more on the Russell Tribunal Facebook page – including by downloading the session’s preliminary findings.

Last week, internet service in Palestine was taken offline in what officials called a “serious act of sabotage,” according to the Ma’an News Agency.

November 7, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Olympia Food Co-op fights back against Israel-backed anti-boycott lawsuit

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 11/02/2011

The Olympia Food Co-op (OFC) is fighting back against an Israel-backed lawsuit aimed at forcing it to end its boycott of Israeli goods.

Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, acting on behalf of the OFC, today filed a motion to dismiss the suit on the grounds that it violates a Washington state law to prevent use of the courts to silence free speech and public participation.

In September, The Electronic Intifada first revealed the plan by StandWithUs, a pro-Israel group, in consultation with the Israeli Consul-General in San Francisco, for five individuals to bring the lawsuit against the OFC.

The grocery cooperative located in Olympia, Washington, made international headlines in July 2010 when it decided to ban Israeli goods from its shelves in solidarity with the Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

An attempt to silence Co-op’s “principled stand”

A press release from CCR stated:

“We hope the court will strike down this effort to silence the Co-op’s principled stand on Israel’s human rights violations,” said Maria LaHood, Senior Staff Attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “Allegations that the Co-op Board acted beyond its power are a thinly-veiled attempt to stop concerned citizens from using a nonviolent and historical tool for social change.”

Bruce E.H. Johnson of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, the author of the law that protects against abusive lawsuits, said:

“Our nation was born in the middle of a boycott of British goods, and boycotts have played an important role over the centuries in our system of freedom of expression, whether the subject is segregation on the Montgomery municipal bus system, lettuce picked by non-union labor, or apartheid in South Africa.”

Yet, the StandWithUs and Israeli-government-backed lawsuit against the Olympia Food Co-op is part of a nationwide strategy by pro-Israel groups to use lawfare to try to fight BDS and silence criticism of Israel.

The Electronic Intifada cited in legal motion

The OFC’s motion to strike the lawsuit against it cites The Electronic Intifada’s original report as part of the evidence that the individual plaintiffs in the case were effectively only a front for the real party behind the effort: StandWithUs.

The same Electronic Intifada report also uncovered plans by StandWithUs to file a federal civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College, the alma mater of Rachel Corrie, in an attempt to suppress campus Palestine solidarity activism.

Similar complaints have been filed against the University of California-Santa Cruz, and Columbia University, as part of a strategy masterminded by pro-Israel activist and former US government official Kenneth Marcus.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has set up a case page with the motion, all other key documents and background which will be updated as the matter progresses through the courts.

November 2, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Anat Kamm Accepts Plea Deal for 4 1/2 Year Prison Sentence

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | October 30, 2011
anat kamm
Anat Kamm, a lonely figure in the face of the massive power of the Israeli military-intelligence establishment (Motti Milrod)

In the closing act of a travesty foisted upon Israel by its military-intelligence apparatus and tacitly supported by a quiescent media, Anat Kamm accepted a plea deal that will force her to spend four and one half years in prison for passing secret IDF [sic] documents to Haaretz journalist, Uri Blau.  Now, Kamm becomes the Israeli version of Bradley Manning and Shamai Leibowitz, both of whom (Manning is imprisoned but not yet tried or convicted) were sentenced to jail sentences for obeying their conscience and revealing secrets that implicated their governments (or Israel in Leibowitz’s case) in acts that violated the law and drew the nation closer to war.

Long ago, an Israeli journalist pointed out that IDF generals and cabinet ministers all leak top-secret information to journalists.  It’s called doing their job.  They’re not imprisoned.  Often they’re promoted as a result.  As long as you leak in service to your commander and prime minister, no matter what the garbage you leak, you are in like Flynn.  But obey your conscience and cross the political/military elite, and you’ll be destroyed.

A journalist once pointed out that an IDF soldier of similar rank to Kamm once leaked secret documents to a reporter and received a sentence of a few days confinement to base from her commander.

The Israeli far right has demonized Anat Kamm.  They’ve vandalized her home where she served two years under house arrest.  They’ve painted graffiti on it calling her “traitor.”

