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Category: News
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Netanyahu ‘told New Zealand backing UN vote would be declaration of war’
Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told New Zealand’s foreign minister that support for a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories would be viewed as a “declaration of war”.
According to reports in Israeli media, the Israeli PM called Murray McCully, the foreign minister of New Zealand, before Friday’s resolution, which was co-sponsored by Wellington. Netanyahu told him: “This is a scandalous decision. I’m asking that you not support it and not promote it.
John Kerry to underline outgoing president’s support of two-state solution with speech setting out US vision of Israel-Palestine agreement
“If you continue to promote this resolution, from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences. We’ll recall our ambassador [from New Zealand] to Jerusalem.”
McCully, however, refused to back down, telling Netanyahu: “This resolution conforms to our policy and we will move it forward.”
A western diplomat confirmed that the call took place and described the conversation as “harsh”.
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In Historic Vote City of Portland Votes to Cease Investments in All Corporate Securities Including Occupation Profiteer Caterpillar and Prison Profiteer Wells Fargo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 23, 2016Press Contacts: Maxine Fookson: info@jvp-pdx.org
Peter Miller: info@auphr.org
In Historic Vote City of Portland Votes to Suspend Investments in All Corporate Securities Including Occupation Profiteer Caterpillar and Prison Profiteer Wells Fargo
In a unanimous vote on Wednesday 12/21/16, Portland’s City Council halted investments in all corporate securities including Caterpillar and Wells Fargo, two companies of particular concern for violations of multiple criteria of the City’s Socially Responsible Investments (SRI) policy. Occupation-Free Portland, a coalition of Palestinian human rights organizations and church groups, and the Portland Prison Divestment Coalition, convened by Enlace, and representing 25 leading racial and migrant justice groups, with support from the environmental group, 350pdx.org, joined forces to urge the City Council to make the historic move to place Caterpillar and Wells Fargo on the City’s do-not-buy list.
The coalition of groups successfully urged the City Council to support the recommendations of the appointed Socially Responsible Investment Committee (SRIC) to divest from Caterpillar and Wells Fargo for violating criteria set forth in the city’s SRI policy.
As the hearing opened, Commissioner Steve Novick introduced an amendment to add Wells Fargo and Caterpillar to the City’s Do-Not-Buy list. Commissioner Amanda Fritz immediately added an additional amendment to stop all investments in corporate securities until the new City Council can return to this issue in 2017.
The City Council’s unanimous approval of Fritz’s amendment means that not only Caterpillar and Wells Fargo but every corporation is now ineligible for Portland investments.
“After today’s decision, it will be important for Caterpillar and other corporations to have discussions in their board rooms about their corporate conduct, and decide to make the change to not sell products and services to human rights abusers,” noted Palestinian-American lawyer Hala Gores.
Weighing in on the Portland City Council decision, Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council, comprised of over 40 Rabbis and Rabbinical Students from across North America and Israel/Palestine, stated, “Many of us in the Jewish community deeply appreciate the solidarity of people of conscience in pursuing conscientious nonviolent strategies, such as socially responsible investing as a path towards building a more ethical and sustainable world. Thank you, members of the City Council, for your commitment to ethical investing and for setting an example for other cities of what socially responsible investing looks like.”
Occupation-Free Portland Steering Committee member Maxine Fookson added, “We applaud City Commissioner Steve Novick, who, in his opening statement, countered the accusations by opponents to placing Caterpillar on the do not buy list that Occupation-Free Portland is motivated by anti-Semitism and the reference to the Jews within OFP as being ‘fringe’.”
Novick said, “I share the desire of folks in Jewish Voice for Peace” (part of Occupation-Free Portland) “to make Israel a better country. Frankly I was disturbed a few weeks ago to hear them referred to as ‘fringe Jews’”.
In earlier hearings, and in written testimony, the broad coalition of groups and community members presented compelling evidence of Caterpillar’s and Wells Fargo’s violations of human rights, tax avoidance, unfair labor practices, environmental desecration and corrupt corporate governance.
Occupation-Free Portland (OFP) focused on the case of Caterpillar, a company that knowingly sells its militarized D9 bulldozers to the Israeli military for use in home demolitions, destruction of agricultural land and destruction of Palestinian city and village infrastructure.
The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights state that corporations are responsible for human rights violations – even those committed by their customers’ use of their products, if the corporation knew or should have known of such use by the customer. For over a decade Caterpillar has been informed of concerns with the use of its D9 bulldozer in the Israeli occupation.
Occupation-Free Portland Steering Committee member Curt Bell said, “The City’s vote yesterday afternoon makes me proud to live in a city that refuses to invest hard-earned tax dollars in companies that not only violate human rights but also desecrate the earth.”
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Group headed by Trump’s Israel envoy pick sued for war crimes
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to Israel is the head of an organization that is being sued by Palestinians for its role in the theft of their land for settlements and other Israeli war crimes.
Announcing the nomination, the Trump transition team said that David Friedman would serve from Jerusalem, “Israel’s eternal capital” – signaling that the new administration intends to move the US embassy to the city from its current location in Tel Aviv.
Friedman is being described as “more extreme” even than the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reports, Friedman has called President Barack Obama an “anti-Semite” and labeled supporters of the liberal Zionist lobby group J Street as “kapos” – a term used to describe Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in the death camps.
Friedman supports the outright annexation of the occupied West Bank and has argued that absorbing the Palestinian population would not threaten Israel’s status as a Jewish-ruled state because, allegedly, “Nobody really knows how many Palestinians live there.”
