Category Archives: Politics And Government

Boycott Campaigns Should Be Commended Not Punished

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  • Ariel Gold CODEPINK staff

    • ELIJAH GOLD
    Protestors outside the the New York State Capitol building in Albany

    Last Wednesday around 200 protesters descended on the New York State Capitol building in Albany to demand that Governor Cuomo repeal his executive order requiring New York State to create a blacklist of companies and organizations that engage in or promote boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Opponents of the BDS movement claim that it is anti-semitic and unfairly targets Israel. Contrary to that, however, the BDS movement is rooted in an anti-oppression framework, opposing all forms of racism, including anti-semitism. It utilizes similar tactics to those that were successful in dismantling South African apartheid and is firmly within the tradition of American Civil Rights Era campaigns, such as the Montgomery bus boycott. Rather than seeking to destroy Israel, the BDS movement seeks to leverage economic pressure to influence Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its siege on Gaza. The most well known and widespread BDS campaigns are those that strategically target companies involved in egregious human rights abuses and violations of international law, including the detention and abuse of Palestinian children; stealing of land, water, and other resources; restricting Palestinians’ freedom of movement; maintaining an apartheid systems of different roads, schools, and laws for different people; and  the support of Israeli settlements, which are entirely illegal under international law. Below are five examples of why Governor Cuomo should be applauding the BDS movement rather than attacking it:

    Remodel RE/MAX

    The Remodel RE/MAX campaign asks RE/MAX LLC to set standards prohibiting their franchises from selling, renting or advertising properties on illegally seized land in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem, and to establish that members of the RE/MAX network should not refer clients to agents and brokers who are involved in such activities. On July 29, 2015 UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon stated that Israeli settlements are “an impediment to peace, and cannot be reconciled with the Government of Israel’s stated intention to pursue a two-state solution.” A January 2016 report from Human Rights Watch entitled“Occupation, Inc.: How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights,” directly indicted RE/MAX LLC, stating:

    By advertising, selling and renting homes in settlements, both the Israeli franchise of RE/MAX and RE/MAX LLC, the owner of the global franchise network, facilitate and benefit from the transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory and the associated human rights abuses, contravening their rights responsibilities.

    The Remodel RE/MAX campaign encourages RE/MAX shareholders to pressure the company to abide by international law and organizes protests at RE/MAX offices, shareholder meetings, and conventions.

    Stolen Homes

    In January 2016 a coalition of organizations, including CODEPINK, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Jewish Voice for Peace, US Palestinian Community Network, and others, formed to demand that Airbnb stop listing vacation rentals in Israel’s illegal settlements. Aswith RE/MAX’s sale of these homes, Airbnb’s listing of these properties directly profits from and contributes to Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise. Airbnb’s website states that they “prohibit content that promotes discrimination, bigotry, racism, hatred, harassment or harm against any individual or group.” They have recently reiterated their commitment to disallowing racism. However, by listing vacation rentals in illegal Jewish-only settlements, Airbnb is directly violating its own policies and assertions.

    The Stolen Homes coalition collected over 150,000 signatures that were delivered to Airbnb’s headquarters on a March day of action and to Airbnb major investor Fidelity Investments on a  June day of action. Internationally renowned nonviolent human rights defender Issa Amro, of the West Bank city of Hebron, voiced his support for the Stolen Homes campaign, saying, “As a Palestinian activist struggling to end Israel’s half-century occupation of our land, it is profoundly disturbing to know that Airbnb would seek to profit from our misery through rentals in illegal Israeli settlements.

    Stolen Beauty: Boycott Ahava

    On March 9, 2016 after a seven year long BDS campaign, Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories announced that they will be moving their factory from the West Bank to within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics concern with its main manufacturing facility and visitors center located in the illegal settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, labels its goods as “product of Israel” when they are in fact made in the occupied West Bank. Ahava pillages mud from occupied shores for use in its products. The announcement that Ahava will be moving its factory out of the West Bank has been applauded by human rights and international law advocates around the world, although the boycott campaign will continue until the facility in Mitzpe Shalem is shuttered and there is proof that Ahava no longer plunders occupied natural resources..

