Category: News

In interview with Haaretz, bank’s local specialist warns that without more water from Israel, Gaza will continue to move toward being uninhabitable by 2020.

Irreversible damage has already been done to parts of the Coastal Aquifer in the Gaza Strip as a result of overpumping and seawater seepage, according to a senior water-sanitation specialist at the World Bank.

The financial institution is one of many local and international organizations that have been warning against, and trying to prevent, such an occurrence over the past 20 years.

“Ecologically speaking, the damage to the aquifer is getting worse, and studies have been showing a steady increase in water salinity,” said Adnan Ghosheh. This brings the Gaza Strip closer to the situation the United Nations predicted in 2014: that it will be unfit for human habitation by 2020.
As a way of expressing once again the urgency needed to rectify the situation, the World Bank issued a press release earlier this month, following which Haaretz interviewed Ghosheh.

Most of the information in the press release is not new. It notes that while 90 percent of the inhabitants of the West Bank and 85 percent of the inhabitants of the Middle East and North Africa have access to a faucet for drinking water, only 10 percent of the 2 million or so inhabitants of Gaza can safely drink the water piped into their homes. The other 90 percent do not even associate drinking water with the simple act of turning on a tap: Their water is too saline because of seawater seepage, and too dangerous because of raw sewage or gray-water seeping into the aquifer.

read more on Haaretz

[Zaha is a co-founder of AUPHR!]

The City Council hearing and vote on whether to add Caterpillar and Wells Fargo to Portland’s ​do not buy list is now re-scheduled to:

Wednesday December 21 at 2:30 to 4:30 PM
Portland City Hall 1221 SW 4th Ave.
City Council Chambers–2nd Floor
Come one and all to fill the chamber!

We are not quite at the finish line and there is still time to make sure the CIty Commissioners hear our voices. Just a few easy steps. If each of us take them, it will be powerful:

1. SIGN AND SHARE the petition from our allies at Enlace. We are almost at 1000 signatures, now with extra days, let’s come in with 2000 names.
                                   tinyurl.com/pdxdivest

2. Email or call each of the City Council members. The message is simple, “I support Portland’s Socially Responsible Investment policy and I urge you to put Caterpillar and Wells Fargo on the Do Not Buy list for these companies’ many violations of that policy. Thank you.”
Here is the contact for all the City Council Members:
  

Thanks for supporting our city to align its investment with values.

Best,

The OFP Steering Committee–
Curt, Maxine,​ ​ Ned, ​​Peter and Rod

A prominent leader of the “alt-right” left a Hillel rabbi speechless when he drew a direct parallel between white supremacy and Zionism — igniting debate on social media about whether such a comparison has any validity.

Richard Spencer, who leads the white nationalist National Policy Institute, appeared at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas on Tuesday night. Hundreds of students protested outside of the event, while others stood silently with raised fists inside the hall.

During a question-and-answer session, Texas A&M Hillel’s Rabbi Matt Rosenberg stood and invited the white nationalist to join him in Torah study. Rosenberg’s invitation, and Spencer’s response, were captured on video by The Eagle, the Texas A&M student paper, and viewed widely on Twitter.

“My tradition teaches a message of radical inclusion and love,” Rosenberg said. “Will you sit town and learn Torah with me, and learn love?”

Spencer declined the invitation, but used it as an opportunity to suggest that the objectives of Zionism and Jewish continuity were close to his own goals for white people.

“Do you really want radical inclusion into the State of Israel?” Spencer said. “And by that I mean radical inclusion. Maybe all of the Middle East could go move in to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Would you really want that?”

Rosenberg, who later admitted he is not a good debater, stood silent.

“You’re not answering,” Spencer said.

“I’m not answering,” Rosenberg said.

Spencer went on to argue that Jewish continuity is predicated on resistance to assimilation. He framed that cultural imperative as similar to the movement for so-called white rights in the U.S.

“Jews exist precisely because you did not assimilate,” he said. “That is why Jews are a coherent people with a history and a culture and a future. It’s because you had a sense of yourselves. I respect that about you. I want my people to have that same sense of themselves.”

Rosenberg later acknowledged that the confrontation wasn’t his best moment.

Read more on The Forward

Click Here to sign Enlace’s Petition!

On December 15, the Portland City Council will vote on whether to stop investing in the banks financing private prisons and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and Caterpillar for its destruction of indigenous land and involvement in human rights abuses in Standing Rock and Palestine.

The companies involved in destroying our communities are the same. Our struggles are united. Join us in raising a single voice to City Council: uphold human rights and add Wells Fargo, Caterpillar, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Bank of NY Mellon to the city’s do-not-buy list.

As taxpayers and residents in the City of Portland, we demand that the City immediately stop our investments in the finance industry and Caterpillar that are complicit in tearing apart our families and criminalizing our communities, destroying Palestinian communities, desecrating sacred lands and indigenous sovereignty, and threatening all of our water.

