Among those surveyed … was Ofra Ben-Artzi, a left-wing activist and the sister-in-law of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the prime minister. “I told the pollster, ‘Imagine this kind of question being asked in London or New York.’ It testifies to the level of racism we’ve reached,” she said.
Activism
Harvard University has insisted that the sale of shares in Israeli companies is not driven by pro-Palestinian boycott and divestment campaign.
ALSO
Globes (Updated): Harvard denies divestment from Israel
Foreign Policy: Harvard not divesting from Israel
IOA Editor: Harvard’s sale of all its Israeli holdings will remain a bit of a mystery, at least for a while. The manner in which it was done – an entire country-portfolio, sold at once – during the second quarter of 2010 which, coincidentally or not, was also when the Berkeley BDS struggle culminated, suggests it may be more than just a matter of investment management.
If the Harvard Corporation wanted to avoid becoming embroiled in a BDS struggle connected to the Israeli Occupation – say, the next time Israel commits war crimes on sea or land – its best strategy would be to make a ‘business decision’ to pull out of Israel, quietly and without fanfare: not to make a principled, morally-based and publicly explained University policy decision, one that would be controversial and may cause some of Harvard’s donors to put their money elsewhere. And this is exactly what it did. Only time will tell.
In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.
IOA Editor:The Harvard Management Company — a subsidiary of Harvard University charged with managing the university’s endowment, pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts — is best known for managing the university’s $26 billion endowment, the largest endowment in US higher education. Historically, the HMC has been the leading university investment management company, receiving a great deal of attention from all other university funds.
This is probably the first reported university endowment divestment from all Israeli holdings. Coming from Harvard, it sets a very important precedent: it is likely to be reviewed, scrutinized, and possibly followed, by other universities. Because Harvard, or HMC, has yet to make a public statement on the decision, one can only assume that it took place as a preventive measure, to avoid becoming the “next Berkeley.”
Despite Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the escalating displacement in the Negev and East Jerusalem, Palestinians have some reason to celebrate. In Washington [state] a food co-op has passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli products, confirming that the boycott movement – five years old last month – has finally crossed the Atlantic.
A primer on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), its history, participants, and recent successes.
IOA Editor: An Appeal from April 2001, which predates by several years actions covered in the summary presented here by IMEU, can be found on the Matzpun website. A co-author of the Matzpun Appeal reports that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first call for boycott of Israeli products and tourism, covering both Israel and the occupied territories. At the time, the initiative was very isolated, not receiving support from organizations that now support BDS.
For 62 years, the Palestinian people have been misunderstood and oppressed, and in a small way, we hope to change that. It is in the spirit of justice that we found the inspiration to compile The Veritas Handbook.
FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE VERITAS HANDBOOK
A group of Israeli women smuggled 12 Palestinian woman and four children, among them a year-old baby, into Tel Aviv for a day of fun about two weeks ago. The women, among them writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the women from their villages, following two earlier meetings with them.
RELATED: Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation
I would like to remind [Israelis] that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.
Henning Mankell, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla: “We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates … The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.”
The Popular Resistance Campaign marched toward Israel’s no-go zone Monday in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in protest over land confiscation and prohibited access to farm land.
We have to be careful not to reduce everything to BDS; it’s one of several strands, but probably the least significant, in my opinion. It may acquire more significance, but I think the major fronts right now are the international law and the nonviolent civil resistance.
MORE by Norman Finkelstein
‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’
GRITtv interview: Results, Not Rhetoric
Emily Henochowicz, the very talented art student who lost her eye after being shot by Israeli tear gas canister in a West Bank protest, discusses her life, art, and why she plans to return.
ALSO — Mondoweiss: ‘Democracy Now’ and ‘Village Voice’ grant Henochowicz sympathy the ‘Times’ begrudged her
Boycott is the primary tool of those engaged in nonviolent resistance to systematic injustice. Boycott targets unjust policies. It is not about ‘the right to exist’; Everyone has the right to ‘exist’… Israel inside the green line is the agency of occupation and [it] conducts, plans, prepares and executes aspects of the occupation from inside the green line.
Zinn, who died in January at the age of 87, did not advocate violence or support the overthrow of the government, something he told FBI interrogators on several occasions. He was rather an example of how genuine intellectual thought is always subversive. It always challenges prevailing assumptions as well as political and economic structures. It is based on a fierce moral autonomy and personal courage and it is uniformly branded by the power elite as “political.” Zinn was a threat not because he was a violent revolutionary or a communist but because he was fearless and told the truth.
Tony Blair’s term as envoy of the Quartet (US, UK, Russia, UN) has been marked by many photo opportunities but few, if any, accomplishments. Indeed, research shows that Blair’s relationship with one of the world’s richest men poses a clear and significant conflict of interest with his duties as Quartet envoy.
Amnesty International: “Ameer Makhoul is a key human rights defender, well-known for his civil society activism on behalf of the Palestinian citizens of Israel” and “his arrest and continued detention smacks of pure harassment, designed to hinder his human rights work.”
It is not our right or responsibility to lecture the Palestinian leadership on what they should do. That is up to the Palestinians to decide. But it is very definitely our responsibility to focus attention on what we should be doing. Of prime importance is to educate and organize the American public and to develop popular forces that can overcome the dominant propaganda images that sustain the US policies that have been undermining Palestinian rights.
IOA Editor: And much more from Noam Chomsky on the US and Israeli dynamics of the Occupation, and on approaches available to the anti-Occupation movement, including detailed comments on BDS.