    Boycott Soda Stream

    As with Ahava, the Israeli home beverage company SodaStream chose to locate its main production facility in an illegal Israeli West Bank settlement while labeling its product “made in Israel.” By placing their factory in the industrial zone of Mishor Edomin, the company was able to exploit a captive Palestinian labor force and take advantage of inequitably distributed water, cheap land, tax benefits, and lax regulation of environmental and labor protection laws. After a coordinated and persistent boycott campaign by many organizations, SodaStream saw it revenues drop and was forced to yield to pressure, finally moving their factory within the 1967 boundaries of Israel.

    G4S

    Global security giant G4S Secure Solutions has contracts with the Israeli prison system where Palestinian children as young as 12 are tried in military court, denied access to lawyers and their parents, detained in adult prisons, and abused at the hands of guards and interrogators. In 2013 UNICEF reported that the maltreatment of imprisoned Palestinian children is “widespread, systematic and institutionalised”. G4S is known for maltreatment of prisoners and fiascos around the world as well.  There have been numerous reports of sexual abuse and use of excessive force at their Florida Juvenile Justice facilities. Between 2010 and 2012 they were investigated in the UK for the death of Jimmy Mubenga who died at the hands of G4S guards while being deported. Recently they have come under fire for having been the employer of Orlando, FL shooter, Omar Mateen.

    In June 2014, the international campaign to stop G4S was successful in getting the Gates Foundation to divest the entirety of its $170 million holdings in the company. During the same month in 2014, the US Methodist Church voted to divest from the company. As a result of BDS campaigns G4S has lost numerous contracts with universities, charities, and others, including a contract with UNICEF in Jordan. On March 9th, 2016, G4S announced that for the purpose of “extracting itself from reputationally damaging work” they would be selling their Israeli subsidiary.

    Any day now the UN is expected to release a database of companies involved in Israel’s settlement enterprise. Both RE/MAX and Airbnb will surely be on this list and the campaigns against them will continue. It remains to be seen whether G4S will actually follow through with their announcement that they will sell their Israeli subsidiary. If not, the campaign against G4S will continue with renewed strength and persistence.

    Gov. Cuomo’s executive order will not stop the work on BDS campaigns such as these. This executive order will likely be challenged in court, as boycott is a constitutionally protected form of speech, association, and assembly. But more than a first amendment right, the BDS movement is something that should be commended, supported, and furthered. It is nonviolent change in action, placing those who participate in it on the right side of history.

    Father of Tel Aviv terrorist victim attacks Israeli government; creating ‘despair’ and ‘hatred’

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    By Martin Smith

     Family and friends mourn by the body of Ido Ben Ari, 42, during his funeral in Yavne, Israel, June 9, 2016. Ido Ben Ari died after being shot during a terror attack inside a restaurant in Tel Aviv on Wednesday night after two Palestinians opened fire killing four and wounding sixteen. Israeli security arrested the two Palestinian gunmen who were in Israel illegally from the West Bank.
    YAVNE , Israel, June 10 (UPI) — The Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians has been heavily criticized by the father of one of the victims of Wednesday’s attack in Tel Aviv.

    As he buried his son, the father of Ido Ben Ari said Thursday that Israel was not doing enough to resolve the conflict, and he accused his country’s government of provoking Palestinians with its hard-line approach.

    “The leaders we elect at democratic elections are supposed to find a strategic solution, which demands far-reaching vision, concessions, a creative solution, and not mantras and laundered words,” the father, whose name was not published, said at the funeral in Yavne, which was attended by hundreds of people, including deputy minister Ayoub Kara.

    “Last night, after the attack, the prime minister and two of his ministers arrived and yet another security cabinet issued decrees — not to return corpses, to put up barriers, to destroy houses, and to make lives harder. These solutions create suffering, hatred, despair and [lead] to more people joining the circle of terror,” he said.

    “What’s needed is a solution rather than saying all the time that there’s nobody to make peace with. We chose you to stop the cycle of blood, already 49 years you’ve been trying to solve things tactically and you haven’t succeeded. The time has come for a strategic solution.”

    Ido Ben Ari was one of four people killed when two Palestinians opened fire at the Sarona Market in central Tel Aviv on Wednesday.

    The 42-year-old Coca-Cola executive and former IDF elite commando unit fighter was dining with his wife and two children at the Benedict Restaurant at the time of the attack. His wife was also injured.

    “Ido served in [the elite commando unit] Sayeret Matkal. He went through [the] Lebanon [War] and all the horrors of the army, and yet it was over this nonsense that he was taken,” his sister Reut Fishman told The Times of Israel.