In some ways, the State only had to wait out Kamm.  It knew that she could only withstand house arrest so long before having to make a deal.  She felt she got the best deal she could and realized that as far as the Israeli state is concerned this might be China, and she could be under house arrest for the remainder of her days.

This is sad day, a day of disgrace for Israel.  A day in which military malfeasance was endorsed (Kamm’s materials revealed that IDF general Yair Naveh ordered unarmed Palestinian militants to be assassinated in contravention of Supreme Court rulings–rulings the Court of course has refused to enforce in this case out of deference to the IDF supreme role in society).  A day in which a woman who should be a national heroine was made to grovel in the dirt.

October 30, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Leaked emails show Israel role in UK plot to ban Raed Salah

By Asa Winstanley | The Electronic Intifada | 27 October 2011

London – A UK immigration court ruled yesterday that popular Palestinian leader Sheikh Raed Salah could be deported from the country, after being banned by Home Secretary Theresa May in June.

The Electronic Intifada can now also exclusively reveal new details of an Israeli government role in the UK plot to exclude Salah.

Following yesterday’s decision, Salah could now take his appeal to a higher court, and meanwhile will remain in the UK on bail. Salah’s lawyer told The Electronic Intifada yesterday that his legal team were considering the judgment very carefully and could not comment further for the time being.

The judgment that Salah could be deported for “unacceptable behavior” comes as The Electronic Intifada reveals new details of the Israeli role in Salah’s June-July detention by the UK government. Government emails obtained by The Electronic Intifada contain evidence that the Israeli embassy in London gave information to the British government later used in an attempt to deport him from the country.

“Victim of unfairness and procedural irregularity”

In their ruling the First Tier Tribunal judges accepted that Salah “has behaved lawfully throughout this matter, and that he has been the victim of unfairness and procedural irregularity … [and] was detained unlawfully for a period of time.”

The judges wrote that their decision was a “balancing exercise” between the public interest and the interests of Salah. The ruling addresses each of five main points the government used to ban Salah, reiterating the case on each side, but for the most part it does not rule on the central facts, agreeing with the government’s argument that the five points did not need to be proven.

But on one of the five points, the judges wrote that a poem by Salah “is not directed to the Jewish people as a whole but only at those among them who aim at Israeli territorial expansion and control at the expense of the Palestinians.”

The Electronic Intifada previously published private documents proving that this accusation of anti-Semitism was fabricated, as it rested on what seemed to be a malicious mistranslation of Salah’s original words. But the judges have neglected the point that it was not just a mistaken quote, but a deliberate Israeli attempt to smear Salah. They state that video evidence shown in court proved that Salah was “the victim of serious [Israeli] police harassment” but that this was “not a matter which is relevant to the central issues in this appeal.”

Opaque criteria for “unacceptable behavior”

The judges concluded that Salah’s words came within the government’s anti-terrorist “Prevent” policy, because he “engaged in the unacceptable behavior of fostering hatred.”

They did not specify on this point, saying they had reached the decision from the evidence “viewed in the round.” They elaborated: “it is not necessary to satisfy the criteria of unacceptable behavior for words and actions to be racist as such … This might be achieved by words and actions which are not necessarily racist.” They also explain that the list of “unacceptable behavior” specified by the government (including racism) was indicative and not exhaustive.

In a striking turn of phrase, the judges wrote that “although it is not our task to rubber stamp a decision by the Secretary of State [Theresa May]” it was nevertheless her decision to make rather than the court’s.

From the beginning, Salah claimed Israel had a hand in the exclusion, arrest, unlawful detention and attempt to deport him from the UK. “Israel carries the full responsibility for his detention in the United Kingdom,” a press release said at the time.

Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament), at the time said to the press: “The primary cause for the arrest is Israeli pressure and the pressure of Zionist elements inside Britain” (“Raed Salah arrested after UK appearance,” Ynet, 29 June 2011).

Concerns that Israel using UK case against Salah

Salah refused to consent to voluntary deportation — the UK Border Agency (UKBA) tried to persuade him to drop his in-country appeal. Salah was concerned that, once he returns home, the Israeli authorities would use a successful deportation from Britain in their long-standing campaign against him.

