Category: News

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  • Turmus Aya’s Palestinians threatened by settlement plan

    Turmus Aya’s Palestinians threatened by settlement plan

    Around 4000 Palestinians live in fear over recent encroachment from Israeli settlements.

    Turmus Aya, Occupied West Bank – At the entrance of the Palestinian village Turmus Aya, a large sign written in Hebrew, Arabic and English warns visitors that “this road leads to Palestinian areas [sic]. It is dangerous for Israeli citizens to enter”.

    Contrary to the sign’s warning, it is the Palestinian residents of this seemingly tranquil area who are more nervous, specifically about the recent encroachment from the Israeli settlements that surround their village.

    Turmus Aya, home to around 4,000 people, lies in the shadow of a string of such settlers’ communities, which are illegal under international law. On a bump in the land directly to the north sits Shilo, a well-developed example, built in 1979 and home to around 3,000 illegal settlers.

    Last week, tensions rose in the area, after the Israeli government confirmed that Shilo and other nearby Israeli communities would be joined by the construction of the first official settlement in the occupied West Bank in nearly 20 years. Geulat Zion will be built on a hilltop east of Shilo, to house around 50 settler families removed from Amona, an unauthorised settlement dismantled after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled it had been built on private Palestinian land.

    Read more on Al Jazeera

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  • Responding to Pressure from Social Justice Activists, Portland City Council Halts All Investments in Private Corporations

    Responding to Pressure from Social Justice Activists, Portland City Council Halts All Investments in Private Corporations

    For Immediate Release

     

    4-11-2017

    Press Contacts:

    Amanda Aguilar Shank, Enlace, 503-660-8744

    Rod Such, Occupation-Free Portland, 971-322-4237

     

    Responding to Pressure from Social Justice Activists, Portland City Council Halts All Investments in Private Corporations

     

    On Wednesday 4/5/2017 the Portland, Oregon, City Council voted 5 to 0 to adopt a new City Investment Policy that ends all future investments in corporate securities. The decision followed three hours of public testimony that was overwhelmingly in support of Socially Responsible Investing. 

     

    “We celebrate this victory as it moves the City out of the business of investing in corporations that behave in ways that are so fundamentally opposed to the values we hold as a community,” said Hyung Nam, member of the former Portland Socially Responsible Investments Committee (SRIC). 

     

    The April 5 vote was the culmination of a process that started in December 2014 with a decision by the City Council to enact a Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) screen and appoint a seven-person SRIC. The charge for the SRIC was to hear public testimony, review research, and develop an annual report with recommendations to the City Council for companies to be added to the City’s Do-Not-Buy list. These companies would be ineligible for investment based on multiple violations of the City’s SRI criteria. 

     

    In October 2016, the SRIC issued its first report to the City Council. The report found that nine companies violated multiple SRI criteria. In November 2016, the City Council received the SRIC report and heard extensive citizen testimony concerning primarily two of the companies on the list–Caterpillar and Wells Fargo. In December 2016, the City Council opted to take a three-month pause in all corporate investments and tasked the City Treasurer with reassessing Portland’s investment policy and commitment to a SRI lens for all City corporate investments. 

     

    At the April 5, 2017 hearing, the City Council heard the City Treasurer’s proposal, which proposed eliminating the citizen SRI Committee and using the proprietary Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG) investment-screening tool, MSCI, as the sole way to evaluate a company’s SRI eligibility for City investments. 

     

    Citizen testimony at the April 5 hearing gave a resoundingly negative response to the City Treasurer’s proposal. A coalition of groups representing Palestinian human rights, private prison divestment, proponents of a municipal bank and climate justice argued that the proposed plan was completely devoid of any transparency and community input.  The proposal lacked a tool to screen for values that Portlanders embrace. In testimony that was sung rather than spoken, the Raging Grannies challenged the Council with the words “From Standing Rock to Palestine and here in Portland town, Human life is under attack and the right thing must be done. Human life or profits, which side are you on?” 