    The two gunmen, who had been posing as customers at the market’s Max Brenner cafe, were caught shortly after they went on their deadly rampage. They are cousins who came from the Palestinian town of Yatta in the southern West Bank. At least one was reportedly injured in gunfire.

    Within hours of the attack, Israel announced that it was suspending 83,000 Palestinian entry permits, which will prevent those living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip from visiting relatives in Israel, attending Ramadan prayers in Jerusalem and from traveling via Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport.

    The Max Brenner restaurant in Tel Aviv returned to normal just hours after two Palestinian gunmen carried out the attack on Wednesday night, killing four and wounding sixteen. Israeli security arrested the two Palestinian gunmen who were in Israel illegally from the West Bank. Photo UPI
    Meanwhile, the scene of Wednesday’s shootings returned to normal Thursday morning as shops, bars and restaurants at Sarona Market reopened.

    The blood, broken glass and bullets had been cleared away, along with the belongings of the people who had died, reports The Times of Israel. And customers and workers returned to the various businesses, as if nothing had happened.

    Charles Peguine, the owner of Le Palais des Thes, a tea shop in the market, said that it was the third terror attack in Tel Aviv that he and his family narrowly avoided since the start of the year.

    “This is our life,” says Peguine, who grew up in Belgium. “Unfortunately four people died; but there haven’t been fewer customers today. We are used to this.”

    Here are some of the comments on this article.

    Kevin Mardesich ·California State University Maritime Academy

    Awwww… jews steal Palestinian land and resources for decades, oppress them and then cry when the Palestinian’s resist and fight back.
    Have a tissue.

    Robert Johnson

    What a brave and honest man. My heart goes out to him for his loss and my admiration for his objectiveness and honesty. The violence in the Middle East is religious violence. Israel claims God gave all of that land to them. It’s time to move beyond ancient myth and embrace reason. As Albert Einstein said regarding Israel, “Should we be unable to find a way to honest cooperation and honest pacts with the Arabs, then we have learned absolutely nothing during our 2,000 years of suffering and deserve all that will come to us.” ( http://deism.com/einstein.htm )

    We need to take the advice of the Deist Thomas Paine who wrote in The Age of Reason that we need a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism. This will eventually put an end to religious violence.

    Chidambaranadar Jeyabalan ·

    Indian Institute of Science

    Collective punishment is an inducement to convert a normal person into an agitated person, who then transforms into a militant, then terrorist.

    For all backward progress in Israel, the present leadership is totally responsible. I have plenty of Israel friends who live in US and Israel. Whoever visits Israel, they feel insecured.

    The mentally corrupt politicians are responsible for the bitterness among the brothers (Israelites and the Palestinians). I condemn the present stupid Israel leadership first before I do the terrorists.

    ARE ANTI-ISRAEL BOYCOTTS LEGAL? DOESN’T LOOK LIKE IT

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    This article was recently published on the YAHOO website. A comment is posted after each paragraph.

    BY

    05_19_Israel_Boycott_01
    Israelis celebrate Israel’s 68th Independence Day with fireworks in the southern city of Ashkelon. The author argues that attempts by educational nonprofits to boycott Israel breaks the law that nonprofits’ funds from members cannot be used to push a political agenda that has nothing to do with the association’s mission.

    Israelis try very hard to stifle the voice of freedom not only in the land of Palestine but also in the United States and anywhere in the world they can. We should encourage everyone, specifically college students, to speak their minds and get their opinions heard. But, as the Israelis see it and want everyone to see and believe it that when people’s opinions and the truth is not to the Israelis liking, it’s against the law.

    Boycotts against Israel are making headlines again. The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is voting this month on whether to boycott Israel. If the resolution passes, AAA will be the largest and oldest academic association to do so.

    The AAA is doing the right thing, and boycotting Israel is the right thing to do. The Israelis need to know that their lies and intimidation are not as effective as they used to be. People in this country are waking up and realizing the reality in the Middle East which’s driving the Israelis off the wall.

    In response, many heads of U.S. universities, including MIT, the University of Chicago and all 10 University of California campuses, recently reaffirmed their opposition to academic boycotts, specifically citing ones targeting Israel.

    The pressure and intimidation still works on those heads especially when added to the lack of morality on their part. Those heads should be chopped off and replaced by more reasonable and encouraging ones to the freedom of fact finding and opinions’ expression. 

    The graduate student unions at University of Massachusetts (UMass) Amherst and New York University (NYU) just voted to boycott Israel. Both UMass chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy and NYU president Andrew Hamilton responded with unequivocal opposition and condemnation.

