The BDS Thread (Boycott, Divestment, & Sanctions)

[RLENT]

The possibility of "complications":

Boycott worries may be undermining Israeli currency, economists say

 

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Looks like a possible FAIL for the anti-free speech thugs:

Bill targeting academic groups that boycott Israel halted in New York Assembly

Alex Kane on February 4, 2014

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. (Photo: Associated Press/Mike Groll)​

There was little notice last week when the New York State Senate took up legislation to prohibit state aid from flowing to academic groups that boycott Israel. It passed quietly–and overwhelmingly. But when the same legislation started making its way through the New York Assembly, activists sprung into action–and have stopped it from advancing, at least for now.

Three committees in the New York Assembly did not discuss or vote on the anti-boycott legislation, a victory for the coalition of civil liberties and Palestinian rights groups that mobilized fast over the weekend to stop the legislation from passing. Activists said that Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, the chair of the Higher Education Committee, announced that the anti-boycott bill was taken off the agenda for discussion yesterday. Glick also said that the legislation will be reworked, so it could come back in a different form.

“We hope that New York legislators have realized that it is inappropriate for them to deny state funds to universities in an effort to silence political speech activities that they personally disagree with. The right to engage in human rights boycotts, used to oppose segregation in the U.S. South, the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and now aimed at achieving equal rights for Palestinians, is protected by the First Amendment,” Dima Khalidi, Director of Palestine Solidarity Legal Support and Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement. “The threat to this right will remain until the New York bill and similar bills in other states are entirely defeated.”

The bill would cut off money to students and scholars from state institutions who need aid to travel to conventions organized by the American Studies Association, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association and the Association for Asian American Studies, all of which have voted to boycott Israel. Those three organizations have endorsed the boycott of Israel, and many members of the New York legislature want to cripple the ability of scholars to participate in those academic groups.

(Article continues at link below)

Anti-boycott Israel bill halted in New York Assembly

The hilarity of it all is that these putzes were decrying the inherent wrongness of boycotts ... and sought to deal with that horrible injustice by ... (wait for it) ... implementing their own unconstitutional boycott ...

 

[davekc]

Well, it is New York. Kinda like the IRS trying to silence the Tea Party.

 

[RLENT]

Well, it is New York. Kinda like the IRS trying to silence the Tea Party.

Yup ... just another illustration of how someone else want to use the power of government to reduce other peoples freedom ...

Left ... Right ... makes no difference ... it's a disease that is no respecter of political ideology.

 

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Two individuals on opposite sides of the BDS question have come out condenming and denouncing the unconstitutional efforts of the authoritarian anti-free speech thugs in Albany and Annapolis:

Open letter criticizes anti-boycott bills as threat to public debate

Alex Kane on February 4, 2014

Corey Robin and Henry Farrell are two scholars who have opposing views on the academic boycott of Israel. But when it comes to the anti-boycott bills being debated in the New York legislature, which would cut off state aid to academic groups that support the boycott, they’re united in opposition.

Robin, a political science professor at Brooklyn College, and Farrell, a political science professor at George Washington University, have issued an open letter criticizing the New York bill–and its counterpart in Maryland–as threatening “the ability of scholars and scholarly associations to say controversial things in public debate.” The letter was published on the Crooked Timber blog.

The two academics are encouraging other professors to sign their open letter at the comments section on their post here.

Here’s an excerpt:

(Article continues at link below)

Open letter criticizes anti-boycott bills as threat to public debate

 

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And the Editorial Board of the NY Times weighs in as well, advising lawmakers to vote the bill down:

A Chill on Speech - NYTimes.com

 

[RLENT]

Looks like the NY anti-constitution, anti-free speech bill is real popular with the terror crowd ... where they get elected to the NY State Assembly:

The Former Terror Suspect Leading the Attack on the Brooklyn College BDS Panel

State Assemblyman Dov Hikind was deeply involved in the Jewish Defense League, which the FBI listed as a “violent extremist Jewish organization.” Other officials should be questioning him, not the college.

Max Blumenthal
February 6, 2013

Brooklyn assemblyman Dov Hikind in 2012. (AP Photo/ Louis Lanzano)​

 
When Brooklyn College’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine announced it would be hosting a forum promoting the BDS movement, or the Palestinian call to boycott, sanction and divest from the state of Israel, and would be doing so with sponsorship from the school’s political science department, a who’s who of top New York Democrats snapped into action. In a strongly worded letter to Brooklyn College president Karen Gould, the self-described “progressives” demanded that the political science department withdraw its sponsorship of an event they cast as unacceptable. The signers included Representatives Jerrold Nadler, Nydia Velasquez and Hakeem Jeffries, as well as the progressive councilman Brad Lander and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is a front-runner in the race to be New York City’s next mayor.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg—a committed Zionist who has spoken in favor of Israeli military assaults on the Gaza Strip—reacted strongly against the letter. “If you want to go to a university where the government decides what kind of subjects are fit for discussion, I suggest you apply to a school in North Korea,” Bloomberg remarked. Then, on February 6, most of the apparently humbled Democrats who lent their names to the letter retracted their demand for the Brooklyn College political science department to pull its sponsorship. Out of the letter’s nineteen original signers, seventeen withdrew their names, leaving only former city comptroller and mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson and State Assemblyman James Brennan as the outliers.

Thompson was, in fact, among the politicians who gathered on Brooklyn College’s campus on January 31 for a blustery press conference condemning Gould and the political science department for sponsoring the BDS panel. Among the indignant elected officials were major Democratic officials, including Assemblymembers Steve Cymbrowitz and Rhoda Jacobs, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, who dispatched aides from his office to the anti-BDS press conference.

Before a crowd of camera people and reporters, Thompson railed, “This organization [the BDS movement] is one that expresses hate; is one that expresses opposition to Israel.” Next, New York City Councilman David Greenfield held forth until he was red in the face, calling BDS advocates members of a “hate-filled, anti-Semitic, pro-terrorist movement.”
“I wonder if the administration’s policies would have been different if the political science department had invited [former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard] David Duke. If David Duke were here I’m sure [Brooklyn College president Karen] Gould would be outside protesting as well.… We are talking about the potential of a second Holocaust.”

If the lawmakers had in fact gathered to take a principled stand against “hate” and “terrorism,” they chose a curious figure to stand behind. Indeed, the press conference was organized by a man who has been suspected by the FBI of involvement in several terrorist bombings and who was a top cadre in an organization currently identified by the FBI as a “violent extremist Jewish organization.” He is Dov Hikind, a Democratic State Asssemblyman who, despite his links to acts of terrorism and violence against racial minorities, has emerged as a political kingmaker in New York State politics. With his ability to deliver thousands of Russian and Orthodox Jewish votes to the candidates of his choice, often deciding hotly contested elections, Hikind had no trouble marshaling high-level opposition to Brooklyn College’s scheduled BDS event.

Now that the “progressive” New York Democrats have just walked back their letter to Brooklyn College’s Gould, Hikind has become by default the face of the organized opposition to the scheduled BDS forum. And none of the lawmakers who appeared with Hikind at the January 31 press conference have backed down in their demand to the college.
Hikind gained his earliest experience in the early 1970s in local New York politics as an acolyte of Meir Kahane, the fanatical rabbi-turned-Israeli Member of Knesset who called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and establishment of a theocratic state of “Judea” in the West Bank. “I’m proud of every single moment, let me make that very clear. Rabbi Kahane had a great influence on me,” Hikind declared in 2008. Under Kahane’s guidance, Hikind became active in the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a nationwide extremist network that attacked Arab-American and Soviet targets while rallying vigilante squads to “protect” working-class Jews living in African-American and Puerto Rican neighborhoods.

According to Robert I. Friedman, the journalist and author of the Kahane biography The False Prophet, Hikind operated a front group with the JDL bomb specialist Victor Vancier (now Chaim Ben Pesach, an online radio demagogue known for wild harangues against blacks, Arabs and leftist Jews). A self-described “crazy Jew,” Vancier openly contemplated killing the Palestinian intellectual (and longtime Nation contributor) Edward Said. “I think the man is a monster. And that means anything goes,” he said of Said. When Said’s Columbia University office was ransacked in 1986, Vancier hailed the unknown vandals as “Jewish patriots,” but refused to take credit. A year later, Vancier was sentenced to ten years in prison for carrying out numerous bombing attacks on innocent people, including a tear gas attack that injured twenty audience members at a Metropolitan Opera House performance of the Soviet Union’s Moiseyev Dance Company.

In their book on the plot to assassinate Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, journalists Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman reported that Hikind had been arraigned in a federal court in 1976 for tossing a smoke bomb into the Ugandan mission after the Israeli rescue of passengers kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists on an Air France jetliner in Entebbe, Uganda. “A decade later the FBI suspected him of involvement in planning a string of six bombings against Arab targets in NY, Massachusetts and California—in which one man was killed and seven were injured—but no evidence was found against him,” Karpin and Friedman wrote. Two JDL members who fled from FBI prosecution to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank had been involved with Hikind in a campaign to undermine the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, according to Karpin and Friedman.

The most significant figure the JDL was suspected of killing was Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) western regional director Alex Odeh. However, the FBI was never able to apprehend the likely perpetrators. After the murder of Odeh, more assaults followed on ADC offices, including a pipe bomb attack in Boston that critically wounded a member of a police bomb squad. In an interview with Robert I. Friedman, Hikind said he supported forming a group of “intelligent professionals” to assassinate Nazis and Arab-American supporters of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The JDL fizzled out in 2001, after leaders Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel were locked up for conspiring to blow up a Los Angeles–area mosque and assassinate Republican Representative Darrell Issa, who is of Lebanese descent. Following the assassination plot, the FBI listed the JDL as a “violent extremist Jewish organization,” placing its remaining members under constant surveillance. A JDL activist handing out Kahanist paraphernalia at the 2006 Israel Day Concert in New York’s Central Park told me that FBI monitoring had grown so intense the group was no longer able to operate in any coherent fashion. By this time, Hikind had established himself as one of the most influential Jewish politicians in New York, delivering pivotal support to candidates from former Senator Alfonse D’Amato to former Governor George Pataki.

(Article continues at link below)

The Former Terror Suspect Leading the Attack on the Brooklyn College BDS Panel | The Nation

 

[muttly]

An 'interesting' article about Mr Embargouti.


Barghouti at UCLA: A speaker who brings hate
by Roberta P. Seid, PhD
3 weeks ago



15

Omar Barghouti
Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is on the road again with his anti-Israel show and its pack of bigotry and lies. On Jan. 15, UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) hosted him at UCLA for his talk, “International Solidarity With Palestine: Towards a Global Intifada.” An apt title, although he piously insists his movement is nonviolent, he banged the drum for more bloodshed against Israeli Jews, for a fight to the finish that would undo the results of the 1948 war and be Zionism’s death knell. Nothing else would do.
For Barghouti, compromises that bring peace are unacceptable. As he said, if peace did not include the right of an allegedly 8 million diaspora Palestinians and Palestinian refugees living across the Middle East and elsewhere to “return” to Israel (a euphemism since 1949 for destroying Israel by turning Jews into a minority), peace would merely signify the “end of resistance to injustice,” and “contentment” with a “slave situation.”*
The event began with SJP laying out ground rules. No videotaping, no disruptive behavior, no loud noises, no standing up and blocking the view of the speakers. These are precisely the tactics that anti-Israel groups, led by SJP and the Muslim Student Union, have used to shout down or silence pro-Israel speakers and which in those cases they defended as “free speech.” It is unlikely that the organizer saw the irony.
A slick, seasoned propagandist who postures as a reasonable academic, Barghouti presented an alternate reality of falsehoods, perverse logic and scrambled principles worthy of the “big lies” perpetrated in 1930s Germany. He had clever, practiced answers to deflect most questions. The audience of approximately 120 people, mostly students who reflected UCLA’s diversity, could come away with only two clear messages: Israeli Jews and their supporters are racist and wantonly evil, and have deprived Palestinians of justice and of their humanity; and being anti-Israel aligns you with the romantic, heroic social justice movements of the past.
[Omar Barghouti at UCLA: No to BDS, no to occupation]
Indeed, Barghouti began by claiming that BDS follows the heroic legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and the anti-apartheid movement, which was now “Palestine’s South Africa moment.” He insisted his calls for boycotts against Israel were akin to the boycotts of apartheid South Africa, conveniently ignoring the fact that they are more akin to the Arab nations’ historic boycotts against Jews. Arab leaders called for boycotts against the Jewish community in pre-state Israel in the 1930s; the Arab League instituted a cultural, economic and diplomatic boycott in 1945 before Israel was even re-established, and have maintained it since, though they relaxed it minimally in the 1990s.
Much of his litany of false accusations he’d presented before, cherry-picking anomalous examples or making up “facts,” such as that Israel steals Palestinian water (it*gives*Palestinians 30 percent more Israeli water than it even agreed to give in the Oslo Accords), and that checkpoints are choking Palestinians (B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group very sympathetic to the Palestinians, reports there has been free movement in the West Bank for the past few years and the Israeli government reports that only nine checkpoints remain, which are manned only during terrorist alerts). He likes inventing terms to make his accusations seem more sinister. Absurdly claiming Israel is systematically destroying Palestinian education, he accused it of “scholasticide” and omitted the fact that he himself attended graduate school at Tel Aviv University. He praised the American Studies Association’s vote for an academic boycott of Israel, claiming it showed BDS was succeeding, despite the fact that the most prestigious American academic associations and more than 200 major universities unequivocally condemned the resolution as an assault on academic freedom and an unfair singling out of Israel.
ADVERTISEMENT

But Barghouti*didn’t stop there.*
He hurled blood libels. Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian children “for sport.” Indeed, they “provoke” the children, “entice them like mice, and then shoot them” for no reason. Often, it is just because the soldiers are “bored.”
He justified terrorism against Israelis, defending the Palestinians’ right to “resistance by any means, including armed resistance.” When he insisted that the only way to end terrorism was to end the “root cause” — that is Israel’s alleged oppression of Palestinians — the audience erupted into finger snapping, the way college audiences show approval.
He shamelessly told lies. When asked how Israel could be called an apartheid state, given the prominent positions of Israeli Arabs in government and the judiciary, he snapped back that every evil system has its collaborators. He claimed there were even Jews in the Nazi government.
He declared that many large Jewish communities don’t accept a Jewish state and cited a Satmar rabbi for proof. When UCLA Hillel Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller interrupted to protest that the Satmars are only a fringe group that doesn’t represent the vast Jewish community, the organizer reprimanded him and threatened to have him removed. The rabbi stormed out, declaring, “This is anti-Semitic!”
Barghouti repeatedly denied that Jews are one of the indigenous peoples of the region. When an Israeli stood up and said he is a 10th-generation Israeli and indigenous, Barghouti scoffed. “You aren’t indigenous just because you say you are.” He allowed that colonialists could be indigenized but only if they melded and intermarried with the existing society, not if they sought to disenfranchise the real indigenous peoples. The Boers, he explained, described themselves as an indigenous people when they fought British colonialism.*
He denied that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination. They are not a people, he declaimed, and the United Nations’ principle of the right to self-determination applies only to colonized people who want to acquire their rights. While he insisted that Palestinians must have “the right to have rights,” he denied that the Jewish people had any collective rights.
He claimed that Israel’s fears about terrorism and potential massacres if there were a one-state solution are merely “projections” of what Israelis really want to do to Palestinians. Indeed, according to Barghouti, Israel’s self-defense measures are “routine terrorism.”
When asked what he is doing to bring Hamas, the popular Palestinian fundamentalist movement that oppresses women and minorities and wants to establish a theocracy, to share his supposedly progressive vision, he sidestepped the question. He said BDS can’t deal with every social rights issue. The anti-apartheid movement couldn’t deal with social and economic issues until it succeeded. Similarly, first the occupation must end, then these problems can be addressed. Meanwhile, Hamas violence and its violent ideology are excusable and even justifiable in Barghouti’s worldview.
I have often wondered what Jews or decent people could have done to push back against the anti-Semitic propaganda of 1930s Germany. I don’t know. But I do know that Omar Barghouti follows in that tradition of the “big lies,” the dehumanization of Israelis and incitement that would lead others to justify or excuse those who murder Israeli Jews. Historically, Jewish blood has been cheap too many times. It is critical that people
of good will mobilize to protest and discredit the lies, educate the public, and re-educate the students who have been misled by the heady blend of bigotry, idealism and furious*outrage that animates extremists like Barghouti.
Roberta P. Seid, PhD, is Research/Education Director of
StandWithUs

Omar Barghouti at UCLA: A speaker who brings hate | Opinion | Jewish Journal.

 

[RLENT]

An 'interesting' article about Mr Embargouti.

Oh yes ... it is indeed an "interesting" article alright ... perhaps not so much about Mr. Barghouti, but for what it says about the writer herself ...

Barghouti at UCLA: A speaker who brings hate
by Roberta P. Seid, PhD
3 weeks ago

Perhaps everyone should examine Mr. Barghouti's actual remarks ... rather than relying on the biased characterizations of a fanatical Zionist like Ms. Seid.

To that end, here is the YouTube of Mr. Barghouti @ UCLA ... and people can judge for themselves - by comparing it to the article that Muffy offers - who it is that actually has that "hate" thing going on. The video of Barghouti speaking starts @ 19:53 and ends @ 47:40 - of course anyone can move the current time marker and watch the entire thing, which includes some comments by Robin Kelly that precedes Mr. Barghouti's remarks:

See for yourself if you think he sounds like some fanatical hater ...

 

[RLENT]

Hot off the presses (within the last couple of hours):

Revealed: Right-wing group StandWithUs’ strategy to combat Israel Apartheid Week

Alex Kane on February 6, 2014

(Photo: Facebook.com/StandWithUs)​

They have grants of $200 to dish out, Israeli soldiers to promote and events to suggest, like a “Hummus not Hamas” party. StandWithUs, the right-wing pro-Israel group, is gearing up to combat the annual “Israel Apartheid Week,” when college campuses host speakers and put on events highlighting Israeli violations of human rights.

A document Mondoweiss obtained reveals details of the strategy StandWithUs, which works closely with the Israeli government, plans to employ to fight back against “Israel Apartheid Week” (IAW). In addition to giving out money and suggesting events, StandWithUs is also concerned about how Israel’s treatment of African migrants will be portrayed by Palestine solidarity groups on campus, and how IAW plans to promote the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

In an e-mail I received addressed to “Israel Advocates,” Lihi Benisty, the New England Campus Coordinator for StandWithUs, encourages recipients to “go through” the attached document, which details the “many resources for you that StandWithUs has to offer.”

“This is a confidential document, so please do not distribute it,” writes Benisty. “If you think this could help another student leader or Hillel staff, please put me in touch with them and I’ll be happy to share it.”

Attached to Benisty’s e-mail is a PDF document (read the whole thing below) authored by Brett Cohen, the national campus program director for the group.

“Israel Apartheid Week will be taking place from February 24th to March 2nd this year and may be coming to your campus. IAW is celebrating their tenth anniversary and recent BDS ‘victories’ at academic conferences, so if the campaign is coming to your campus, don’t be surprised to see a larger IAW effort this year than in years past,” the document says.

StandWithUs suggestions for events to combat IAW include running an “I Heart Israel Campaign” and “hosting fun events” like a “Buy Israeli Goods” action day. And if students take video footage of buying a bunch of Israeli goods, StandWithUs wants to help them edit it–and make it go viral. The group also recommends “writing op-eds to your school paper, which StandWithUs can help you write and/or edit for publication.”

One part of the StandWithUs document focuses on African refugees in Israel. ”A hot issue right now, for example, is the African refugee issue in Israel,” the group states. ”SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] is using this issue to make Israel look awful, but Israel was the only country in the region to take in people fleeing genocide in Sudan, while Egypt was shooting at them while trying to get to freedom in Israel. Now that there is relative peace in their home countries, Israel would like to send them back, but many want to stay in Israel for economic opportunity.”

There’s also a section where the right-wing group shows pro-Israel organizations the money. In addition to the $200 in “microgrants” it offers to combat IAW, StandWithUs also offers “higher levels of funding for special circumstances, so make sure to keep open lines of communication with your campus coordinator and let them know what you are planning.”

Over half of the money StandWithUs receives from donors goes to programming on college campuses, the Jewish Daily Forward’s Nathan Guttman reported in 2011. And as the journalist Eli Clifton reported for Inter Press Service in 2009, the group’s donations come from “a web of funders who support organisations that have been accused of anti-Muslim propaganda and encouraging a militant Israeli and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.”

(Article - including "confidential" document from StandWithUS - continues at link below)

Revealed: Right-wing group StandWithUs' strategy to combat Israel Apartheid Week

 

[RLENT]

In response to the smear piece by Ms. Seid of Omar Barghouti and the BDS Movement that Muttly posted, here's a statement from Student For Justice In Palestine, UCLA Chapter.

And to really expose the lies, mischaracterizations, and outright distortions in Ms. Seid's hit piece, it includes a link to the audio of the entire Q & A session ... so that folks can listen and hear for themselves and then judge veracity and character of Ms. Seid and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller ... and the level to which they are willing sink in their fanatical support of Zionism and Israel (Note: the video referenced in the piece below I have already posted above):

SETTING THE RECORD: STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE AT UCLA REJECT MISREPRESENTATIONS OF RECENT EVENT AND PROVIDE AUDIO-VIDEO RECORDING TO PROVE IT

01/28/2014

In a recent opinion piece written about a Students for Justice in Palestine-organized panel at UCLA (15 January 2014), Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller misleads readers about the nature of the event and comments made by one of the two featured speakers (Mr. Omar Barghouti). Therein, Rabbi Seidler-Feller charges Barghouti with being anti-Semitic and advocating discrimination.

We write today to categorically reject such accusations. They are designed to do nothing but undermine the integrity and transparency with which SJP has conducted itself and its events. In this spirit, we provide here the audio-video recordings of the presentations and discussion that followed, wherein observers will note that the nature of the event as a whole and the comments of the organizers and speakers do not match the unsubstantiated claims made by Rabbi Seidler-Feller. In particular, regarding Rabbi Seidler-Feller's claim that Mr. Barghouti denied Jewish peoplehood and self-determination, a listener will note that in response to a question about that very issue, Mr. Barghouti replied that “as a Palestinian, whether there is a Jewish people that deserves self-determination or not is not up to me to decide, but certainly they have no right to colonize us and consider that self-determination.” Thus, it is clear that Mr. Barghouti did not deny Jewish peoplehood or self-determination; he merely reiterated that Jewish peoplehood and self-determination do not license denying the human rights of other people. It is impossible to characterize his remarks in any other way.

Link to audio from Q and A period that followed.
​

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, which is an organization comprised of a diverse array of students (including but not limited to Palestinians, non-Palestinians, Jewish Americans, and Jewish Israelis) stands firm in its opposition to all forms of discrimination and bigotry, whether it manifests itself in the displacement and disenfranchisement of the Palestinian people, anti-Semitism, or any other form of bigotry. We also reaffirm our commitment to equality between all people that live in the area known as historic Palestine, irrespective of whether it is divided into one, two, or more states. Unfortunately, not a single comment by Rabbi Seidler-Feller in his piece, his questions, or his outburst, showed any similar commitment on his part.

We maintain that the issue at hand is that our tuition and university funds are currently invested in several companies that profit from, enable, and thus prolong Israeli policies that systematically displace, discriminate against, and do violence towards the Palestinian people. As members of the UCLA community, we insist that our university discontinue these investments, and put the university's funds in companies that uphold, rather than denigrate, human rights. Such demands are not anti-Semitic, as they are rooted in a fundamental commitment to equality between Jews and non-Jews currently living under Israeli rule or displaced by it. We continue to pursue our anti-racist, anti-oppression, and pro-human rights agenda, and we invite all members of the UCLA community to join us.

Setting the Record: Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA Reject Misrepresentations of Recent Event and Provide Audio-Video Recording to Prove It - Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA

FWIW: The fanatical Zionists really, really do not want people to hear the message, and the references to historical facts, contained in the Barghouti's talk or addressed in the above Q & A ... it drives them nearly bonkers ... because they know, as Malcolm X rightly stated:

"The oppressed have truth on their side ..."

It's why the fanatical Zionists resort to lies, mischaracterizations, outright distortions, and character assassination ... it's the only thing they have got ...

 

[RLENT]

Muttly,

I have several questions for you ... which I suspect you will avoid answering or addressing:

1. Did you actually watch/listen to Mr. Barghouti's presentation before you sought out and posted the false smear piece, which was full of lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions ?

2. If you did, how could you in good conscience post such a piece, when it is obviously contradicted by the factual record contained in the video itself, and the audio of the follow-up Q & A ?

3. If you didn't watch Barghouti's original presentation, or listen to the follow-up Q & A, how does that reflect on your critical thinking skills and gullibility ?

4. Finally, if you did knowingly post something which you knew to contain lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions, how do you think that posting such crapola reflects on your own character, personal integrity, and morals ?

 

[RLENT]

Deranged, fanatical rightwing Jewish Israeli ultra-nationalists (illegal settlers in the Occupied Territories) in white hoods attack Israeli human rights activists ... all while Israeli soldiers look on and do nothing ...

Article by Mairav Zonszein, published in 972 Mag, dateline tomorrow:

WATCH: Settlers assault Israeli in West Bank, tell soldiers to shoot

On Saturday morning, Israeli Ta'ayush activists accompanied Palestinian residents of the village of Shweika in the South Hebron Hills to their grazing and farm lands in a valley near the illegal Eshtamoa outpost. According to Guy, a veteran activist and documenter, settlers and Israeli soldiers have been obstructing or preventing access to the land in recent weeks, despite the fact that Israeli authorities recognize the valley as private Palestinian land and have restricted any Israelis from entering it.

Just before 11 a.m., 10-15 settlers came down from the outpost into the valley most of them with their faces covered to avoid identification and began throwing stones, some of them using slings. As can be seen in several videos below, three of the settlers violently assaulted one activist, with one of the settlers using a club. Watch the second video to the very end: You can see a soldier slowly making his way up to the settlers who run off after the attack. He did not try and stop them, does not run after them, and in fact pats one on the shoulder in a friendly, not disciplinary manner. This kind of dynamic not only makes the double standard in treatment of Palestinians clear, but shows that it is in fact the settlers who run the show in these parts.

The activist was badly bruised on his arms, legs and back. According to Guy, soldiers in the area looked on and did nothing to prevent it, nor did they detain the settlers or demand to see their faces and identify them. Guy, along with the victim and another activist, went to the Kiryat Arba police station to file a complaint. The police said the incident will be investigated.

(Article - which includes 3 video clips - continues at link below)

WATCH: Settlers assault Israeli in West Bank, tell soldiers to shoot | +972 Magazine

Yup ... the "state" of Israel has just got to have that lebensraum ... after all it's for the "chosen" ...

Certainly no parallels there with anything in history ...

 

[RLENT]

Muttly,

I have several questions for you ... which I suspect you will avoid answering or addressing:

1. Did you actually watch/listen to Mr. Barghouti's presentation before you sought out and posted the false smear piece, which was full of lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions ?

2. If you did, how could you in good conscience post such a piece, when it is obviously contradicted by the factual record contained in the video itself, and the audio of the follow-up Q & A ?

3. If you didn't watch Barghouti's original presentation, or listen to the follow-up Q & A, how does that reflect on your critical thinking skills and gullibility ?

4. Finally, if you did knowingly post something which you knew to contain lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions, how do you think that posting such crapola reflects on your own character, personal integrity, and morals ?

... crickets ...

 

[RLENT]

Ruh-roh ...

I'm sure this means we'll all treated to another installment of "Look ... it's another self-hating Jew" by the Ziobots ... and maybe a few appellations "Nazi" and "kapo" thrown in just for good measure ...

Pro-BDS Jewish-American: I’m on UN shortlist to replace Falk

By TOVAH LAZAROFF
02/12/2014 03:05

Jewish-American activist Phyllis Bennis says she may replace the United Nations Human Rights Council investigator, whose term is up.

PHYLLIS BENNIS Photo: INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES​

Jewish-American activist Phyllis Bennis, who supports theBoycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, has reported that she is on a shortlist to replace United Nations Human Rights Council investigator Richard Falk.

“I’m now on the shortlist of candidates to succeed my great colleague and friend Richard Falk as the next United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories,” Bennis said on Saturday, in an article she wrote for the Real News Network.

The official shortlist of three to five experts, culled from a longer pool of 10 candidates who applied for the position, is expected to be published by the UNHRC later this week.

A final decision will be announced on March 28th in Geneva, at the end of the UNHRC’s 25th session.

Falk, a Jewish professor emeritus at Princeton University, ends his six-year term as UNHRC special rapporteur this year.

He is known for his contentious comments on Israel and the Boston marathon bombing, and for his support of conspiracy theories about the September 11, 2001, attack on the US.

The US and Canada have in the past called for his dismissal.

In December, Falk told Russia’s English television news program RT that Israel had genocidal intentions toward the Palestinians.

“When you target a group, an ethnic group, and inflict this kind of punishment upon them, you are in effect nurturing a kind of criminal intention that is genocidal,” Falk said.

(Article continues at link below)

Pro-BDS Jewish-American: I'm on UN shortlist to replace Falk | JPost | Israel News

 

[RLENT]

In the UK's Parliment, House of Commons, one week ago today:

Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab): I once led a delegation of 60 parliamentarians from 13 European Parliaments to Gaza. I could no longer do that today because Gaza is practically inaccessible. The Israelis try to lay the responsibility on the Egyptians, but although the Egyptians’ closing of the tunnels has caused great hardship, it is the Israelis who have imposed the blockade and are the occupying power. The culpability of the Israelis was demonstrated in the report to the UN by Richard Goldstone following Operation Cast Lead. After his report, he was harassed by Jewish organisations. At the end of a meeting I had with him in New York, his wife said to me, “It is good to meet another self-hating Jew.”

Again and again, Israel seeks to justify the vile injustices that it imposes on the people of Gaza and the west bank on the grounds of the holocaust. Last week, we commemorated the holocaust; 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are being penalised with that as the justification. That is unacceptable.

The statistics are appalling. There is fresh water for a few hours every five days. Fishing boats are not allowed to go out—in any case, what is the point, because the waters are so filthy that no fish they catch can be eaten? The Israelis are victimising the children above all. Half the population of this country is under the voting age. What is being done to those children—the lack of nutrition—is damaging not only their bodies and brains; it will go on for generation after generation.

It is totally unacceptable that the Israelis should behave in such a way, but they do not care. Go to Tel Aviv, as I did not long ago, and watch them sitting complacently outside their pavement cafés. They do not give a **** about their fellow human beings perhaps half an hour away. The right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) quoted the Prime Minister as saying that Gaza is a prison camp. It is all very well for him to say that, as he did, in Turkey—he was visiting a Muslim country—but what is he doing about it? Nothing, nothing, nothing!

The time when we could condemn and think that that was enough has long passed. The Israelis do not care about condemnation. They are self-righteous and complacent. We must now take action against them. We must impose sanctions. If the spineless Obama will not do it, we must do it—even unilaterally. We must press the European community for it to be done. These people cannot be persuaded. We cannot appeal to their better nature when they do not have one. It is all very well saying, “Wicked, wicked Hamas.” Hamas is dreadful. I have met people from Hamas, but nothing it has done justifies punishing children, women and the sick as the Israelis are doing now. They must be stopped.

As has been pointed out, there is a time limit for what we are talking about. The idea that things can go on, while we wait for a two-state solution, is gone. Sooner or later, the Palestinians will say, “We are dying anyhow, so let us die for something.” Let us stop that: I do not want a war. I do not want violent action, but the action that the international community takes must be imposed, otherwise hell will break loose.

House of Commons Hansard Debates for 05 Feb 2014 (pt 0002)

In framing the above and providing some context, allow me to quote a commenter, "American", at Mondoweiss:

Sir Gerald is one of the very few heroic figures in British politics. His family suffered horribly during the Holocaust. After the Israelis’ Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in 2008/9 in which they slaughtered 1400, mostly civilians including hundreds of children, he told the House of Commons: “My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.”

He doesn’t mince words; he knows the Israeli regime for what it really is. “They’re not simply war criminals, they’re fools”. He calls Israel itself a “pariah state”.

In April 2002, during Israel’s controversial military operation codenamed Defensive Shield, Kaufman said in the Commons: “It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood.”

He also compared Hamas in Gaza to the Jewish resistance during World War II. “The spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians. The total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that ’500 of them were militants’. That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.”

As for Hamas, he describes them as “a deeply nasty organization, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.” He pointed out that the Irgun [infamously responsible for the bombing in 1946 of the King David Hotel, HQ of the British Mandate government, murdering 91, and the Deir Yassin massacre in 1948] were terrorists, and that “Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism”.

There’s an interesting footnote on the Wiki page which says: “In 2010, the Supreme Court of Israel rejected a petition by the newspaper Haaretz for the declassification of documents, reports and photographs concerning the Deir Yassin massacre. The court cited the possible damage to Israel’s foreign relations…” ...

Now, allow me to graciously cede the floor to the knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing Jeebus™ haters ... who I'm sure will be able to manage to lead everyone that cares to participate in a few rousing cheers of "self-hating Jew" and "Nazi" in honor of old Gerald ...

 

[RLENT]

Muttly,

I have several questions for you ... which I suspect you will avoid answering or addressing:

1. Did you actually watch/listen to Mr. Barghouti's presentation before you sought out and posted the false smear piece, which was full of lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions ?

2. If you did, how could you in good conscience post such a piece, when it is obviously contradicted by the factual record contained in the video itself, and the audio of the follow-up Q & A ?

3. If you didn't watch Barghouti's original presentation, or listen to the follow-up Q & A, how does that reflect on your critical thinking skills and gullibility ?

4. Finally, if you did knowingly post something which you knew to contain lies, mischaracterizations, and distortions, how do you think that posting such crapola reflects on your own character, personal integrity, and morals ?

... ahem ...

 

[RLENT]

No futbol for you ! (mebbe):

PA to ask FIFA to expel Israel

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH 02/12/2014 23:24

Chairman of Palestinian Football Association says Israel should be expelled for failing to abide by FIFA conventions.

The Palestinian Authority will ask the Federation Internationale de Football Association to expel Israel from the organization for failing to abide by its conventions, Jibril Rajoub, chairman of the Palestinian Football Association, announced Wednesday.

Rajoub, a senior Fatah official and former Palestinian Authority security commander, said that the Palestinians won’t accept any compromises or half solutions to solve the problems facing Palestinian athletes and sports.

“We will demand the expulsion of Israel from FIFA and the International Olympics Committee,” Rajoub told reporters in Ramallah.

(Article continues at link below)

PA to ask FIFA to expel Israel | JPost | Israel News

 

[RLENT]

Ever the epitome of courtesy and politeness, fanatical Zionists manage to crap all over a foreign dignitary - one who is (or maybe "was" at this point) staunchly anti-BDS and anti-sanctions against Israel - by publicly heckling him and walking out during his address to the Israeli Knesset:

Bennett demands European Parliament chief apologize: 'I won't accept lies in German' | JPost | Israel News

Knesset walkout during EU Parliament chief's speech is a new low for Israel - Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz

#perpetualvictimhoodwhichknowsnobounds

 

[RLENT]

Blowback:

European parliament chief slams Israeli critics in Knesset as 'extremists'

Martin Schulz: My speech was pro-Israel; John Kerry was similarly attacked.

By Ofer Aderet | Feb. 13, 2014 | 12:30 PM

European Parliament President Martin Schulz on Thursday denounced the Israeli lawmakers who criticized his speech in the Knesset a day earlier as "extremists."

"I presented to the Knesset the position of the European parliament," Schulz told the German daily Die Welt, after his question regarding limits to Palestinian water consumption triggered a walkout by the right-wing party Habayit Hayehudi.

"Naturally, I cannot only say things that would be pleasant to everyone's ears. I must also present the controversial side of the things."

In a speech delivered in his native German to Israeli lawmakers on Wednesday, Schulz said, "A Palestinian youth asked me why an Israeli can use 70 cubic liters of water and a Palestinian just 17. I haven't checked the data. I'm asking you if this is correct."

After the walkout, Habayit Hayehudi Chairman Naftali Bennett demanded an apology from Schulz for his "lies."

(Article continues at link below)

European parliament chief slams Israeli critics in Knesset as 'extremists' - Diplomacy and Defense Israel News | Haaretz