     

    Initially, Council member Chloe Eudaly proposed amendments to the Treasurer’s resolution. These amendments called for the City to add Amazon, Caterpillar, Bank of NY Mellon, and Nestle to the proposal and for these companies to be placed on the Do- Not-Buy list. Ultimately, what won the day was the City Council passing a resolution proposed by Council member Dan Saltzman to prohibit Portland from investing in any corporate securities. 

     

    “This decision is a huge victory for citizen activism,” said Maxine Fookson of Jewish Voice for Peace and Occupation-Free Portland. “Through bringing the discussion of the egregious practices of companies such as Wells Fargo and Caterpillar into the light of day, the City Council opted to withdraw our taxpayers’ financial support from these corporations.” 

     

    “Although we would have preferred seeing the City keep its socially responsible investing policy and its SRIC so as to highlight the worst of the worst corporations and in order to encourage better corporate behavior, the compromise amendment at least ensures that our tax money will not be complicit in human rights violations in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere,” Fookson added.  

     

    Wells Fargo is the largest financier of private prison corporations, which are widely known for human rights abuses of detainees and understaffing and poorly trained and low-paid workers. Wells Fargo, which is also financing the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), has gained notoriety for fake customer accounts and fraudulent and discriminatory lending practices that particularly target communities of color.

     

    Caterpillar is heavily profiting from involvement in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In violation of international law, Caterpillar sells the Israeli military weaponized bulldozers that are used as weapons of war to demolish Palestinian homes, villages, and agricultural lands. Churches, student groups and numerous international human rights organizations have attempted to engage Caterpillar to urge them to cease supporting this brutal military occupation, but the company has disregarded all attempts at engagement. In addition, Caterpillar was contracted to dig the Dakota Access Pipeline and is a favored company for construction of the US-Mexico Border Wall that Donald Trump is proposing.

     

    “The City of Portland has taken strong stands in opposing DAPL and fossil fuel extraction,” noted Curtis Bell of Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East. “It was only consistent for the City to disinvest from the companies engaged in those projects.”   

     

    Divestment from companies such as Wells Fargo and Caterpillar–companies that do such grave harm–is a strong statement for corporate responsibility. Though the City Council voted to make this statement in a more generic way, Enlace and Occupation-Free Portland applaud the fact that Portland will no longer be complicit with companies whose practices are so diametrically different from the social values Portlanders cherish. Both groups also welcomed the testimony given on behalf of a public bank and echo the insistence of climate justice organizations that Portland stay on record in support of keeping fossil fuels in the ground.

     

    “In this age of Trump, we see our movements coming together internationally to push back against a corporate agenda that seeks profit over investment in people and the planet,” said Amanda Aguilar Shank, Interim Director of Enlace, convener of the National Prison Divestment Campaign. “In Portland and nationally, our communities are demanding that our cities become Freedom Cities, sites of resistance and also sites of visionary advances, like what we have seen in Portland today.”

  • ACTION: combat anti-BDS and pro-Settlement legislation in Oregon!

    ACTION: combat anti-BDS and pro-Settlement legislation in Oregon!

    Dear Supporter of Human Rights and Free Speech:

    We need your help to stop several bills going through the Oregon Legislature. They need to be condemned and defeated. They are bills: SCR25, SM1, SJM9. This legislation attacks UN efforts to oppose illegal settlements on Palestinian land, and attempts to put an end to an increasingly effective campaign in support of human rights and international law in Palestine-Israel.  These misguided and misleading bills must be defeated.

    Bill SCR25 – condemns the non-violent movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). BDS is a movement answering the call of Palestinian civil society against Israel’s ongoing violations of human rights. The movement works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law. If passed, this bill will have a chilling effect on criticism of Israel’s human rights abuses, and could serve as a basis for other, more extreme bills such as have been introduced in a number of other states. For details about SCR25 see:

    https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Measures/Overview/SCR25

    For more information about anti-BDS legislation across the country and fact sheets see:

    http://palestinelegal.org/resources/

     

    Bills SM1 and SJM9 oppose UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which passed unanimously in the Security Council with only one abstention from the Obama administration. The UN resolution properly condemned Israel’s ongoing and rapidly expanding settlement activity on Palestinian lands in support of international law and in support of longstanding U.S. policy that is opposed to Israeli settlements. You can read more at:

    https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Measures/Overview/SM0001

    and 

    https://olis.leg.state.or.us/liz/2017R1/Measures/Overview/SJM9

     

    The above bills are in the Senate Committee On Rules. We need to call and write the Senators of the Rules Committee and our own Senators to make sure they know that opposition to these bills is widespread and growing. See the contact information below or use the link above.