    Bravo to UMass and NYU for not allowing the chancellor and president of those universities to influence their opinions and votes.

    Fierce debate has surrounded boycotts since the American Studies Association (ASA) endorsed an Israel boycott two years ago. Are boycotts antithetical to the mission and values of academia? Do boycotts violate academic freedom?

    Boycotts do not violate academic freedom. In fact they have nothing to do with academic freedom. They are a matter of opinions’ and should not be associated with academic value in any way.

    Others questioned: Why the obsession with Israel?  Considering all the non-democratic, non-feminist and non-free religion, free speech and free press countries, why Israel? Israel is the only country in the Middle East to provide equal rights to women and all members of the LBGTQ community, to guarantee freedom of press and religion and to safeguard the opportunity to vote, regardless of ethnicity. In fact, Jews, Christians and Muslims all serve in Israel’s government. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, Russia and many other recidivist human rights violators are not singled out for boycott. Among the 196 nations in the world, why is the only Jewish state being singled out? Are boycotts of Israel really thinly veiled anti-Semitism?

    It is typical of the Israelis and their allies to try to divert the attention of the facts and discussion matter at hand. What does the treatment of women and members of the LBGTQ have to do with boycott of Israel? and why Israel is comparing itself to those counties? We are not discussing any of those countries or  their democracies, we are discussing Israel and it’s illegal occupation of the Land of Palestine and demolishing the homes of Palestinians which prompted the call for boycott of Israel. Incidentally, the statement above is not true. The so called democracy in Israel applies to the Israelis only, not the Palestinians. And only to the Jews, not Christians or Muslims.

    Putting those concerns aside, though, there is a new question gaining much traction in legal circles: Are such boycotts even legal? Law professors Eugene Kontorovich and Steven Davidoff Solomon on the Wall Street Journal opinion page recently concluded they are not. And days ago, a group of distinguished American Studies professors and longtime ASA members, two of whom were recipients of the highest ASA award for outstanding teaching and program development, sued their Association.

    Boycott of Israel is not only legal but necessary. I challenge all those so called Law Professors to show me where it’s stated in the law that it’s illegal to boycott Israel. The Israelis need to know that the days of suppressing the truth and forcing their lies on the American people are over. Those so called professors prove that not only goods can be bought, people can be as well.

    The American Studies professors describe how a handful of radicals, including founding members of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, hijacked their academic association to ram through a personal and political mission having absolutely nothing to do with American Studies. This new legal question is probably the most relevant.  Let me explain. Nonprofits incorporated in D.C. are governed by the D.C. Non-Profit Corporations Act. It provides that an organization is limited to the terms of its charter. Knowing that nonprofits are often run by a handful of active members, the law was created to protect the entire membership from officers and directors who abuse their positions and coopt an organization for political purposes.

    Let me ask you a question “Mr. know it all”, if those so called, according to you, announced their unconditional support to Israel, would you call them radicals, and more importantly, would you call them “Law Brakers”? and in your opinion, would they be abusing their positions for political reason? Of course not. That’s the divination of hypocrisy which Israel and its supporters demonstrate on daily bases.  

    Funds from members cannot be used for purposes beyond activities authorized in the charter. Activists cannot legally trade on an academic association’s reputation to push a personal political agenda that has nothing to do with the association’s mission. At the time the boycott was initiated, ASA’s constitution clearly stated that “[the object of the association [is] the promotion of the study of American culture through the encouragement of research, teaching, publication…about American culture in all its diversity and complexity.” According to the American Studies professors, for 60 years, ASA has been an association focused on American Studies. It is not a social justice organization, nor is it a foreign policy organization. Indeed, according to the professors, boycotting a foreign nation has absolutely nothing to do with ASA’s mission and is therefore illegal.

    How much does it cost for someone to endorse someone else or agree with an idea or a philosophy? When a political candidate is endorsed by someone or some group or organization, does the endorser start packing to move into the poor house? Or does he or do they have to spend any amount of money for the endorsement? Of course not. So, why are you accusing the ASA of misappropriating the organization’s funds for the purpose of pushing a personal political agenda? You know something, even if they were, it will be well worth it using those funds to promote the boycott. Whether you admit it or not, the US is very much involved in the Middle East and this falls in the category of American studies.

