“These organizations are trying to help Hamas in [its] fight against Israel,” argues Im Tirtzu chairman Ronen Shoval. “They are slandering the State of Israel and the Israeli soldiers around the world.” Read more »
An illuminating e-mail exchange between Ur Shlonsky, professor of linguistics at the Universite de Geneve, and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation. As Shlonsky points out, it is remarkable when accusations of anti-Semitism, or “self-hating Jew” (the version used for Jews), come from the executive director of a major research-funding agency. Read more »
Michael Sfard: “I am embarrassed to say that the investigation team did not even go to Ni’ilin, the scene of the shooting… If a Jewish man had been shot and wounded, there is no doubt that the entire village would be under curfew and Israel would do everything possible to investigate.” Read more »
Carleton University (Canada) students’ new BDS campaign video which re-tells the story of the censorship of a poster by the University and the reasons behind the new divestment campaign. Read more »
There are widespread fears among Israeli academics that calls for a boycott of Israeli universities will intensify following the Ariel College decision. Yaron Ezrahi, a professor at Hebrew University, called the decision the “academisation of the occupation”. Read more »
Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Read more »
The Israel Film Fund has ended its financial support for director Yonatan Segal’s new piece Odem, after learning that it compares Israel’s occupation of the West Bank to the Holocaust. Read more »
The Sheikh Jarrah vigils started as an avowedly political act – an outcry against a system which allows Jews to reclaim property held in east Jerusalem prior to 1948, but prohibits Palestinians from doing the same in west Jerusalem… Silencing the drums of Sheikh Jarrah is akin to eroding the pillars of Israel’s freedom.
IOA Editor: Written from an Israeli-centric perspective, this commentary supports citizens’ right to protest. But it overlooks a 61-year long reality where the “pillars of Israel’s freedom” never applied to Israel’s Palestinian citizens. And, no country running a four-decade long violent colonial occupation project can make any claims to “freedom.” Read more »
[T]he move to “purge” east Jerusalem of its Arab residents saddens [MK Mohammed Barakeh] not only on a personal level but also because he feels “there is no peace process, no two-state solution without east Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital.”
Recent Israeli repression of anti-Occupation activities:
Israel blocking NGO efforts with tourist visas
Night Raids and Arrests of West Bank Popular Leaders
Police arrest CEO of Israeli rights group in Sheikh Jarrah
Israeli authorities deny American journalist entry
Israel stages night-time Ramallah raid, arrests activist
Israel Crushes Local Dissent, Attacks Global Criticism Read more »
The IDF also uses networking sites to its own ends: The army spokesperson’s office makes regular use of Facebook and Twitter, as well as publishing regular blogs. In the last year the military has intensified its online activities in an attempt to broaden its public relations drive to reach young people who increasingly gather information from unofficial sources, rather than traditional news providers.
IOA Editor: The reach and importance of online ’social networks’ is often underestimated: Facebook, for example, has over 300 million global users. To the IDF, social networks provide a nearly limitless global arena for propaganda dissemination – for example, using what Israel does in Haiti to whitewash what it does in Gaza.
The IOA on Facebook: www.facebook.com/Israeli.Occupation – ‘fan’ us…
The IOA on Twitter: http://twitter.com/IsOccupation – follow us. Read more »