Click Here to sign Enlace’s Petition!

Israel is marshaling pro-Israel forces in Europe as well as in the US against the European Union’s recently issued guidelines on labeling some of its settlement products, for fear that this will lead to stronger measures. Al-Shabaka’s Nur Arafeh, Samia al-Botmeh and Leila Farsakh debunk Israel’s arguments both as regards the impact on the Palestinian economy as well as on Palestinian workers.

Read More

When friendship for Israel is judged solely on the basis of support for the occupation, Israel has no friends other than racists and nationalists.

All of a sudden it’s not so terrible to be anti-Semitic. Suddenly it’s excusable as long as you hate Muslims and Arabs and “love Israel.” The Jewish and Israeli right has issued a sweeping amnesty to anti-Semitic lovers of Israel – yes, there is such a thing, and they’re en route to taking power in the United States.

So now we know: Not just pornography but also anti-Semitism is a matter of geography and price. Right-wing American anti-Semites are no longer considered anti-Semites.

The definition has been updated: From now on, anti-Semites are only found on the left. Roger Waters, a courageous man of conscience without stain, is an anti-Semite. Steve Bannon, a declared racist and closet anti-Semite who has been appointed chief strategist in the Trump White House, is a friend of Israel.

(more…)

 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 26, 2016
 ​        ​        ​
Associated Students of Portland State University Pass Divestment Resolution In Support of Palestinian Human Rights

Portland, OR (October 26, 2016)— The student senate of the Associated Students of Portland State University (ASPSU) passed a resolution earlier this week brought forward by Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER). The resolution calls on the university to divest from Israeli apartheid by an overwhelming vote of 22-2, with 1 abstention.

The resolution was passed after seven years of work by SUPER, which presented to the student senate. The central focus of the resolution is to prohibit investment in four corporations complicit in the oppression of Palestinians: Hewlett-Packard, Motorola Solutions, G4S and Caterpillar.  Hewlett-Packard provides biometric ID systems to the Israeli military that enables discriminatory treatment of Palestinians, playing a similar role that Polaroid did in apartheid South Africa. Motorola provides surveillance and communication systems supporting Israel’s occupation and illegal settlements. G4Sprovides systems and support for Israel’s imprisonment of political prisoners and children under unjust military rule. Caterpillar provides militarized bulldozers, which are complicit with numerous human rights violations and are used to destroy Palestinian homes, orchards, and civilian infrastructure.

It was resolved that the ASPSU call on Portland State University to divest any current and future holdings in the companies mentioned above, and any other company deemed to profit from human rights violations against Palestinians. Furthermore, the resolution more specially resolved, “that the Associated Students of Portland State University ASPSU calls on the University to put in place an internal investment screen which prohibits investment in any company that provides weapons or equipment used for violent acts that target either Israeli or Palestinian civilians; provides equipment used for the displacement of Palestinians from their homes or the construction and maintenance of illegal and unethical Israeli government authorized settlements; or supplies equipment used for the construction or maintenance of the Separation Wall in the West Bank and Jerusalem.”

The passing of this resolution means the students of Portland State University have spoken: moving forward, the university should cease investing in these companies. “These four companies aren’t only responsible for human rights violations in Palestine, but all over the world,” according to SUPER. “They are also involved in the U.S. prison system, immigration and human rights violations all around the globe.”

We believe in justice and equality for all people, and are proud that our campus is now on the right side of history. We hope our university’s decision may encourage others to also stand for human rights. We urge other members of the university community and other universities to pursue the same path of justice, and to continue to make history towards a free Palestine.

For more information:
Hewlett-Packard: http://investigate.afsc.org/company/hewlett-packard-company
Motorola Solutions: http://investigate.afsc.org/company/motorola-solutions-inc
G4S: http://investigate.afsc.org/company/g4s-plc
Caterpillar: http://investigate.afsc.org/company/caterpillar-inc

From Standing Rock to Palestine, the Caterpillar Bulldozers at Work for the Colonial Project

(for links and other information, see original article)

Two Caterpillar bulldozers at work (left: Rafah, Palestine in 2002,      right: Standing Rock, ND on Native sacred burial ground in 2016)

Since April 1, 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, later followed by over 200 other Native nations, has been occupying the sacred site of Standing Rock in order to protect it against the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline (named after the two American States, not the Native nation of course), which would carry Bakken crude from North Dakota to Illinois. Yesterday (September 8),  North Dakota Governor Jack Dalrymple has called for the U.S. National Guard to intervene at Standing Rock a few hours before the ruling of a lawsuit that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has brought against the U.S. government. A few days earlier, some Native organizers had been attacked by dogs ordered by private security force, and bulldozers had demolished a sacred burial ground (see the Democracy Now report here).

(more…)