    I agree, which is why my organization has assembled a team of lawyers to represent these esteemed American Studies professors in this significant and pivotal case.The question of whether an arguably anti-Semitic academic boycott of Israel violates academic freedom continues to be debated. But whether it violates the law seems pretty clear.

    Yes it is. It clearly does not violate the law in any form or fashion.

     

    Venezuelan ambassador to U.N. comes under fire for comparing Israelis to Nazis

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    Published May 12, 2016

    • Rafael Ramirez Israel.jpg
      (PHOTO BY MICHAEL CARONNA-POOL/GETTY IMAGES)

    Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations Rafael Ramírez sparked a diplomatic war of words with Israel last week after making comments during a Security Council meeting comparing Israeli policy toward Palestinians to that of the Nazis in Europe during World War II.

    “What is Israel planning to do with the Palestinians?” Ramírez asked during the meeting. “Do the Israelis want the Palestinians to disappear? Is Israel preparing a ‘final solution for the Palestinians similar to what was done to them?”

    The comment, which occurred the day after Holocaust Remembrance Day, was quickly condemned by officials in Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom and France.

    “This statement by the Venezuelan Ambassador is clear Anti-Semitism against the Jewish state,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon said in a statement. “His remarks are a direct continuations to the Palestinian representative’s statement a few days ago comparing Israel to the Nazis. The Palestinians are bringing Antisemitism into the halls of the UN and are legitimizing racists and crass language in the parliament of nations.”

    Ramírez’s comments also earned him the criticism of the person who previously hold his job.

    “Instead of contributing to the subject, the representative of Venezuela chose to attack the Israeli state in such a miserable way that he has prompted a very serious international reaction, “Diego Arria, the former Venezuelan ambassador to the U.S said.

    Ramírez has since apologized for the comment, saying that he was sorry to the “Jewish people if they were offended by the remarks,” but added that Israel had made a “disproportionate response” to his comments.

    “We want to clarify that our country has no position against the Jewish people, no position against the Israeli people,” he said. That statement “was politically used there is an entire lobby [effort] aimed at turning our words into something we don’t feel.”

    This Ramirez fellow, doesn’t he know that when it comes to Israel he is not suppose to tell the truth or speak his mind? The Israelis don’t like it when someone has the guts to tell it like it is if it’s not in their favor, therefore if you think it, don’t say it. However, if your criticism is directed toward the Palestinians, feel free to announce it to the world.

    Thousands of Arabs march for Palestinian return in Israel

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    Rahat (Israel) (AFP) – Thousands of Arab Israeli protesters marched in favor of a right of return of millions of Palestinians on Thursday, the same day Israel celebrated its independence.

    The Israelis of Palestinian origin were seen carrying Palestinian flags and others holding up signs demanding the right to return for refugees at the rally in the Negev desert. Organizers said it was the first time such a demonstration has been held in the Negev.

    Israeli Jews, in contrast, celebrated in public parties in two very different sets of reactions to the 68th anniversary of Israel’s founding. Israelis hail independence day as what they call the reformation of the Jewish state.

    For Palestinians, however, the events of 1948 are seen as a “nakba” — catastrophe in Arabic — as more than 760,000 Palestinians, estimated today to number about 5.5 million with their descendants, fled or were driven from their homes.

    The Nakba will be formerly marked on May 15. Marchers carried the slogan “On the anniversary of your independence, remember our nakba.”

    For the Palestinians, the right to return to homes they fled or were forced out of is a prerequisite for any peace agreement with Israel, but it is a demand the Jewish state has rejected out of hand.

    When has negotiating with Israel ever helped the Palestinians?

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    Readers React
    Netanyahu has a face that’s begging to be slapped and powerfully punched

    To the editor: Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, writes that “the modern history of Israeli-Arab peace-making has taught us that only direct negotiations between the two sides can actually achieve results.” (“Israel’s U.N. ambassador: Direct diplomacy is the only way to peace,” Opinion, April 25)

    Exactly the opposite is true. Past peace “processes” have resulted in Israel confiscating even more Palestinian land. Nothing positive has ever happened for Palestinians.

    Yes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “extended himself … in his pursuit of direct negotiations with the Palestinian Authority,” but he has also said that he would never allow a Palestinian state. So what is the point of negotiations except to pretend that something positive is being done?

    Palestinians would be insane to subject themselves to yet another peace “process.” Their only hope appears to be with the United Nations and the success of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) initiative.