Lawsuit
A bankruptcy lawyer, Friedman is president of American Friends of Bet El Yeshiva Center, a nonprofit organization that raises about $2 million a year, mostly for the Beit El settlement, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. -
Gaza Water Crisis Has Caused Irreversible Damage, World Bank Warns
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.
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Is Trump steering Israel toward diplomatic disaster?
[Zaha is a co-founder of AUPHR!]
Zaha Hassan is a human rights attorney and Middle East Fellow at New America. During Palestine’s bid for UN membership and Quartet-sponsored talks between 2010 and 2012, she was the coordinator and legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.
(CNN)Anyone interested in a just and durable resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict should be disturbed watching the Donald Trump transition unfold.
As Israel’s military occupation over Palestinian land enters its 50th year, the President-elect has nominated David Friedman, a right-wing sponsor of Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, to serve as US ambassador to Israel.Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer with no relevant experience, is president of the US fundraising arm for Bet El, a settlement built on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. His extremist record includes calling President Obama an anti-Semite and labeling American Jews who criticize Israel’s military occupation “kapos,” a term used for Nazi collaborators. At a time when bold US leadership is required to stop the Israelis from flying off a cliff, destroying any chance of peace, Friedman is the exact opposite of who we need in a diplomatic position.Both Trump and Friedman have promised to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, thereby recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the city. At best, in one fell swoop Friedman would serve to normalize the acquisition of territory by force. At worst, such reckless disregard for international law and the highly sensitive issues involved could egg on a diplomatic Armageddon.
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CIty Council Vote on Caterpillar / Wells Fargo!
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/pdxdivest2. 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:
Commissioner Nick Fish 503-823-3589 nick@portlandoregon.gov Commissioner Amanda Fritz 503-823-0008 amanda@portlandoregon.gov Commissioner Steve Novick 503-823-4682 novick@portlandoregon.gov Mayor Charlie Hales 503 823-4120 mayorcharliehales@portlandoregon.gov Commissioner Dan Saltzman 503-823-4151 dan@portlandoregon.gov Thanks for supporting our city to align its investment with values.
Best,
The OFP Steering Committee–
Curt, Maxine, Ned, Peter and Rod -
‘Alt Right’ Leader Ties White Supremacy to Zionism — Leaves Rabbi Speechless
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.
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Trimet Bus Ad Campaign Links Rights Violations at Standing Rock & Palestine
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 7, 2016Media Contacts: email info@auphr.org for Curt Bell or Rod Such
Occupation-Free Portland Begins Ad Campaign on Trimet Buses Ads Link Rights Violations at Standing Rock and Palestine
Occupation-Free Portland, a coalition of faith, social justice and peace organizations, today announced the launch of an ad campaign on Trimet buses serving the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area. The ad reads, “Portland: Divest from Caterpillar. Caterpillar Violates Human Rights from Standing Rock to Palestine.” The ad shows a photograph of a Caterpillar bulldozer that was used to desecrate a sacred burial site on land promised to the Standing Rock Sioux nation by an 1851 treaty. It also shows a photograph of a Palestinian child left in the ruins of her home demolished by a Caterpillar bulldozer.
“We wanted to show that Caterpillar is complicit in serious human rights violations that are contrary to Portland’s Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) policy,” said Maxine Fookson, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the steering committee of Occupation-Free Portland.
The ad campaign comes as Portland’s City Council prepares to vote on December 15 on whether the city will continue to invest in Caterpillar. Since 2014, the city has invested more than $110 million in commercial paper issued by Caterpillar.
In October, the city’s Socially Responsible Investments Committee (SRIC) issued its final report to the City Council and found Caterpillar in “violation of Sioux’s human rights” and Palestinian human rights. The SRIC called out findings by the United Nations Human Rights Council showing that Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer was used by the Israeli military to violate UN agreements and to carry out “attacks on civilians.”
The SRIC is a volunteer committee that advises the city on its investments and recommends that companies be placed on the Do-Not-Buy list if they breach the criteria established under the SRI policy. The committee found that Caterpillar violated six of the seven criteria, including extreme tax avoidance and harm to the environment in addition to human rights.
“Portland has rightly condemned the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) and issued an official proclamation supporting the Standing Rock Sioux,” noted Rod Such, another member of the OFP steering committee. “It makes no sense to invest in a company that is helping build the pipeline you’ve just condemned. It makes no sense to ban investments in fossil fuel companies, as Portland did earlier this year, and yet put $110 million into a company that specializes in extracting fossil fuels.” Caterpillar’s Oil and Gas Division sells and leases portable generators used for fracking shale oil, and seven Caterpillar dealers directly leased 250 earth excavators to the company building DAPL.
Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozer is sold to the Israeli military through the U.S. military sales program and is weaponized by a Caterpillar subsidiary in Israel. Numerous human rights and faith organizations, including Human Rights Watch, United Church of Christ and Presbyterian USA, have called on Caterpillar for more than a decade to cease these sales. Since 1967 Caterpillar bulldozers have been used to destroy more than 12,000 Palestinian homes and businesses, leaving more than 50,000 Palestinians homeless in blatant violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which both Israel and the United States have ratified.
The bus ad campaign began on Nov. 29, coinciding with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The campaign is scheduled to run for one month. The ad was developed in collaboration with the Seattle Mideast Awareness Campaign (SeaMAC) and was cosponsored by Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights, a Portland-based group, and Jewish Voice for Peace-Portland Chapter. Photos of the ad are available upon request.
Occupation-Free Portland (OFP) is a coalition of faith, peace, and social justice groups working for human rights, justice, and equality in Israel/Palestine.
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Tell the City of Portland: Stop Investing in Destruction!
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.