Palestinians welcome Academy distancing itself from Oscars gift bag
Palestinian BDS National Committee | February 17, 2016
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announced that it is suing Distinctive Assets, the company distributing a luxury gift bag to Oscar nominees, which this year includes an all-expenses paid trip to Israel sponsored by the Israeli government.
Palestinians had denounced the inclusion of the trip to Israel as a “cynical and desperate” attempt by the Israeli government to fight its increasing international isolation through bribes to celebrities instead of addressing its human rights abuses against them.
Responding to this latest development Omar Barghouti from the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the broadest Palestinian coalition that leads the global BDS movement, said:
“By distancing itself from the company marketing Israel’s propaganda trip to Oscar nominees, the Academy is taking a step in the right direction. The so-called ‘Oscars swag bag’ has fallen into further disrepute with its association with the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”
“The Academy needs to do much more, clearly, to address the serious charges of bias and racism raised by the #OscarsSoWhite campaign as well as Palestinian human rights campaigners, among many others.”
“Campaigners will continue to urge nominees to act with conscience and reject Israel’s latest propaganda attempt to whitewash its war crimes and other egregious violations of human rights. Any artist with a conscience would have similarly declined a free trip paid for by the apartheid regime in South Africa in the 1980s.”
A petition has been launched calling on nominees not to take the free trip to Israel, echoing demands by the Palestinian arts community. The Palestinian Performing Arts Network denounced the hypocrisy by saying Israel deliberately attacks Palestinian art and cultural production.
Oscar nominees Mark Rylance and Asif Kapadia have already promised not to visit Israel professionally as long as the human rights violations persist. Five-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh, Director Ken Loach and musician Brian Eno today publicly denounced the Israeli government’s propaganda initiative.
Sit-in in solidarity with Muhammad Al-Qiq at Birzeit University
Birzeit University | February 19, 2016
Birzeit, Ramallah, Occupied Palestine – Birzeit University administration, Workers’ Union, and students organized a sit-in in solidarity with its former student and head of students council, Journalist Muhammad Al-Qiq, who has been on hunger strike since November 25 against his imprisonment without charges or trial.
Protestors called for immediate and unconditional release for Al-Qiq and all prisoners as key to the realization of justice and comprehensive peace. They demand all academic institutions and international organizations work together to promote and implement campaigns of boycott and sanctions against Israel and its illegal measures against Palestinians.
“Palestinian journalists have always been on the frontline, and Al-Qiq is now experiencing forceful and abusive measures from the Israeli occupation because he practiced his normal right of speech and freedom of expression”, Abu Hijleh added.
On behalf of the Workers’ Union, Salem Thawaba demanded that officials should urgently interfere to end Al-Qiq’s torture. He stressed the importance of unity and reconciliation for Al-Qiq whose health has deteriorated to the point of facing imminent death.
Representatives from the student council assured the student movements will never stop their solidarity events in support for Al-Qiq and all prisoners who are going through a legal struggle on behalf of the whole nation for the sake of the Palestinian cause.
UK Israeli boycott ban contradicts official govt business guidelines
RT | February 18, 2016
Britain’s ban on the public boycott of goods from Israel’s occupied territories contradicts its own official business guidelines, documents have revealed.
The controversial new law, which would ban local councils, student unions and other public bodies from boycotting goods for political reasons, was announced by the government on Monday and has been implemented without parliamentary debate or vote.
However, documents first seen by the Independent show the Foreign Office’s Overseas Business Risk assessment for Israel states that the government does “not encourage or offer support” to business with the occupied territories, apparently contradicting the new regulation.
“Settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict impossible,” the document reads.
“There are therefore clear risks related to economic and financial activities in the settlements, and we do not encourage or offer support to such activity.”
The new rules do not apply exclusively to Israel, but would ban institutions that receive the majority of their funding from the government from participating in procurement political campaigns, choosing not to buy products from companies on political grounds. The only exception would be nationwide boycotts mandated by the government.
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has attacked the new law, saying it undermines the democratic rights and freedoms of public bodies.