    And why does Danon refer to “Israeli-Arab” negotiations instead of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations? Palestinians are, for the most part, an Arab people, but they are a separate people who have inhabited Palestine for many centuries and have hopes and aspirations of their own apart from other Arab countries…

    To the editor: Danon blames Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for the failure to hold more peace talks. But he curiously neglects to mention the rapid growth in Jewish-only, illegal settlements under Netanyahu.

    When Israel carves out more and more land from the West Bank for Jewish-only developments, how can anyone believe its government is serious about allowing for a Palestinian state?

    No wonder Abbas and supporters of Palestinian rights have turned to the BDS movement to pressure Israel to abide by international law.

    Mandy Erickson, San Mateo, Calif. 

    Follow the Opinion section on Twitter@latimesopinion and Facebook

    Defining political issue of our time

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    NYU grad student union overwhelmingly votes to boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights

    NYU Graduate Student Organizing Committee is first private university labor union to support BDS, as movement grows

    TOPICS: BDS, BOYCOTT DIVESTMENT SANCTIONS, ISRAEL, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, PALESTINE, ,

    "Defining political issue of our time": NYU grad student union overwhelmingly votes to boycott Israel over violations of Palestinian human rights(Credit: NYU GSOC)

    Graduate students at New York University have overwhelmingly voted to boycott Israel in protest of its violation of Palestinian human rights.

    Exactly two-thirds of voting members of the graduate student union the Graduate Student Organizing Committee, or GSOC-UAW 2110, supported a referendum on Friday that calls for New York University and United Auto Workers International to withdraw their investments from Israeli state institutions and international corporations complicit in violations of Palestinian human and civil rights.

    At least 645 union members participated in the vote. An additional 57 percent of voting members pledged to uphold the academic boycott of Israel, refraining from participating in research and academic programs sponsored by institutions funded by the Israeli government.

    The union says this “was an unusually large membership turnout, a testament to union democracy.” It explained in a statement that the vote took place after a period of “vigorous debate and engagement with the union among wide layers of graduate workers.”

    “After months of mass mobilization and a four-day election, GSOC members have taken a clear stand for justice in Palestine,” explained Shafeka Hashash, a member of the union’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, caucus.

    “This historic endorsement of BDS by GSOC at NYU occurs in the wake of growing momentum for the movement across university campuses and labor unions nationwide,” she added.

    BDS is an international grassroots movement that uses peaceful economic means to pressure Israel into complying with international law and respecting Palestinian human rights. The campaign was called for by Palestinian civil society and by major trade unions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    The Graduate Student Organizing Committee is a labor union representing more than 2,000 teaching assistants, adjunct instructors, research assistants and other graduate workers at New York University, or NYU. It is the first recognized graduate worker union at a private university in the U.S.

    The union says its referendum vote it sets “an important precedent for both solidarity with Palestine and for union democracy.”

    “In addition to bringing material gains for their members, NYU graduate students are reclaiming the union as a political platform for social justice causes,” explained Maya Wind, an Israeli activist and Ph.D. student at NYU who is a member of the union.

    “Through the recent mass mobilization for justice in Palestine we have taken a stand on one of the defining political issues of our time,” she added. “The referendum success is indicative of the traction the movement is gaining across university campuses, and increasingly among graduate students.”

    The referendum also calls on NYU to close its sister program in Israel’s Tel Aviv University, which the union says violates its own non-discrimination policy.

    A recent U.S. State Department report acknowledged the “institutional and societal discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel,” as well as the unlawful killings, excessive force and torture people endure at the hands of the Israeli military in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

    Students of NYU and other universities around the country, we solute you for being humanitarians and calling for BDS of Israel. The Israelis have long lied to us and forced us to believe that the Palestinians are terrorists when in fact they are the ones who are spreading terror in the Palestine, robbing people of their land and resources and killing innocent men, women and children.

    Students want Ohio State, other universities to boycott Israel

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    REQUEST TO BUY THIS PHOTOBROOKE LAVALLEY | DISPATCHReema Jallaq photographs a Palestinian flag she is holding in front of the Wexner Center for the Arts on the Ohio State University campus during a March 22 protest.

    The Israel-Palestine conflict, never absent from most U.S. college campuses, is fueling especially passionate debate in central Ohio this spring.

    Much of the argument centers on the nationwide “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” movement, which aims to punish Israel economically as a way to pressure it to change its treatment of Palestinians. In recent years, the movement has attracted powerful pushback from pro-Israel organizations.