In June, right-wing Israeli parliamentarian Alex Miller used Salah’s arrest to build support for his so-called Raed Salah bill, according to daily Israel Hayom. “If the British government refuses entry for this individual because of his extreme views and the fear that he might use public and academic venues to incite violence and racism, there is no reason why Israel should allow him and his kind to enjoy such activities either,” he is reported to have said (“MK Ben-Ari urges Britain not to release Sheikh Salah,” 20 June). Miller is a member of the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, and lives on an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Relying on dubious Israeli sources, elements of the British press accused Salah of anti-Semitism — an allegation now ruled false by the court which also formed the basis of the exclusion order. Three days after legally entering the UK on 25 June for a well-publicized speaking tour, Salah was abruptly arrested in his hotel room. This prevented him from attending a public meeting in Parliament the next day, organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

At the police station, UKBA officials served an exclusion order on Salah dated 23 June. The letter cited a 2009 Jerusalem Post editorial which attributed a fabricated anti-Semitic comment to Salah. The editorial said Salah wrote a poem including the comment “You Jews are criminal bombers of mosques” but the original Arabic text of the poem was in fact addressed at the Israeli occupation forces. The words “You Jews” were not in the poem and The Jerusalem Post appears to have added them.

In a July High Court hearing for bail, significant doubt was cast on this and other statements attributed to Salah in the Israeli and British press. The judge, Justice Nicholas Stadlen then freed Salah on restrictive bail. Conditions included a ban on public speaking. In September, the High Court ruled in a separate judicial review that the first few days of detention had been unlawful, and Salah was entitled to compensation.

Details of the plot against Salah emerged as the case went on. The Electronic Intifada uncovered evidence that the government had acted in collusion with pro-Israel lobbying groups in the UK.

But today, The Electronic Intifada can reveal new details of an Israeli government role in the plot.

Israeli government’s role

In a 22 June UKBA advice document used by Home Secretary Theresa May to justify her ban of Salah, case worker Jonathan Rosenorn-Lanng stated that although “this case is very finely balanced,” Salah’s alleged views had the potential to foster “inter-community violence” in the UK. Rosenorn-Lanng also said the British Embassy in Tel Aviv had been consulted: “The FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office] in Israel has also confirmed that SALAH is considered to be an extremist.” Presumably, this view was based on Israeli press reports, or on consultation with Israeli officials.

Only one day before Salah flew to London’s Heathrow Airport on 25 June, a UKBA official emailed Alan Stewart, an official with the British Embassy in Tel Aviv, telling him about the ban and detailing British-Israeli efforts to collaborate on the case.

UKBA official Rebecca Hadlow attached a copy of the exclusion, along with a border warning from the Risk and Liaison Overseas Network (RALON), part of the UKBA’s International Group. Hadlow said the RALON notice had been issued to airlines flying direct from Tel Aviv to the UK: “If they identify him, they will not carry him.”

The alert was disseminated to the Israeli state airline El Al in Tel Aviv. But it turned out that Salah traveled on a British Airways flight.

Even then, on 24 June, the British government had still not been able to serve the exclusion order on Salah: “we did not until this morning have an address for him (I am grateful for the assistance of the Israeli Embassy in London for this).” Hadlow then gave Salah’s address and asked Stewart to arrange for the exclusion order to be couriered to him, while acknowledging that “he may not receive it before he travels.”

The same email was copied to Philip Boyle, an official at the British Embassy in Amman, who replied to Hadlow that he had “passed details of the exclusion notice to a contact in the Israeli Immigration Intelligence [sic – there is no known organization by that name] and asked to be notified if they encounter the subject leaving for the UK on an indirect route.”

The text of the RALON border warning makes it clear Salah did not know he was banned — “He has not yet been notified of his exclusion.” The UKBA knew his passport number, therefore it is logical to assume they got this information from the Israeli government, perhaps via the Israeli embassy in London. Yet somehow, the UKBA got his full name wrong, mixing up two of his names.