     

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  • Israeli Ministry Trying to Compile Database of Citizens Who Support BDS

    Israeli Ministry Trying to Compile Database of Citizens Who Support BDS

    [So much for acting like a Democracy]

    read more:  http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.778516

    Senior officials say attorney general vehemently opposes Minister Gilad Erdan’s bid, arguing his ministry has no legal authority to collect information on Israelis.

    Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wants to set up a database of Israeli citizens who are involved in promoting and supporting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel or the settlements.

    Senior Israeli officials noted that Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit is vehemently opposed to Erdan’s proposal, arguing that the Strategic Affairs Ministry has no legal authority to collect information on Israeli citizens.

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  • Anti-Boycott Bills Are Part of Wider Crackdown on Protest

    Anti-Boycott Bills Are Part of Wider Crackdown on Protest

    A number of commentators have noted two different trends. First, across the nation Republican lawmakers are pushing for bills criminalizing protests. Second, a number of state legislatures have passed or considered, often at the impetus of Democratic lawmakers, bills aimed at silencing the movement for Palestinian human rights by targeting boycotts of Israel. 

    These trends should not be viewed separately from one another. It is important to understand that the more general anti-protest bills and those aimed specifically at the Palestinian human rights movement are motivated by the same factors. The bills aimed at silencing supporters for Palestinian human rights are anti-protest bills. All of these anti-protest bills are not arising exclusively out of a general disdain for public participation, but out of a disdain for the public participation of particular social movements that the bills’ sponsors fear will be successful. Together, the two trends amount to a bi-partisan attack on the First Amendment.

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  • Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

    Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid

    Courtesy of Mondoweiss, here is the copy of the UN Report on Israeli Apartheid that was removed from the UN website due to severe political pressure.

    Read more about the controversy on Mondoweiss!

     

    Israeli-Practices-towards-the-Palestinian-People-and-the-Question-of-Apartheid.pdf

  • UN agency labels Israel ‘apartheid regime’– and Israel likens organization to Nazis

    UN agency labels Israel ‘apartheid regime’– and Israel likens organization to Nazis

    A United Nations agency today labeled Israel an “apartheid regime,” in a report that found the country guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt” of the “grave charge” of operating systematic discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people. 

    The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) published the document, “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian, People and the Question of Apartheid,”[PDF]. ESCWA is mandated to review Israeli aggressions.  

    The findings of the report are non-binding and reflect contributions from professor of political science at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Virginia Tilley and former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk. It concluded UN organs should sanction Israel and coordinate with civil society groups in boycott campaigns. Apartheid, the report described, is “a crime against humanity” and defined as:

    Apartheid, the report described, is “a crime against humanity” and defined as:

    “[I]nhuman acts…committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial groups or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

    While neither Jews or Palestinians are racial groups, the report stated, the apartheid standard was met because ESCWA found a “racial character” to the policies of the Israeli government enacted toward both Jews and Palestinians. This is expressed inside of Israel through separate categories for a citizen’s “nationality” (Jewish or Arab) and in the occupied territories by the absence of citizenship for Palestinians. 

    Israel was said to have divided Palestinians into different spheres of governance, each with fewer rights than Jewish-Israelis. Sub-sections of the report outline Palestinians citizens of Israel, West Bank and Gaza residents, Jerusalem residents, and external refugees, all of whom have unequal rights in comparison to Jewish-Israeli citizens. 

    “Strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime,” ESCWA said. Individual treatment to each group may not meet the apartheid definition, when taken together the report said, it does. 

    The UN body regarded Israel as producing “one comprehensive regime developed for the purpose of ensuring the enduring dominion over non-Jews in all land exclusively under Israeli control in whatever category.”

    Read more on Mondoweiss.

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  • Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel

    Jim Crow is alive and well in Israel

    Long before Israel erected separate communities, the United States perfected the art of the artificial divide.