Michael Sfard: “Either way, even if wounding of my client was the result of negligence and not criminal intent -even then the State of Israel has a moral, ethical and legal obligation to pay for her treatment.”
The Shin Bet’s tendency to call in citizens to discuss their political activity has ACRI concerned. The Attorney General’s office says the service wants to keep innocent people from being exploited.
Rashid Khalidi: “The siege is not imposed on the Hamas government, or on a ‘terrorist entity’, as the Israeli government describes the entire Gaza Strip: it is imposed on a population of 1.5 million people, who are effectively imprisoned, and most of whom are deprived of living a normal life. Moreover, it hardly affects that government… This is collective punishment of a civilian population, pure and simple… That is potentially a war crime. Most of Gaza’s population, being children, did not vote for Hamas or anyone else. Any human being of any political orientation should oppose this siege.”
IOA Editor: This is a misleading headline in every respect: Rashid Khalidi (who’s also an IOA Advisory Board member) is not “Obama’s friend,” except for when Haaretz stoops to the level of Right-wing lunatic bloggers. As reported in this story, Khalidi is a sharp critic of the Obama administration, and is not one of the organizers of this project. He is not “raising funds” for this project either. Rather, he signed a letter in support of it.
Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual is an Israeli human rights organization whose main objective is to assist Palestinians of the Occupied Territories whose rights are violated due to Israel’s policies. At Hamoked, we work to expose and publicize essential truths about the occupation, in its manifold modes of operation.
The Israeli Parliament approved the first of three readings of a new law which, if passed, will make it illegal to declare a boycott on Israel or Israeli companies, participate in a boycott, or provide aid in the form of information to anyone who is part of the BDS campaign. The bill also penalizes the PA for its decision in May 2010 to ban the use by Palestinians of settlement products. The law even affects international citizens who will be banned from entry into Israel for 10 years and will be effective retroactively.
This movement is taking upon itself what governments have failed to do: to hold Israel accountable for its crimes. The dockworkers’ refusal to deal with Israeli ships is part of this vibrant movement and comes in response to the appeal in 2005 from Palestinian civil society. Other initiatives include campaigns for the boycott of Israeli products, divestment from companies aiding Israeli war crimes, and cultural isolation, so as to not entertain Israeli apartheid.
Board member: “I am trying to be realistic – the Olympia Food Co-Op boycott is not going to change the Israeli policy, but I believe that these small drops will eventually have an effect. I would like to see more co-ops joining the boycott and more voices involved.”
Almost immediately, Shapira related, she began talking about his activity in Global BDS Movement: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions for Palestine, which supports measures against Israel… The agent reminded Shapira the Knesset was expected shortly to outlaw calls for sanctions against Israel.
“I came to save lives, but also because it’s important to me to show that Israel is not the Flotilla Country that it is painted out to be,” said the Israeli doctor… “International aid organizations here are very pro-Palestinian and not too friendly to Israelis,” said an American training specialist.
Israeli border police destroyed several Palestinian fields in Al Beqa’a Valley just east of Hebron on 6 July 2010, directly affecting the livelihood of more than one hundred Palestinians.
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
Some things are amazingly simple. In Sheikh Jarrah you can see pure theft in all its starkness. The Bible says “Thou shalt not steal,” and it – God, that is – was referring to Sheikh Jarrah. Any one can see it. The shocking thing, of course, is that the whole apparatus of the modern state – the municipality, its committees and master plans and grey bureaucrats, the mayor, the government, the Prime Minister, the cabinet, the courts, the police, the secret services – all these have colluded in actively perpetrating the theft.
Under the new law [if enacted], any group could sue damages of up to NIS 30,000 from anyone who launched a boycott against them, or incited a boycott, without having to prove that damage was indeed caused. An additional sum could then be demanded once damages were proven.
A few weeks ago, human rights activist, Ezra Nawi, was released from jail after serving a month’s sentence following his attempt to prevent a bulldozer from destroying Palestinian homes in the South Hebron Hills… Today, his pickup truck is falling apart, and he desperately needs to replace it. Ezra cannot afford to buy a car, so a group of friends has decided to collect donations so that Ezra can buy a newer car, which will, in turn, enable him to continue his important work in the West Bank.
Hundreds of Israeli college professors have signed a petition accusing the education minister of endangering academic freedoms after he threatened to “punish” any lecturer or institution that supports a boycott of Israel.
Neve Gordon: “I am worried about what is happening to the space for debate in Israel. I find that there is a proto-fascist mindset developing. One of the slogans you hear a lot now is no citizenship without loyalty. It is an inversion of the republican idea that the state should be loyal to the citizen.”
Hollywood actors Meg Ryan and Dustin Hoffman backed out of attending this year’s annual Jerusalem Film Festival, which is set to kick off this coming Thursday, following the international outcry over Israel’s attack on the Gaza aid flotilla.
Commentators of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict often complain that there has not yet been a legitimate Palestinian Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. to emerge from within Palestinian civil society. The reality is that there are many Palestinians engaged in popular unarmed resistance to the Israeli occupation, preferring organized demonstrations in the West Bank to suicide bombs in Tel Aviv.
“Israeli academia will suffer great damage if politicians dictate to it what is right and wrong to say, think, research and teach, and force it to adopt that kind of criteria for admitting, promoting or rejecting researchers and professors. Your statement about intending to use your authority to act against professors who support an academic boycott of Israel are causing just such damage.”