PLO Executive Committee Members Dr Hanan Ashrawi and Dr Saeb Erekat released a joint statement after meeting with Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood on Wednesday.
“This represents a serious regression in British policy and it would empower the Israeli occupation by sending a message of impunity,” said Ashrawi and Erekat.
“In order to accommodate the Israeli occupation, the British government is undermining British democracy and their own people’s rights.”
The Labour Party has panned the new measures as an “attack on democracy.”
“This government’s ban would have outlawed council action against apartheid South Africa. Ministers talk about devolution, but in practice they’re imposing Conservative Party policies on elected local councils across the board,” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said.
The government, however, has defended the anti-boycott measures, saying they are necessary for “community cohesion” and national security.
“There are wider national and international consequences from imposing such local level boycotts. They can damage integration and community cohesion within the United Kingdom, hinder Britain’s export trade, and harm foreign relations to the detriment of Britain’s economic and international security,” ministers said in a procurement policy note sent out to public authorities.
Coinciding with the law’s announcement, Cabinet Minister Matthew Hancock, who has recently come under fire for accepting a £4,000 donation from a right wing think tank, weeks before announcing a crackdown on lobbying by charities, is currently in Israel promoting business and trade links with the UK.
Read more:
Like Thatcher with apartheid: UK to ban public bodies from boycotting Israeli West Bank goods
Combating BDS Act of 2016
Congress Moves against BDS
By Lawrence Davidson | To The Point Analyses | February 17, 2014
It was bound to happen – an attempt by the U.S. Congress to sanction the attacks on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement already taking place in some states and municipalities. The strategy is to legitimize an increasingly standard approach to undermining the boycott of Israel, an approach wherein the investment of any state funds, including pension funds, in any business or organization that boycotts the Zionist state is forbidden.
Bipartisan pairs of senators – Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) – and Congressional Representatives – Robert Dold (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) – introduced into both houses the “Combating BDS Act of 2016” (S.2531 and H.R.4514). We can be sure that all four of them are doing this at the coordinated behest of Zionist special interests to which they are financially tied. In other words, acting in their official capacity, their behavior on things that touch on Israel-Palestine is a payback for money and other forms of assistance offered by the Zionists to facilitate the politicians’ elections and reelections. Sadly, this is the way the U.S. campaign system works. Unless you are very wealthy, you are constantly scrounging for money. Under such circumstances one’s pathway to success is made easier if you don’t know the difference between ethics and your elbow.
Our four sponsors of the “Combating BDS Act” would, of course, deny any such tainted motives. Rather, they would insist that theirs is an effort to weigh in against anti-Semitism and defend the integrity the “only democracy in the Middle East.” If they really believe this is so, the kindest thing that can be said for these legislators is that they are profoundly ignorant about Israel and its true character. It is also possible that they know the truth about their patron, but really don’t care. It is all about the money.
Intimations of the Real Israel
For instance, are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, recently voted down a bill to include the principle of equality among citizens in the wording of the country’s “Basic Law” on Human Dignity and Liberty? Basic Laws stand in for a constitution in Israel. The bill was introduced by one of the few Arab-Israeli MKs (members of the Knesset) , Jamal Zahalka, who noted that “All constitutions in modern countries begin with stressing the principle of equality amongst their citizens.” That did not matter to a majority of the Knesset who, following inherently discriminatory Zionist ideals, do not believe in equality between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens. Yet to Israel’s supporters in Washington the Zionist state remains a “democracy” much like the United States. Such an unquestioning assumption, so wide of the mark, displays a level of closed-mindedness that ought to require intensive remedial critical-thinking training before allowing someone to stand for office.
Are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the Knesset “Ethics Committee” has suspended three Arab-Israeli MKs, including Mr. Zahalka, from participating in legislative sessions because they met with families whose members had been killed while violently resisting Israeli occupation? The aim of the meeting was to assist the families in recovering from Israeli authorities the bodies of their slain relatives. The Israelis refuse to recognize the truism that the violence of the oppressed will eventually reach the level of the violence of the oppressor. Instead, any violent blowback occurring in response to their own violence is conveniently characterized as “terrorism.”