On 5 July, Claire Lawrence, Head of the “Middle East Peace Process/Palestine/Israel” desk at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, wrote to Rosenorn-Lanng, saying: “Our Embassy in Tel Aviv have just let us know that a very high level delegation intend to call on our Ambassador early tomorrow, to discuss the Salah case amongst other issues.” Who exactly was part of this delegation was not revealed, although it seems a likely reference to Israeli government ministers or security officials.

Salah and his legal team are due to meet and will decide whether or not to pursue his appeal against deportation further. It remains to be seen if any higher court would act as anything other than a “rubber stamp” of the political decision to expel Salah from the UK, apparently with the cooperation of Israel.

~

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist based in London who has lived in and reported from occupied Palestine. He edited the newly-released book Corporate Complicity in Israel’s Occupation. His website is www.winstanleys.org.

October 27, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israel extends journalist’s detention without trial

Ma’an – 27/10/2011

RAMALLAH — Israel on Wednesday extended the imprisonment of a journalist who has not been charged or tried for any offense, a press freedom watchdog said.

Israeli forces detained Nawaf al-Amer, a program coordinator for Quds satellite TV station, in June from his home near Nablus in the northern West Bank.

On Wednesday, Israel extended al-Amer’s detention for four months, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) said in a statement.

Al-Amer has not been tried or given any reason for his arrest or imprisonment. His wife told MADA that Israel has prevented their sons from visiting their father since his arrest.

The center strongly condemned the extension of al-Amer’s detention, noting that it stood “in flagrant violation of legal due process under international law.”

Al-Amer is being held in administrative detention, a practice widely used by Israel against Palestinians under which detainees are held without charge or trial.

The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem says administrative detention “is carried out under the thick cover of privilege, which denies detainees the possibility of mounting a proper defense.”

MADA urged international organizations to protect Palestinian journalists and to lobby on behalf of those in detention.

October 27, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

US government requests for Google user data increasing

Actual numbers likely higher than those reported

Press TV – October 26, 2011

A new report from the Internet giant Google shows that the US government’s requests for data on Google users for the first half of 2011 have increased 29% compared to the previous six months.

The report released by Google on Wednesday shows a rise in the government requests for user account data and content removal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to the report, in the first half of 2011, the US had the largest amount of user data requests of any country, with 5,950 such requests pertaining to more than 11,057 separate users or accounts, to which Google complied 93 percent of the time.

One such request was made by an unnamed law enforcement agency which requested that Google remove YouTube videos of police brutality, However, Google reportedly declined the request.

The latest Google Transparency Report also shows historic traffic patterns on the company’s services, indicating outages by governments to block access to Google or the internet.

Other countries seeking large user data were India, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Google says it mostly complied with the countries’ requests.

Content removal requests rose in the UK by more than 70 percent in the last six months. User data requests were up 28 percent in Spain, 38 percent in Germany, 27 percent in France, and 36 percent in South Korea.

According to an online privacy advocate, Chris Soghoian the actual numbers are likely to be larger than what is reported because the law prohibits Google from revealing information on requests from intelligence agencies such as the US Department of Defense’ National Security Agency or the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI).

The report also cites attempts by governments to get Google to remove content from blogs and advertisements as well.

October 26, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

New Israel Fund Honors ‘New Generation’ of Israeli Social Justice Activists, No Arabs Need Apply

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | October 25, 2011

The New Israel Fund will hold its annual young leaders fundraising event in New York on November 2nd.  Here is how the website describes the goal of the event and NIF in general:

A new generation of voices is speaking up for social justice and equality in Israel! Celebrate these pioneering activists…fighting for a better Israel.

The New Generations Benefit is the premiere annual event for progressive supporters of Israel in their 20s and 30s, raising funds for the New Israel Fund’s work to strengthen Israel’s democracy and promote justice and equality for all members of Israeli society.

Well, at least they paid lip service to all Israeli citizens in that italicized phrase, because they sure didn’t pay lip service or any attention to over 20% of the Israeli population when they determined their honorees.  They will be Zvi Benninga–Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, Idit Menashe–SHATIL, Gil Gan-Mor–Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Inna Zysskind and Pavel Kogan–Fiskha Club and Havaya-Life Cycle Ceremonies Religious Pluralism and Marriage Equality, and Noa Sattath–Religious Action Center.

