Campaigns

NOVANEWS The fate of the eleven students arrested for heckling Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., during a speech on U.S.-Israel relations given on February 8th at the University of California Irvine (UCI), continues to hang in the balance as calls for either harsh action or clemency continue. The students face possible suspension or expulsion. Chancellor Michael Drake justifies such a response by arguing that the heckling students undermined freedom of speech, which is “among the most fundamental, and among the most cherished of the bedrock values our nation is built upon” . Political heckling has a long and somewhat illustrious history; sometimes a duel of wit and sometimes an expression of outrage. It has ranged from the polite and silent (e.g. when a group of woman prote...

NOVANEWS So, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the Zionist lobby AIPAC faithful that (illegal) settlements in East Jerusalem are staying and expanding: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told AIPAC activists that “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” and also depicted the Palestinian Authority as not taking steps for peace. During the comments on Jerusalem, the 8,000 American Israel Public Affairs Committee activists packed into the Washington Convention Center burst into lengthy cheers Monday evening, underscoring how the U.S.-Israel tensions over Israeli building in the eastern part of the city have yet to subside. In her own address Monday morning to the annual policy conference, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, described building in eastern Jerusalem...

NOVANEWS So, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the Zionist lobby AIPAC faithful that (illegal) settlements in East Jerusalem are staying and expanding: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told AIPAC activists that “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” and also depicted the Palestinian Authority as not taking steps for peace. During the comments on Jerusalem, the 8,000 American Israel Public Affairs Committee activists packed into the Washington Convention Center burst into lengthy cheers Monday evening, underscoring how the U.S.-Israel tensions over Israeli building in the eastern part of the city have yet to subside. In her own address Monday morning to the annual policy conference, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, described building in eastern Jerusalem...

NOVANEWS BECTU members received the following email from their union in February: “I am writing to let you know about EXPOSE, a new campaign of media workers and students - journalists, technicians, designers, musicians and actors - that is dedicated to exposing the British National Party as the racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, women-haters and fascists that they are. “BECTU are working with our colleagues from the NUJ to support the launch of ‘EXPOSE’, a campaigning group set up to provide well-researched information and background briefings for reporters, news editors and others in our industry in order to challenge the BNP’s statements and spokespersons, and the racism and criminality at the heart of their organisation.” Below is how one member responded: It’s not the BNP, but the Lab...

NOVANEWS Posted on March 19 2010 by Cecilie Surasky under BDS , Educational Institutions , Media. As Republican pollster (and Israeli Hasbara guru) Frank Luntz knows all too well, the relationship between reality and language is increasingly tenuous. Words are how he carefully works to shape political outcomes. But it’s also true that the rather wide space between reality and language, especially on the issue of Israel-Palestine, is where the blogosphere can make a real difference. Here are three examples of deliberate and not so deliberate blurring of messages and how people and peace groups are routinely “extremized”, as Naomi Klein says. CASE 1) Though I have some real disagreements with Moshe Yaroni’s post in Zeek on the Reut Institute analysis (Yaroni didn’t have the whole report at t...

NOVANEWS Omar Barghouti got a “No thank you” response from the San Francisco area Jewish Community Relations Council head Rabbi Doug Kahn, the key author of recent McCarthyite Federation funding guidelines, but he did finally get his BDS debate– with well-known peacenik Rabbi Arthur Waskow–on Democracy Now. Meanwhile, here’s Barghouti’s Open Letter from Kabobfest: by Omar Barghouti, a leader of the international movement to boycott Israel Open Letter to Rabbi Doug Kahn Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council It has recently come to my attention that pending the advice of a working group of which you were a member, the Jewish Community Federation has chosen to itself boycott groups advocating a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) program targeting Israel. As one o...

NOVANEWS US Department of Justice Asked to Regulate AIPAC as a Foreign Agent of the Zionist regime in 'Israel'. WASHINGTON, PRNewswire — The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Zionist Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Zio-Nazi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A 392 page legal filing presented by a four person IRmep delegation in a two hour meeting with top officials of the Internal Security Section substantiated the following case for AIPAC’s immediate registration: AIPAC is a spinoff of an organization already ordered by the DOJ to register as an Zionist's foreign agent. In November of 1962 the American Zionist Council was ordered by the Attorney General to begin filing disclosures as an Zionist foreign agent under the ...

NOVANEWS Peacemaker Hillary Clinton Speaks to AIPAC says “Israeli Building Hurts Peace” Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke to AIPAC. She made bold statements and outlined a path to success for both the Palestinians and Israel. peace-maker-clinton New Israeli construction on land claimed by the Palestinians threatens peace efforts and undermines America’s ability to help end the Arab-Israeli conflict, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told a leading Jewish organization Monday. Zionist’s recent announcement of new housing in east Jerusalem exposed differences between the U.S. and the Jewish state that others could exploit, Clinton said. Her remarks to the American Zionist Public Affairs Committee...

NOVANEWS Walter Scott wrote, ‘Oh! what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!’ Now the law on charities is complicated but essentially they must be for the public benefit, which is why Britain’s public schools are complaining that they have to provide too much for the local yokels. There are also a number of charitable objectives, which in recent years have been expanded – things like the promotion of religion, relief of poverty and distressed, giving alms to soldiers etc. As long as you are not a political campaign then, in theory, you should be able to register as a charity with the Charity Commission. The problem for the CST is that it combines at least two different roles. On the one hand it compiles statistics on anti-semitic incidents, and in the process conflates...

NOVANEWS AIPAC punked by false press release saying it pressures Israel on settlements by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz Screen shot of C-Span announcing the fake news. Is J Street finally getting traction? Brilliant fake AIPAC press release showed up on Al Jazeera and all over CSPAN during Hillary’s speech to the policy conference. We bought it! This just drives the wedge between AIPAC and J Street and gives AIPAC a stinko headline when it’s trying to affirm the special relationship and attack Iran. At TPM, Justin Elliott says settlements aren’t even on AIPAC’s issues page. Update: Medea Benjamin has contacted us to let us know that Code Pink sent out the release. Here is the announcement the fooled nearly everyone (including us!): PR_AIPAC