In order for the action of the Arab MKs to make sense to most Israeli Jews and their Zionist supporters abroad, there has to be recognition of the historically established fact that the occupation of Palestinian land is real. This the Zionists will not do, and apparently, part of their deal with the U.S. politicians in Congress is that they too must echo that same denial.
Are Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas aware that the respected human rights organization Amnesty International has recently released a report accusing Israeli forces of using “intentional lethal force” against Palestinians in situations where such force was “completely unjustified”? Amnesty spokesman Philip Luther asserted that the Israelis had “ripped up the rulebook” by “flouting international standards” when it came to the use of force. For the politicians in Washington who have made their pact with the Zionists, such behavior, if noted at all, is rationalized as self-defense on the part of the Israelis. However, suppression of resistance to illegal occupation cannot not be judged self-defense either legally or logically. Who in Congress is aware of the Fourth Geneva Convention?
There are many other practices and policies of the State of Israel that must be ignored (including Israel’s support of al-Qaeda in Syria) if Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas are to carry on with clear consciences. But this might be based on a false assumption that these politicians have a conscience to which they pay attention. After all, our system of politics, which all but demands submission to special interests, may well select for amoral personalities.
Ignoring the Question of Constitutionality
The apparent indifference of Senators Kirk and Manchin and Representatives Dold and Vargas goes beyond Israel’s flouting of international law. It carries over to these politicians’ own disregard for the U.S. Constitution, which each gentleman has sworn to uphold.
Ever since the early 1980s the Supreme Court has regarded domestically initiated boycotts as a legitimate form of political speech. There is little excuse for our four defenders of Israel not to know this. And what are we to say of them if they do in fact know? Only that they, like their patrons, are willing to “rip up the rulebook.” They are willing to act as if what is unconstitutional is, after all, acceptable when it protects the interests of a foreign rogue state on whose payroll they happen to be. Just how long can they get away with this? Is the answer really just as long as the Zionist money keeps coming?
Congressmen and senators tied to Zionist special interests will eventually have to rethink these alliances. Their connection with a state that has no compunction about violating international law has led them to become accomplices in the undermining of U.S. law. Thus, the actions of politicians such Kirk, Manchin, Dold and Vargas act as a barometer indicating the degree to which under-regulated special interests have corrupted the U.S. government. Those involved are walking a path that can lead only to on-going ethical decline and policy failures.
UK to outlaw boycotts of Israeli settlement goods
MEMO | February 15, 2016
Public bodies in Britain are to be prevented from boycotting “unethical” goods, such as those from illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine, under a plan expected to be announced later Monday, local media reported.
Publicly funded institutions such as local municipalities and universities will face “stiff penalties” if they bar products from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco or West Bank settlements, The Independent newspaper reported, citing ministers.
The proposals – due to be announced by Cabinet Office Minister Matthew Hancock – are being put forward on the grounds that bans on products are harming community relations and fuelling anti-Semitism.
“The new guidance on procurement combined with changes we are making to how pension pots can be invested will help prevent damaging and counter-productive local foreign policies undermining our national security,” Hancock told The Independent.
Some public bodies around the U.K. have refused to buy goods from Israeli settlements in recent years and they would have to reverse those decisions under the plans.
In Leicester, a city in the East Midlands, elected officials agreed in 2014 that the municipality would not buy settlement produce. That year the devolved government in Scotland issued a notice discouraging trade and investment with settlements by Scottish councils.
The government’s plan was criticized as an attack on local democracy.
Amnesty International’s Economic Relations Program Director Peter Frankental said the proposal could encourage human rights abuses.
“All public bodies should assess the social and environment impacts of any company with whom they choose to enter into business relationships,” he told The Independent. “Where’s the incentive for companies to ensure there are no human rights violations such as slavery in their supply chains, when public bodies cannot hold them to account by refusing to award them contracts?”
Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights — lands occupied by Israel in 1967 — are considered illegal by the international community and a major impediment to peace with Palestinians.