    As student governments at Capital and Ohio State universities considered resolutions on opposite sides of the issue last week, all three central Ohio Congress members and two state representatives entered the debate at Ohio State. Republican Reps. Steve Stivers and Pat Tiberi joined with Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty in a letter urging the Undergraduate Student Government to reject a measure calling for university divestment from three companies deemed to be involved in Israeli punishment and isolation of Palestinians in the West Bank.

    State Reps. Niraj Antani, R-Miamisburg, and Tim Brown, R-Bowling Green, also sent letters opposing the resolution, which named Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard and G4S.

    In the Statehouse, Rep. Kirk Schuring, R-Canton, is one of 14 sponsors of House Bill 476, which would deny state contracts to any company that supports a boycott of Israel. Schuring, who was part of a Statehouse delegation that traveled to Israel, said he considers it “a bright and shining star that we should look to” because it serves as “a prospering, flourishing oasis in the Middle East.”

    On Tuesday, a dozen or so members of Jewish Voice for Peace, a group of Jews who support Palestinian rights and criticize Israeli government policies, gathered on the Ohio State campus to protest the anti-”Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions” movement, including Schuring’s bill, which they say would suppress a constitutional right to protest through boycott. “It is something you have to do at times,” said Farrell Brody, an organizer of the protest. “It’s a nonviolent means of pushing for justice.”

    The pro-Israel side prevailed in both of the college votes; the OSU student government voted 25-9, with 15 abstentions, to reject the divestment measure. At Capital, the Student Senate on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and pledging support for Capital’s Jewish community.

    Neither the college measures nor the house bill mentions the BDS movement, but it has figured large in the debate.

    Tomer Elias, an Israeli-born OSU student who campaigned against the divestment measure, considers BDS inherently anti-Semitic because it aims to harm Israel. Both he and Capital student Austin Reid, who pushed for the resolution condemning anti-Semitism, believe BDS protests create a hostile atmosphere for Jews on campus.

    Sarah Almusbahi is a leader of #OSUDivest, the group that backed the unsuccessful divestment measure. She supports the aims of the BDS movement, but says opponents ignored that the resolution was more narrowly focused. “All we ask is that we not support three companies involved in well-documented human-rights abuses,” she said.

    #OSUDivest isn’t going away, she said, noting that the failed resolution won endorsements from 23 student groups. “This movement challenges the status quo, and whenever you do that there’s going to be heavy opposition,” she said. “We’ve just gotten started.”

    mcedward@dispatch.com

    @MaryMoganEdward

     

    You can’t make it up. UN names democratic Israel as world’s top human rights violator

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    By Anne Bayefsky

    Published March 29, 2016

    FoxNews.com

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    FILE — A woman walks past the Human Rights Council at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.

    According to the United Nations, the most evil country in the world today is Israel.

    On March 24, 2016, the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) wrapped up its annual meeting in New York by condemning only one country for violating women’s rights anywhere on the planet – Israel, for violating the rights of Palestinian women.

    On the same day, the U.N. Human Rights Council concluded its month-long session in Geneva by condemning Israel five times more than any other of the 192 UN member states.

    There were five Council resolutions on Israel.  One each on the likes of hellish countries like Syria, North Korea and Iran.  Libya got an offer of “technical assistance.”  And countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia and China were among the 95 percent of states that were never mentioned.

    No slander is deemed too vile for the U.N. human rights bodies that routinely listen to highly orchestrated Palestinian versions of the ancient blood libel against the Jews.

    Asylum-Seekers from Israel by Country in 2015 | FindTheData

    In Geneva, Palestinian representative Ibrahim Khraishi told the Council on March 24, 2016:  “Israeli soldiers and settlers kill Palestinian children. They shoot them dead. They will leave them to bleed to death.”  And in New York, Palestinian representative Haifa Al-Agha told CSW on March 16, 2016:  “Israel…is directing its military machinery against women and girls. They are killing them, injuring them, and leaving them bleeding to death.”

    Operating hand-in-glove with governments and the U.N. secretariat are the unelected, sanctimonious NGOs, to which the UN offers free facilities and daily advertisement of “side-events.”  In theory “materials containing abusive or offensive language or images are not permitted on United Nations premises.”

    In practice, in Geneva the UN permitted handouts that claimed Israel “saw ethnic cleansing as a necessary precondition for its existence.”  A film accused Israel of sexual violence against children and “trying to exterminate an entire Palestinian generation.”  Speeches focused on the 1948 “catastrophe” in which a “settler colonial state” was established on Palestinian land.

