Campaigns

NOVANEWS by Philip Weiss Apparently the vote took place at 4 in the morning after an endless meeting. Helena Cobban: Alan Dershowitz, eat your heart out, student senate at U.C. Berkeley voted 16-4 last night to "urge the University of California to divest from companies who have supplied the state of Israel with materials used in alleged war crimes." Related posts: Berkeley student senate divestment resolution 30 student occupations in UK are having an effect BDS landmark: First college in the US votes to divest from Israeli Occupation Amid Tears, Brandeis Student Senate Declines to Congratulate Israel at 60 Hampshire tries to downplay divestment, but says investing in Israeli occupation is not ’socially responsible’

NOVANEWS A victory for the anti-occupation and pro justice and peace party in Berkeley, California last night. Dorothy ----- Original Message ----- From: carol sanders To: Dorothy Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2010 10:13 PM Subject: UCB DIVESTMENT BILL PASSES! Dear Dorothy,   The UCB Senate Divestment Bill passed!  Below is the Student Press Release.  In my 5-minute presentation, I referred to New Profile endorsement and their association with the Shministm (whom many of the students know of through their recent appearance at a UCB event), and the audience applauded.  I then gave each of the 20 student senators a copy of your statement.    Mo also spoke, and was warmly applauded.   An interesting and heartening distinction was how diverse the people speaking in favor of the bill were -...

NOVANEWS « Bin Laden will never receive his full rights Why isn’t the corporate media using blogging far more? » AIPAC is not an independent, pro-Israel body Published on 19 March 2010 in Israel. 6 Comments Tags: Israel lobby, Judaism, United States, Zionism.  Print This Post Not before time: The US Department of Justice has been formally asked to begin regulating the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as the foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

NOVANEWS I received several different queries from friends about my recent post on academic boycott. Both Adam Horowitz and Sami Hermez, who has an excellent article about the difference between boycott and censorship at the Electronic Intifada, pointed out that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) seeks only to boycott institutions, not individuals. Consequently, I was asked to clarify my position on this issue. My purpose in writing that essay was to describe the comprehensive moral framework for academic boycott. I feel strongly that our strategic decisions ought to be informed by purist principles. At the same time, our strategies are restricted by pragmatic considerations. The PACBI campaign is the tangible product of principles constraine...

NOVANEWS European Court of Justice ruling blow for Settlement Goods From little acorns, oak trees grow. Tony Greenstein Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) welcomes landmark EU court ruling, calls for intensifying grassroots BDS Palestine- 15 March: The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign National Committee (BNC) welcomes the long overdue ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that Israeli products originating from Israel's colonial settlements built on Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) do not qualify for preferential customs treatment under the EC-Israel trade agreement [1]. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention, all Israeli colonies are illegal and constitute war crimes. The BNC calls on all 27 member states of the European Union to implement the cour...

NOVANEWS Speaking tour: Jeff Halper & Ghada Karmi 15 – 20 March 2010 "Fighting Israeli Apartheid: the case for Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions" 16 March - Birmingham 1 pm - Lecture Theatre A, ground floor, Watson building, Edgbaston Campus, Birmingham University Chair: Dr. William Edmondson, President, BUCU (This is an extra meeting - it is open to all staff and students at the University of Birmingham and to UCU members from other branches). 7:30pm – Birmingham Unite Offices, Broad Street, Birmingham Local sponsors: West Midlands PSC, Birmingham-Ramallah Twinning Initiative, Midlands Palestine Community Association, Friends of Sabeel - UK Contact: Martin Sullivan, pscwm@yahoo.co.uk

NOVANEWS Add this development to what Mel Frykberg at Inter Press Service calls Israel’s growing “public relations nightmare”: renewed attention to the near-fatal shooting of American activist Tristan Anderson.  Just as the media spotlight is glaring down on Israel because of a civil trial in the killing of American peace activist Rachel Corrie comes a decision by Israel’s Justice Ministry to reinvestigate the shooting of Anderson. Anderson has been in critical condition in a Tel Aviv hospital for a year since he was struck in the head by a high-velocity tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops while he was demonstrating against the illegal separation wall in the West Bank village of Ni’lin. An activist with the International Solidarity Movement, Anderson suffered life-threatening injuri...

NOVANEWS Last June, in "Which Side Are You On?" I wrote, "There's an old labor song by Florence Reece called 'Which Side Are You On?' Sometimes self-styled Palestinian solidarity activists bring this tune to mind." Today brings the sad news that the organizers of the recently concluded Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival have violated both the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott against Israel and the 2005 Palestinian call for "broad boycotts ... against Israel" by showing an Israeli film, Ajami. In an Electronic Intifada interview with Jimmy Johnson entitled "Education and resistance at the Ann Arbor Palestine film fest" one of the festival's organizers, Hena Ashraf, is quoted characterizing the festival as combining her interest in film and Palestine solidarity activism. Ashraf says,...

NOVANEWS  From International Solidarity Movement palreports@gmail.com Subject:  Autopsy doctor admits to violating court order inRachel Corrie autopsy For Immediate Release: [Download this press release: http://rachelcorriefoundation.org/download/14] Today 14 March 2010 the Haifa District Court saw the second full day of testimony in the civil lawsuit filed by Rachel Corrie’s family against the State of Israel for her unlawful killing in Rafah, Gaza. Rachel Corrie, an American human rights defender from Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death on March 16, 2003 by a Caterpillar D9R bulldozer. She had been nonviolently demonstrating against Palestinian home demolitions with fellow members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a Palestinian-led movement committed to resisting the ...

NOVANEWS Other peace and justice groups have asked for action. For example Palestine Action Group wrote to their supporters: This is a call for action on behalf of our friend, Dr Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, whom we know as a tireless advocate for human rights and justice. Mazin is a Palestinian American citizen who lived in the US for 29 years before returning to Palestine nearly two years ago. He received his higher education in the US and served as a faculty member in schools of medicine at the Universities of Tennessee, Duke and Yale. He has also written several books, the most recent of which is Hope and Empowerment: A History of Popular Resistance in Palestine. Israel receives billions of our tax money, and carries out its targeting of nonviolent peace activists, like Mazin, with the tacit com...