ISM calls for internationals to volunteer in Palestine
International Solidarity Movement | 15th February, 2016
Occupied Palestine – Today, Palestinians are facing an enormous amount of pressure in their lives due to the growing violence of Israeli forces. They face restrictions of movement, daily harassment, intimidation and attacks at hands of Israeli occupying forces and extremist settlers. ISM is a Palestinian-led movement; our actions are initiated on the invitation of Palestinians, following their lead and wishes. We, as internationals, are needed to monitor human rights violations and show our support for the popular struggle.
Since the beginning of October, Israeli occupation forces increased their abuse of power by carrying out a series of extrajudicial killings of Palestinians, in a manner that is completely unjustified and, in most cases, constituting crimes of war. Israeli politicians have fueled the motivation to kill Palestinians by making open statements encouraging Israeli citizens to become executioners. In addition, Israeli forces are applying measures of collective punishment towards the families of Palestinians who are killed in this unlawful manner. Over 170 Palestinians have been killed since October, many of them children. On February 14th alone Israeli forces shot dead 5 Palestinians, including 3 children, and critically wounded a 14-year-old girl in al-Khalil.
Israeli forces conducting intimidating military patrol as schoolgirls walk down the street in the Old City of al-Khalil
With more volunteers, ISM could more effectively fulfill our commitments to the Palestinian communities we work with, such as walking with schoolchildren and monitoring checkpoints. A larger team also opens up the possibilities of working in more locations and regions where international presence can be useful.
Our presence in Palestine is crucial, because we witness and document what we see and can show the world what is happening on the ground. We do our best to prevent Palestinians from being harassed, and more importantly, we show them we are there in solidarity with them.
In Al-Khalil (Hebron), we need volunteers to walk children to school and monitor checkpoints where students and teachers cross on their way to and from school. Palestinian parents of kindergarten children living in H2 (the area completely controlled by the Israeli military with constant presence of soldiers and settlers) fear to send their children to school without internationals to accompany them. Children in the neighborhoods in H2 routinely face harassment and intimidation from Israeli forces and settlers, and Israeli forces deploy tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets regularly against schoolchildren at some of the checkpoints ISM monitors.
One of our volunteers walks a group of children to school in al-Khalil
Young schoolboy looks on as Israeli forces body search his teacher just outside their school in al-Khalil
In occupied East Jerusalem, many Palestinian families face the constant threat of having their homes demolished by Israeli forces. As a way of showing support and sharing their story, we go to these families to document their situation and report it in the media. In the old city of Jerusalem, some Palestinian families also face eviction, like in the case of grandma Nora; all part of a plan to replace Palestinians in the old city by Israeli settlers. Part of our job is to make sure that these cases don’t stay unknown to the world by reporting them on our website and sharing it on social media.
In Ramallah and its surroundings, we monitor the Friday popular marches. Palestinian popular committees all over the West Bank organize regular demonstrations where ISM is called to participate. We work alongside popular resistance to the occupation, providing international presence and documentation at protests and actions facing attack by Israeli military forces. Sometimes, Palestinians ask us to accompany them to the military court. We attend hearings of their family members or friends in an attempt to show them that they are not alone.
Demonstrators gathered at night around the fire in the ongoing protest tent opposing the closed military zone in al-Khalil
9-year-old girl being rushed from the scene after Israeli forces shot her with live ammunition in the arm during their attack on the weekly Friday demonstration in Kafr Qaddum
In Tulkarm and its surroundings, thousands of Palestinians cross the checkpoints everyday to go to work in Israel. The conditions of the crossing are tiring and humiliating for the workers, who arrive several hours before the opening of the gates and have to stand in line in order to be on time for work. Since October, the university of Tulkarm has also been witnessing many violent attacks on campus from the Israeli forces, in which several students were injured with teargas and live ammunition. The ISM team monitors and reports on these Human Rights violations.
A large part of ISM’s work has always involved documenting the violence and impacts of the occupation and the Palestinian struggle against it, working to produce and share media to an international audience to build awareness and global opposition to Israel’s unjust, illegal occupation.
ISM volunteers work amplifying Palestinian voices of resistance while in Palestine and especially after returning to our home countries around the world.
5 children who were forced out of their home in Jerusalem after it was demolished; the ISM team met with their family to learn and share their story
When you come to Palestine, try to bring a camera and your laptop if you have one, as both are extremely useful for media work. To plan your trip to the West Bank, please read our traveling information. We ask our volunteers to commit for a minimum of two weeks after completing our two day training, but keep in mind that we always prefer to have volunteers stay for longer periods of time.
Please note that we cannot sponsor people or otherwise facilitate anyone’s entry into Gaza; the information contained here and in our travel and training pages applies to our work in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
When you decide to come to Palestine to join ISM, or if you have any further questions not covered in our page on joining us in Palestine, please contact palreports@gmail.com or call the phone number for the training coordinator once you have entered Palestine at 059 530 7448
In solidarity,
ISM Team
Intimidating military patrol of Palestinian market
International Solidarity Movement | February 9, 2016
Hebron, Occupied Palestine – On Tuesday, February 9, Israeli forces patrolled the Palestinian market in occupied al-Khalil (Hebron), harassing and intimidating residents.
Israeli forces on their patrol through the Palestinian market
A group of soldiers marched through the souq, the main Palestinian market since the closure of Shuhada Street for Palestinians after the Ibrahimi mosque massacre in 1994. Any male adult or youth was stopped on their way to work and forced by the Israeli soldiers to lift up their shirts and trouser-pants, as well as throw their IDs on the ground. After throwing their IDs on the ground Israeli soldiers ordered the men to move back, so they could pick up the IDs from a ‘safe distance’. Most Palestinians were dismissed after this humiliating procedure, whereas some of them were detained for minutes or violently body-searched.
Violent body-search of Palestinian young man
International human rights defenders documenting the Israeli forces violations of basic human rights of Palestinians, were intimidated and harassed by the Israeli soldiers in an attempt to prevent them from documenting. Soldiers took photos of the internationals with their private phones held right in the volunteers faces and as an intmidation tactic ID-checked them.
Israeli forces taking photos of human rights defenders with their private phones
During the more than one hour patrol Israeli forces repeatedly pointed their assault rifles at the internationals as well as Palestinians.
Israeli soldier ‘ordering’ Palestinians to stop by pointing his gun
Not only adults were surprised and shocked by the sudden presence of heavily-armed soldiers right outside their houses, but also children on their way to school and work. Some children, scared by the soldiers, turned around right away after spotting the soldiers and ran back home instead of continuing their way to school or kindergarten. International human rights defenders walked several scared children past the soldiers so they could safely reach their schools and kindergarten.
Two school girls passing the heavily-armed patrol
A mother waiting with children for the school-bus right opposite a group of soldiers
Iowa Peace Activist Facing Felony Charges for Breaking Northrup Grumman Windows
By Fran Quigley | Dissident Voice | February 9, 2016
Jessica Reznicek, 34, an Iowa peace activist, was arraigned yesterday and charged with two felonies for breaking three windows with a sledgehammer at the Northrup Grumman facility outside the Omaha Nebraska Strategic Air Command at Offut Air Force base. After her court appearance she was returned to the Sarpy County Jail where she has remained on $100,000 bond since her action on December 27. Reznicek, who has no plans to post a cash bond, is facing up to twenty years in prison if convicted on both counts. Her trial is set for May 24.
Writing from her jail cell, Reznicek, who has lived and worked at the Des Moines Catholic Worker for years, said she broke the windows as an act of conscience “in an effort to expose the details of the defense contracts currently held by Northrup Grumman with U.S. Strategic Air Command (STRATCOM) at Offutt Air Force Base. Over the years, billions of taxpayer dollars are pouring into the hands of these money-hungry, bomb-building, and computer geek space war criminals.”