    The New York CSW-NGO scene included a film set in in the context of Israeli “oppression” and the “tear gas of my childhood,” and statements analogizing the experiences of Palestinians to today’s Syrian refugees.

    Picture these real-life scenes:

    In Geneva’s grand U.N. “Human Rights” Council chamber, 750 people assembled, pounced on the Jewish state, broadcast the spectacle online, and produced hundreds of articles and interviews in dozens of languages championing the results.

    On the ground, Israelis are being hacked to death on the streets, stabbed in buses, slaughtered in synagogues, mowed down with automobiles, and shot in front of their children.

    At the New York’s UN headquarters, 8,100 NGO representatives gathered from all corners of the globe, in addition to government delegates, and watched the weight of the entire world of women’s rights descended on only one country.

    On the ground, Palestinian women are murdered and subjugated for the sake of male honor, Saudi women can’t drive, Iranian women are stoned to death for so-called “adultery,” Egyptian women have their genitals mutilated and Sudanese women give birth in prison with their legs shackled for being Christian.

    Isn’t it about time that people stopped calling the U.N. a harmless international salon or a bad joke?

    The poison isn’t simply rhetorical.  One of the Council resolutions adopted last week launches a worldwide witch-hunt for companies that do business with Israel – as part of an effort to accomplish through economic strangulation what Israel’s enemies have not been able to accomplish on the battlefield.  The resolution casts a wide net encompassing all companies engaged in whatever the U.N. thinks are business “practices that disadvantage Palestinian enterprises.”

    And the toxicity is self-perpetuating. Acting at the beck and call of Islamic states and their conduit – French Ambassador Elizabeth Laurin and Council President Choi Kyonglim selected Canadian law professor Michael Lynk as the newest U.N. “independent” human rights investigator on Israel.

    Lynk’s qualifications?  He has likened Israelis to Nazis, and challenged the legitimacy of the state of Israel starting in 1948 as rooted in “ethnic cleansing.”

    All of this played out in the same week that Europe was reeling from the Belgian terror attacks.  Petrified or already vanquished, no European state voted against this onslaught of U.N. resolutions against Israel.  Germany and the United Kingdom occasionally abstained, while France voted with Arab and Islamic states on all but one Council resolution.

    Here we are just 70 years after World War II and Europeans believe that they can license this vitriol against the Jewish state – the only democracy on the front lines of an Islamist war against human decency – and the consequences can be contained to the Jews.

    Even as the converse stares them in the face.  Two days after the Brussels attacks, Islamic states rammed through a Council resolution slyly labeled “Effects of terrorism on the enjoyment of all human rights” that was actually so anti-human rights even Belgium was forced to vote against it.

    As for the United States, the Obama administration has been the Human Rights Council’s most important supporter.  Though the U.S. is currently in a mandatory one-year hiatus — after serving two consecutive terms — President Obama plans to bind his successor by running again in the fall for another three-year term that starts January 1, 2017.

    Memo to Americans who are mad as hell: It’s time to elicit a promise from our would-be leaders to refuse to sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council or to legitimize the United Nations.

    Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her on Twitter @AnneBayefsky.

    Senate passes bill on companies boycotting Israel

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    This article, or part of, was posted on the YAHOO website.

    TALLAHASSEE, FLA.

    Florida wouldn’t be able to invest in companies that boycott Israel under a bill now headed to the desk of Gov. Rick Scott.

    The Florida House on Wednesday voted 112-2 for a bill that would force the State Board of Administration to identify companies that boycott Israel and then notify them they are on a “scrutinized companies” list. The board is responsible for managing the state’s retirement fund.

    If the companies continue to boycott Israel, the board would not be allowed to invest in those companies. It would also place limits on state agencies from contracting with companies on the list.

    The push to take action against companies that boycott Israel is a reaction to a global movement backed by Pro-Palestinian groups.

    I would like to ask Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida House a question, or actually several. Is this what you call democracy? Is this what you call free speech? Is this what you call free trade? Or maybe this is what you call blackmail and intimidation!! When are you people going to get away from under the thumb of the Israelis? When are you people going to have a backbone and say NO to Israelis who are dictating their demands to you? You are truly nothing but a bunch of cowards who can only say yes to the Israelis who, half the way across the world, tell you what to do and how to do it!! Grow up and stand up for Florida! Stand up for your country! And most of all stand up for yourselves!