    Stanley L Cohen is an attorney and human rights activist who has done extensive work in the Middle East and Africa.
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/jim-crow-alive-israel-170226083918015.html

    For years, Israel has sold, and we in the United States have bought, the cheap peel-away sticker that it is the “lone democracy” in the Middle East.

    It has a nice, assuring ring to it, sort of like “opportunity” or “peace”, whatever these chants may, in practice, mean. But, like beauty, it remains very much in the eye of the beholder, and like reality, sooner or later the truth surfaces, no matter how well its fiction is packaged.

    We in the US are damn good at packaging ourselves, and our charade of equality and justice is second to none. We sell stuff; lots of it. Much of it false. Very much like a willing stepchild, Israel has learned from us that if you say something long enough with vigour, power and money to back it, it begins to take on a surreal life of its own, no matter how much reality puts the lie to its embroidery. Indeed, we are quite accomplished at obfuscation. We know it all too well. We’ve hidden behind the fog of it for so long that, even today, those who remind us that the earth is, in fact, not flat, remain heretics to be scorned. Have we found the weapons of mass destruction yet?

    Long before Israel erected separate communities divided by will of law to segregate its Jewish citizens from its almost two million Palestinian Arab ones, the US perfected the art of artificial divide.

    With the accuracy of delusion, from coast to coast, could be heard the refrain that race-based segregation was lawful as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal.

    For decades, the legal fiction of “separate but equal” was the mantra that state and local governments, throughout the US, held out to justify the artificial, indeed lawful, separation of tens of millions of Americans on the basis of race and nothing more.

    Whether in services, facilities, public accommodations, transportation, medical care, employment, voting booths or in schools, black and white were segregated under the cheap shibboleth that artificial isolation of the races insured equality, as long as the conditions of their separation were legally equal.

    These laws came to be known simply as Jim Crow.

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  • Israel passes law barring entry for supporters of boycott of Jewish state

    Israel passes law barring entry for supporters of boycott of Jewish state

     

    “The knesset [parliament] passed on its second and third readings the entry into Israel bill,” it said in a statement on Monday night.

    “A visa will not be granted nor a residence permit of any kind to any person who is not an Israeli citizen or permanent resident if he, or the organisation or body in which he is active, has knowingly issued a public call to boycott the state of Israel or pledged to take part in such a boycott,” the statement said.

    Israel has been faced with a boycott movement over its nearly 50-year occupation of the West Bank but it has lately intensified the diplomatic and legal fight against it. 

    The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement campaigns for a global boycott of Israel until, among other demands, the country withdraws from all occupied Palestinian territories. Israel sees the movement as a strategic threat and accuses it of antisemitism – a claim BDS denies.

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  • ACTION NEEDED: Defeat Trump Muslim Ban 2.0

    ACTION NEEDED: Defeat Trump Muslim Ban 2.0

    Donald Trump just reinstated his Muslim ban, signing a new Executive Order that will once again bar nationals of Iran and five other countries from obtaining visas and visiting the U.S.

    Trump’s actions are inhumane, unjust and un-American. We will stop him.

    Email Congress Today

    Nationals of the six countries will be unable to obtain visas for 90 days, but beyond that Iranian visa-seekers will likely be banned from the U.S. indefinitely due to the lack of diplomatic relations and Iran’s designation as a “state sponsor of terror”, according to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

    We cannot let that happen.

    The administration made some small, completely insufficient adjustments to the ban to try minimize public controversy and avoid being blocked once again in court. They are exempting green card holders and persons who currently hold visas.

    The adjustments may reduce some of the chaos at airports. But make no mistake: Iranian visa seekers will be barred from entering the U.S. indefinitely. The Administration has also not provided enough answers regarding non-U.S. dual nationals – the order says they are exempt but their FAQ suggests there may be complications in a dual national obtaining a visa. We are seeking full clarity that non-U.S. Iranian dual nationals will indeed be able to apply for a U.S. visa.

    The bottom line is this: NIAC Action, and all of our allies in this battle, are fighting Trump’s new ban on two paths – the legal path and the Congressional path.

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