Who’s missing from this list? Israeli Palestinians, that’s who. None will be recognized. Now, does this mean that no Israeli Palestinians are working for social justice in Israel? To read this list it would. But of course that’s a lie.

While NIF does offer funding to a number of Israeli Palestinian NGOs working for social justice and human rights, over the past year it has allowed itself to be buffeted by smears raised by NGO Monitor, that its grantees were anti-Semitic or anti-Israel.  All the charges were fabrications and outright lies.  But that hasn’t stopped NIF from running for the hills.  It reworked its grantee guidelines in order to exclude Israeli Palestinian NGOs who “rejected Jewish sovereignty” (whatever that means).  Presumably they weren’t sufficiently in tune with Bibi Netanyahu’s version of Israel as a Jewish state.  Presumably, if you were anti-Zionist or supported anything other than a two-state solution, you stood to get your funding cut.

This is the same organization which has severed ties to a number of its Israeli fellows for stepping out of line, one of whom was Shamai Leibowitz, who made the mistake of speaking at a BDS rally in Cambridge.  Even though he didn’t identify himself in any way with NIF, he was thrown out of the program.  Similar treatment has been afforded others as well.

By the way, I’m not in any way demeaning the stellar social justice work performed by the Israeli NGOs honored at this event.  I’m criticizing NIF.  If you attend this event, be sure to ask NIF where the Israeli Palestinians are.

October 25, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Gaza child artist responds to the censoring of his artwork

Nora Barrows-Friedman – The Electronic Intifada – 10/22/2011

Following last month’s decision by the Museum of Children’s Art (MOCHA) in Oakland, California, to shut down an art exhibition of drawings by Palestinian children in Gaza, one of the child artists included in the exhibit has illustrated his response to being censored.

The Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) has posted this new drawing by 12-year-old Ali Hassan al Baba of Deir el Balah in the Gaza Strip, as well as a short interview with him:

Translated from Arabic in Ali’s picture: “The Exhibit is Closed” written across top. “It’s my right to draw” in child’s speech bubble.

What is your name? Ali Hassan Al-Baba

How old are you? 12 years old

Where do you live? Deir El-Balah, Gaza

How many siblings do you have? Four sisters and three brothers

Please tell us about your drawing:
I’ve drawn the gallery featuring Palestinian children’s artwork. The art shows the bad things that Zionists do to Palestinians, but then the Zionists came and shut it down.

Please tell us about your family:
I am the oldest child of a simple family. My father works and is our only source of financial support. Our home was hit by an air strike but it is now patched up with metallic plates (zingo). It is a small house and the number of my family is big, but I thank God for everything we have.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be an engineer so I can rebuild every house that Israel has destroyed.

Even though the original exhibition was shut down — following sustained intimidation from local and national pro-Israel lobby groups — Ali’s artwork, and the artwork of the other children, has found a new home in a gallery space around the corner from MOCHA in downtown Oakland. The exhibit will be open until the end of November, and MECA has all the information on its website.

October 22, 2011 Posted by | Aletho News, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

US Zionists sharply divided over how to censor Palestine speech on campus

By Ali Abunimah – The Electronic Intifada – 10/17/2011

Sharp disagreements have intensified among leading US pro-Israel groups on the best methods to suppress criticism and discussion of Israel’s apartheid, occupation, colonization and human rights abuses, or support for Palestinian rights, on US college campuses.

The dispute centers on the use of US civil rights statutes to lodge complaints against universities, alleging that discussion of Israel amounts to an infringement of the civil rights of Jewish students who might be made “uncomfortable” by hearing such discussions.

The Forward reports:

Simmering divisions within the Jewish community are expected to come to a head this month over efforts to use federal civil rights laws to sanction some forms of alleged anti-Israel activity on campus.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, American Jewry’s primary umbrella group for addressing domestic issues, will vote at its upcoming board meeting on a resolution that, in its current draft, cautions Jewish groups to guard against suppressing free speech and to invoke civil rights laws only after exhausting other measures.

