Category: News

Read more on The Guardian

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”.

(more…)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 23, 2016

Press 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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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.

(more…)

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

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

 
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