Her letter continued, “Yes, glass did shatter. It shattered like the illusion that Northrop Grumman holds human life in any way in its best interest. It shattered like the illusion Iraq ever possessed weapons of mass destruction. It shattered like the illusion Iraqis were involved in 9/11. It shattered like the lie that perpetual war will ever bring peace. Glass shattered in the name of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives taken when Northrop Grumman/STRATCOM’s direct bombs from space rained down upon them from space. I destroyed two windows and a door, yes! STRATCOM with its cooperate partner Northrop Grumman destroys life in the tens of thousands.”
“My intention was to be on the property and to do property destruction, that’s what I wanted to do,” Reznicek told a local television reporter via a jailhouse phone interview. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I didn’t want to scare anybody.”
Why Northrup Grumman? Northrup Grumman has been manufacturing weapons and weapon systems for profit for the US government for decades. Its primary customer is the US government which accounts for about 85 percent of its total sales every year. The massive corporation spends $10 to $20 million each year lobbying Congress according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In return it is one of the very top recipients of federal contracts year after year.
In October 2015 Northrup Grumman received the biggest prize of all, a $55 billion contract from the US to build 21 long range strike bombers. According to the Secretary of the Air Force, these bombers will “allow the Air Force to launch an airstrike from the continental US to anywhere in the world.”
USA Today included Northrup Grumman in its list of the ten companies profiting the most from war. The corporation recently reported it generated $2.6 billion in income and earned a profit of 12.9%. Its CEO makes more than $21 million a year. Board members are paid over $250,000 each per year and include several who passed through the revolving door of government like one high-ranking twenty year Democratic member of Congress, a General who was appointed by President Bush to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and an Admiral who was Chief of Naval Operations under President Bush.
Even in jail, Reznicek remains hopeful. “I want to say now that I truly believe that the American people are done with war – done funding, killing and dying in U.S.-led wars and terrorism – and are ready to pave a path to peace.”
“I acted in accordance with my conscience and my spirit and that my property destruction was a useful form of nonviolent direct action. I do not stand in judgment of folks who feel uncomfortable using such methods. Nonetheless, I want to stand beside them, asking them to develop and apply their own means to expose the lies of Northrop Grumman & STRATCOM be it through education, research, writing letters, public discussions, public vigils, rallies and marches and yes, even civil disobedience.
“We all have our part to play. Here in the heartland of America we who seek peace must make efforts to dismantle the U.S. military dominance of space from the top down, by publicly and nonviolently resisting the joint Northrup Grumman and STRATCOM missions.
“This is why I acted. You do not have to act as radically or dramatically as I did, but please make a statement in your own way against government funded companies which focus on war and destruction.
“I’ll sit in jail for as long as I need to if it gets people talking.”
Fran Quigley is clinical professor and director of the Health and Human Rights Clinic at Indiana University McKinney School of Law.
Neoconservatives have taken over US academic institutions: Scholar
Press TV – February 8, 2016
“Unfortunately today, these neoconservatives whose philosophy is that intellectuals should be in the service of tyrants who rule using big lies and mass murder, have taken over the academy and they don’t belong in the academy,” said Kevin Barrett, who has a Ph.D in Arab and Islamic studies and is one of America’s best-known critics of the so-called war on terror.
“Transparency and freedom are the ideals of the academy; because the neoconservatives reject these ideals, they have no business in the academy” Barrett told Press TV on Monday.
On Saturday, an American female professor at a Christian university who got in trouble after wearing the hijab and saying Muslims and Christians worship the same God has agreed to leave the school.
Wheaton College, located near Chicago, Illinois, and political science professor Larycia Hawkins have reached a confidential agreement in which they will “part ways,” the college said in a statement.
“This seems to be a very strange kind of phenomenon that a professor should not be allowed to teach at a university,” said Barret, who himself was fired from the University of Wisconsin for accusing the US government of being involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“The whole idea is ludicrous but apparently not in Wheaton College, where Islamophobia appears to be mandatory,” he added. “Anyone who doesn’t hate Muslims with all their heart and soul apparently is not welcome to teach at Wheaton College.”
“It’s a disgrace and an outrage and travesty and anybody who cares about freedom in America should head straight to Chicago to protest, to go and occupy the offices of the administration [of Wheaton College] there.”
Hamas welcomes Italian academics’ call for BDS
Ma’an – January 30, 2016
BETHLEHEM – The Hamas movement hailed on Saturday the announcement that academics from 50 Italian universities had signed a petition calling to boycott Israeli universities and research institutes.
According to prominent Italian publication L’Espresso, more than 160 Italian academics came out in support of the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
The petition, reportedly the first large-scale BDS effort from Italian academia, said it was “a response to the known and well-documented complicity of Israeli academic institutions with Israeli state violence and the total lack of serious condemnation on their part since the foundation of the State of Israel.”
The BDS campaign specifically targeted Technion, the Israeli Institute of Technology in Haifa, for its prominent role in the Israeli military-industrial complex, and called on Italian universities to sever ties with the institution.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri welcomed the move on Saturday, saying the petition “illustrates the increasing state of isolation the occupation suffers as a result of its crimes.”
Israel has been struggling to tackle a growing Palestinian-led boycott campaign which has had a number of high-profile successes abroad in both academic and artistic fields.
The BDS movement aims to exert political and economic pressure over Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in a bid to repeat the success of the campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa.
In recent years, some 1,200 academics in Spain, 343 British professors and lecturers and more than 200 South African academics have publicly come out in support of BDS.
Nonviolent Resistance in the South Hebron Hills
By Cassandra Dixon | Dissident Voice | January 28, 2016
The worst worries of a child’s school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.
Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road connecting the two villages. During the 1980s Israeli settlers built a settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health care, shopping, and higher education.
Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception – children walk behind an Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to walk with them.
Photo by Cassandra Dixon (See *note below)
The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before – shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.
About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military training.
Amazingly, despite all of this, it is almost unheard of for children to miss a day of school. Parents are determined that their children will be educated. When I began volunteering in Tuwani, the school reached only to third grade. Now thanks to the community’s determination to provide their children with education, students can complete high school in the village, and although facing a continued threat of demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, villagers have built and staffed primary schools for children who live in 8 nearby villages.
This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation looks like.
I’m grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.
U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.
I’m working with the Italian organization Operation Dove.
They support Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation, standing with families in their commitment to remain on their land. This includes accompanying school children and farm families as they walk to school, graze their animals and tend their crops. Operation Dove helps document the harassment, intimidation, arrests, detentions, home demolitions, checkpoints, road closures, military training exercises, and settler attacks. Villagers also report to Operation Dove when they endure theft and when their crops and property are destroyed.
Protective presence provided by activists is not a large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into childrens’ lives in Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that it’s important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers’ nonviolent efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond our addiction to militarism and violence.
The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on to college, and some have families of their own. These young people have every reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions, arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their community’s steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have supported them well, including them in the community’s struggle for dignity. Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love wins.
*Author’s Note: This little girl was injured by two masked settlers who attacked her with stones as she gathered herbs with a friend on the path between Tuba and Tuwani. She and her siblings make the same trip on foot each school day. She is an amazingly smart and tough young girl — insistent that the many odd volunteers that pass through her life should learn her name and visit her family’s home. She needed four stitches in a head wound after the attack.
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Book Review
Why the War on Conspiracy Theories Is Bad Public Policy
By Kevin Barrett • Unz Review • February 1, 2019
A Review of Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas by Cass Sunstein (based on an earlier paper co-authored with Adrian Vermeule); In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Nemeth; and Conspiracy Theories and the People Who Believe Them, edited by Joseph E. Uscinski
On January 25 2018 YouTube unleashed the latest salvo in the war on conspiracy theories, saying “we’ll begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways—such as videos promoting a phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat, or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.”
At first glance that sounds reasonable. Nobody wants YouTube or anyone else to recommend bad information. And almost everyone agrees that phony miracle cures, flat earthism, and blatantly false claims about 9/11 and other historical events are undesirable.
But if we stop and seriously consider those words, we notice a couple of problems. First, the word “recommend” is not just misleading but mendacious. YouTube obviously doesn’t really recommend anything. When it says it does, it is lying. … continue
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