“Lawsuits and threats of legal action should not be used to censor anti-Israel events, statements, and speakers in order to ‘protect’ Jewish students,” the draft resolution warns, “but rather for cases which evidence a systematic climate of fear and intimidation coupled with a failure of the university administration to respond with reasonable corrective measures.”

In September, The Electronic Intifada revealed that a leading pro-Israel group, StandWithUS, has been colluding with Israeli government officials to bring just such a civil rights complaint against Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, the university once attended by Rachel Corrie.

Earlier this month, the US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR) launched an investigation into Columbia University over a claim that a Jewish student had been “steered” away by an adviser from a class taught by Professor Joseph Massad. Massad has been the target of persistent defamation campaigns by pro-Israel groups.

The campaign to abuse US civil rights law to censor unfavorable speech and scholarship about Israel is the brainchild of Kenneth Marcus of the Institute for Jewish Community Research, who is also a member of the pro-Israel group Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Marcus was previously head of the OCR.

Blogger Richard Silverstein has done much to shed light on what he calls Marcus’ “campus Jihad against anti-Israelism.”

Marcus, Silverstein observes,

is one of the key intellectual authors of a new campaign to exploit newly written federal civil rights statutes (Title VI) which forbid campuses from creating a hostile environment for various ethnic and religious groups, including Jews. Marcus and his friends at Stand With Us are uniting to explore campuses where they can apply their new theory. To do so, they must find campuses where they can recruit sufficient Jewish students to complain that they are afraid to be Jews on campus because of the environment of fear and intimidation created by pro-Palestinian groups.

It might be added that Marcus’ strategy can be seen as inherently anti-Semitic because it assumes incorrectly and historically that all criticism of Israel equals criticism of Jews. It also infringes on the rights of all students, including the many Jewish students and faculty, who want to talk, study and act for justice and equality in Palestine. In other words, it falsely stereotypes all Jews as mindless supporters of Israel’s atrocious policies and associates them with those policies.

It seems that at least some in the pro-Israel community fear that this aggressive campaign of censorship and intimidation may do more to cast Israel’s defenders as thugs, than to improve Israel’s image on campuses.

October 17, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation authority deports 17 foreign solidarity activists

Palestine Information Center – 13/10/2011

RAMALLAH — The Israeli occupation authority (IOA) deported 17 European solidarity activists from the West Bank after two days of detention for participating in pro Palestinian rallies.

Sources in the solidarity campaign with detained Palestinian leader Ahmed Saadat said that the activists were detained on Sunday night while demonstrating in front of the Nafha jail in solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners, including Saadat, who are on hunger strike.

They said that the activists were held and interrogated at a police station on the charge of supporting a “hostile Palestinian organization”.

The sources noted that the activists were banned from contacting anyone until they were taken two days later in military vehicles to the Ben Gurion airport where they were deported.

The campaign managers charged the IOA with trying to restrict foreign participation in Palestinian solidarity rallies, adding that they would continue, nevertheless, in supporting Palestinian just struggle against occupation.

October 13, 2011 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Israeli army arrests Popular Committee official in Beit Ummar early dawn raid

WAFA | October 11, 2011

HEBRON – Israeli army Tuesday arrested Ahmad Abu Hashem, secretary of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements in Beit Ummar, a village north of Hebron in the southern West Bank, and took him to an unknown destination, said local sources.

The Committee’s spokesman, Mohammad Awad, told WAFA that Israeli army units raided Abu Hashem’s house, beat him and his sons, then arrested Abu Hashem and his son Yousef, 18, who suffered from bruises and injuries to his head and body.

Israeli soldiers used police dogs against Abu Hashem, spreading panic among his family members, and rummaged through his house, said Awad.

Meanwhile, four Palestinian minors from Azzun, a town east of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank, were arrested early Tuesday, according to family members.

Israeli soldiers raided the town at dawn, inspected the youths’ family homes and arrested them, added the families, stressing that two of them are only 14 years old while a third is 15.

October 11, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »