Tag Archives: Israel

U.S. Academic Boycott Call

Posted on by
1

USACBI Mission Statement (excerpts)
http://usacbi.wordpress.com/

Responding to the call of Palestinian civil society to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement against Israel, we are a US campaign focused specifically on a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions, as delineated by PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel). – see http://www.pacbi.org/

PACBI and the entire movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (representing the overwhelming majority among Palestinian civil society parties, unions, networks and organizations) emphasize fundamental Palestinian rights, sanctioned by international law and universal human rights principles that ought to be respected by Israel to end the boycott. We struggle to achieve an end to Israel’s three-tiered injustice and oppression: 1) occupation and colonization in the 1967-occupied Palestinian territory; 2) denial of the refugees’ rights, paramount among which is their right to return to their homes of origin, as per UN General Assembly Resolution 194; and 3) the system of racial discrimination, or apartheid, to which Palestinian (all non-Jewish) citizens of Israel are subjected to.

The principles guiding the PACBI campaign and the three goals outlined above are also points of unity for the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI). We believe it is time to take a public, principled stance in support of equality, self-determination, human rights (including the right to education), and true democracy, especially in light of the censorship and silencing of the Palestine question in US universities, as well as in US society at large. There can be no academic freedom in Israel/Palestine unless all academics are free and all students are free to pursue their academic desires.

We are also responding to the Open Letter to International Academic Institutions from the Right to Education campaign at Birzeit University in Palestine (January 17, 2009), calling on the international academic community, unions and students “to show support and solidarity with the people of Gaza by calling upon their respective governments to impose immediate boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel.” – see http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/

As academics working in the US, we wish to focus on campaigns in our universities and in institutions of higher education to advocate for compliance with the academic and cultural boycott, a movement that is growing internationally across all segments of global civil society.

This call for an academic and cultural boycott parallels the call in the non-academic world for divestment, boycott and sanctions by trade unions, churches, and other civil society organizations in countries such as the US, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Norway, the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and New Zealand.

As educators and scholars of conscience in the United States, we fully support this call. We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing scholasticide and to support the non-violent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions.[...]

Endorsers (so far)

1. Rabab Abdulhadi, San Francisco State University
2. Mohammed Abed, California State University, Los Angeles
3. Wahiba Abu-Ras, Adelphi University
4. Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Montclair State University
5. Lisa Albrecht, University of Minnesota
6. Hamid Algar, University of California, Berkeley
7. Naser Alsharif, Creighton University
8. Evelyn Alsultany, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
9. Floyd Anderson, State University of New York, Brockport
10. Ian Barnard, California State University, Northridge
11. Anis Bawarshi, University of Washington
12. Lincoln Bergman, University of California, Berkeley
13. Tithi Bhattacharya, Purdue University
14. Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota
15. Timothy Brennan, University of Minnesota
16. Steve Breyman, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
17. Robert Brooks, Cornell University
18. Anna Brown, Saint Peter’s College
19. Bill Buttrey, University of Southern California
20. Steve Cameron, North Iowa Area Community College
21. Scott Campbell, New York University
22. Rand Carter, Hamilton College
23. Piya Chatterjee, University of California, Riverside
24. Dennis Childs, University of California, San Diego
25. Bouthaina Shbib Dabaja, University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center
26. Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University
27. Lawrence Davidson, West Chester University
28. Nicholas De Genova, Columbia Univ
29. Lara Deeb, University of California Irvine
30. Alireza Doostdar, Harvard University
31. Eleanor Doumato, Brown University
32. Ronald Edwards, DePaul University
33. Nada Elia, Antioch University, Seattle
34. Nava EtShalom, poet, University of Michigan
35. James Faris, University of Connecticut
36. Grant Farred, Cornell University
37. Sasan Fayazmanesh, California State University, Fresno
38. James Fetzer, University of Minnesota, Duluth
39. Manzar Foorohar, California Polytechnic State University
40. Paul Foote, California State University, Fullerton
41. Robert Frager, Institute of Transpersonal Psychology
42. Cynthia Franklin, University of Hawaii
43. Keya Ganguly, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
44. Jess Ghannam, University of California, San Francisco
45. Bishnupriya Ghosh, University of California, Santa Barbara
46. Him Glover, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
47. Sherna Berger Gluck, California State University Long Beach
48. Avery Gordon, University of California, Santa Barbara
49. Marilyn Hacker, City University of New York
50. Christian Haesemeyer, University of California, Los Angeles
51. Elaine Hagopian, Simmons College
52. Sondra Hale, University of California, Los Angeles
53. Leila Hamdan, George Mason University
54. John Hartung, State University of New York, Brooklyn
55. Salah Hassan, Michigan State University
56. Frances Hasso, Oberlin College
57. Nicholas Heer, University of Washington, Seattle
58. Lyn Hejinian, University of California, Berkeley
59. Annie Higgins, Wayne State University
60. Chris Highley, Ohio State University
61. Jim Holstun, State University of New York, Buffalo
62. Sally Howell, University of Michigan, Dearborn
60. Mahmood Ibrahim, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
63. Ibrahim Imam, University of Louisville
64. Pranav Jani, Ohio State University
65. Amira Jarmakani, Georgia State University
66. Kenneth Johnson, Pennsylvania State University, Abington
67. Brian Johnston, Carnegie Mellon University
68. Pierre Joris, State University of New York, Albany
69. Mohja Kahf, University of Arkansas
70. Rhoda Kanaaneh, New York University
71. Tomis Kapitan, Northern Illinois University
72. Susan Katz, University of San Francisco
73. Kehaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan University
74. Assaf Kfoury, Boston University
75. Issam Khalidi, Independent Scholar
76. Kathleen Kinawy, University of Southern Maine
77. David Klein, California State University, Northridge
78. Yael Korin, University of California, Los Angeles
79. Dennis Kortheuer, California State University, Long Beach
80. Felix Salvador Kury, San Francisco State University
81. Mark Lance, Georgetown University
82. Werner Lange, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
83. Amanda Lashaw, University of California, Davis
84. David Lloyd, University of Southern California
85. Georgette Loup, University of New Orleans
86. Paul Lyons, University of Hawaii
87. Graham MacPhee, West Chester University
88. Shireen Mahdavi, University of Utah
89. Sunaina Maira, University of California, Davis
90. Harriet Malinowitz, Long Island University
91. Ahmad Malkawi, University of Kentucky
92. Khaled Mattawa, University of Michigan
93. Todd May, Clemson University
94. Ali Mazrui, State University of New York, Binghamton
95. Bryan McCann, University of Texas, Austin
96. Daniel McGowan, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
97. Jad Melki, University of Maryland
98. Martin Melkonian, Hofstra University
99. Mark Mendoza, Miami University, Ohio
100. Targol Mesbah, California Institute of Integral Studies
101. Ali Mili, New Jersey Institute of Technology
102. Jessica Morris, University of Louisville
103. Fouad Moughrabi, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
103. Aamir Mufti, University of California, Los Angeles
104. Bill Mullen, Purdue University
105. Donna Murdock, University of the South
106. Mara Naaman, Williams College
107. Marcy Newman, An Najah National University, Palestine
108. David O’Connell, Georgia State University
109. Judy Olson, California State University, Los Angeles, CFA-LA
110. Sirena Pellarolo, California State University, Northridge
111. David Naguib Pellow, University of Minnesota
112. James Petras, Binghamton University
113. Kavita Philip, University of California, Irvine
114. Julio Pino, Kent State University
115. Edie Pistolesi, California State University, Northridge
116. Deborah Poole, The Johns Hopkins University
117. Gautam Premnath, University of California, Berkeley
118. Jessica Quindel, Berkeley High School
118. Peter Rachleff, Macalester College
119. Aneil Rallin, Soka University of America
120. Junaid Rana, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
121. Adolph Reed, University of Pennsylvania
122. Steve Roddy, University of San Francisco
123. Ilia Rodriguez, University of New Mexico
124. Sonia Rosen, University of Pennsylvania
125. Suzanne Ross, United Federation of Teachers, Clinical Psychology
126. Marty Roth, University of Minnesota
127. Lori Rudolph, New Mexico Highlands University
128. Steven Salaita, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
129. Rakhshanda Saleem, Harvard Medical School
130. Basel Saleh, Radford University
131. George Salem, University of Southern California
132. Rosaura Sanchez, University of California, San Diego
133. Eleuterio Santiago-Diaz, University of New Mexico
134. Bhaskar Sarkar, University of California, Santa Barbara
135. Aseel Sawalha, Pace University
136. Simona Sawhney, University of Minnesota
137. Seleem Sayyar, Emory University
138. Robert Schaible, University of Southern Maine
139. James Scully, University of Connecticut
140. Evalyn Segal, San Diego State University
141. Anton Shammas, University of Michigan
142. Matthew Shenoda, Goddard College
143. Setsu Shigematsu, University of California, Riverside
144.Magid Shihade, University of California Davis
145. Snehal Shingavi, University of Mary Washington
146. Ella Shohat, New York University
147. Yumna Siddiqi, Middlebury College
148. Andor Skotnes, Sage College
149. Scott Sorrell, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
150. Ted Stolze, Cerritos College
151. Patricia Stuhr, Ohio State University
152. Kenneth Surin, Duke University
153. Simone Swan, The Adobe Alliance
154. Juan Carlos Vallejo, State University of New York
155. Stefano Varese, University of California, Davis
156. Dorothy Wang, Williams College
157. Richard Wark, University of Maryland
158. Brad Werner, University of California, San Diego
159. Jessica Winegar, Temple University
160. Mansour Zand, University of Nebraska, Omaha

Another War, Another Defeat

Posted on by
Reply

The Gaza offensive has succeeded in punishing the Palestinians but not in making Israel more secure.

By John J. Mearsheimer

But these are not the real goals of Operation Cast Lead. The actual purpose is connected to Israel’s long-term vision of how it intends to live with millions of Palestinians in its midst. It is part of a broader strategic goal: the creation of a “Greater Israel.” Specifically, Israel’s leaders remain determined to control all of what used to be known as Mandate Palestine, which includes Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians would have limited autonomy in a handful of disconnected and economically crippled enclaves, one of which is Gaza. Israel would control the borders around them, movement between them, the air above and the water below them….And if Israel were genuinely interested in creating a viable Palestinian state, it could have worked with the national unity government to implement a meaningful ceasefire and change Hamas’s thinking about a two-state solution. But Israel has a different agenda: it is determined to employ the Iron Wall strategy to get the Palestinians in Gaza to accept their fate as hapless subjects of a Greater Israel.

UK Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman On Gaza

Posted on by
Reply
YouTube Preview Image

Read transcript here.

Quote:

“My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. 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”.


Kurdish Jews Recall a Paradise Lost

Posted on by
Reply

Ariel Sabar, Kurdish-American journalist, recalls his father’s paradise:

It’s become popular, when talking about ongoing violence in U.S.-occupied Iraq, for officials in Washington and the media to paint the Iraqi people as savages who can’t help but keep killing each other.

In last Thursday’s Vice Presidential debate, Democrat Joe Biden said “the history of the last 700 years” showed the Iraqi people could never get along with each other.

But is that really true?

Read more here.

Obsession With Hate

Posted on by
Reply

Via MT Akbar

A nice website called Obsessionwithhate that rebuts the arguments of the propaganda film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” has come out in which both the pundits, their associations, racisms, xenophobia, and agenda are exposed clearly.

The rebuttal section is excellent

More prominent members behind the film (A dangerous obsession
By Ali Gharib and Eli Clifton. Asia Times Online, 26 September 2008):

The Clarion Fund is based at the same New York address as Aish Hatorah, a self-described “apolitical” group dedicated to educating Jews about their heritage. Its street address, as listed on the group’s website and a DVD mailer for the film, is a “virtual address” that goes to a post office box in New York City.

While initial press reports about the mass distribution focused on the Clarion Fund’s financing role, it was EMET that organized and oversaw the distribution, EMET’s spokesman and a former press officer for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Ari Morgenstern, told Inter Press Service.

EMET, according to a recent press release, is “a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to policy research and analysis on democracy and the Middle East.” According to filings made in compliance with the organization’s tax-exempt status, “The organization hosts seminars, debates and educational films featuring Middle East experts in order to educate policymakers and the public at large on the common threats facing Israel and the United States.”

Morgenstern said EMET was “partnered with the Clarion Fund” on what he called the “Obsession Project” which he identified as “an initiative of EMET”. He declined to name the project’s donors – a spokesman for the Clarion Fund, Gregory Ross, also refused to name the fund’s donors, whose identities remain a mystery.

Morgenstern also declined to reveal the cost of the DVD distribution, but did say, “It cost a great deal – it’s a multi-million-dollar effort.” Outside experts have estimated the cost of the operation at between US$15 million and $50 million.

Like hardline neo-conservatives, EMET opposes any land concessions to Palestinians and takes other hardline positions identified with Israel’s right-wing Likud Party and the ”Settler Lobby” there. EMET’s website says, “We regard ourselves as ‘intellectual revolutionaries’.”

Two weeks ago, EMET sponsored a seminar series on Capitol Hill for the controversial multi-billionaire casino and hotel magnate Sheldon Adelson, who is a major donor to right-wing Zionist organizations in the US, such as the far-right lobby group, Freedom’s Watch and the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC).

RJC efforts to persuade Jewish voters that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is aligned with radical anti-Israel forces in the Islamic world have drawn strong criticism from the mainstream Jewish press.

EMET’s board of advisers includes a list of familiar neo-conservative figures, as well as three former Israeli diplomats, including a former deputy chief of mission in Israel’s Washington embassy.

The group is headed by Sarah Stern, who began her activism on Israeli issues in opposition to the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestinians. She made a career out of her activism in the far-right Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) as its national policy coordinator from 1998 through 2004.

Notable members of the advisory board include prominent hardline neo-conservatives, including former US UN ambassador the late Jeane Kirkpatrick; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum; and the Hudson Institute’s Meyrav Wurmser – the Israeli-born spouse of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former top Middle East adviser, David Wurmser.

Other prominent neo-conservative members of the board include Center for Security Policy (CSP) president Frank Gaffney; former Central Intelligence Agency chief James Woolsey; and Heritage Foundation fellows Ariel Cohen and Nina Shea, who has served for years on the quasi-governmental US Commission for International Religious Freedom.

The US-born and educated hardline deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at Gaffney’s CSP, Caroline Glick, is also an adviser. Glick, Pipes and Walid Shoebat, a “reformed” terrorist and EMET adviser, are all featured as experts in Obsession.

Also among the top names of listed advisers to EMET are three Israeli diplomats. Two of them, ambassadors Yossi Ben Aharon and Yoram Ettinger, were among the three Israeli ambassadors whom then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin referred to as “The Three Musketeers” when they lobbied Washington in opposition to the Oslo accords.

Stern began her career at the behest of three unnamed Israeli diplomats who were based in Washington under Rabin’s predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, according to EMET’s website, while Ettinger was at one time the chairman of special projects and is still listed as a contributing expert at the Ariel Center for Policy Research, a hardline Likudist Israeli think-tank that opposes the peace process.

Ben Aharon was the director general – effectively the chief of staff – of Shamir’s office.

The third Israeli ambassador, Lenny Ben-David, was appointed by Likud prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to serve as the deputy chief of mission – second in command – at the Israeli Embassy in Washington from 1997 until 2000. Ben-David had also held senior positions at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for 25 years and is now a consultant and lobbyist.

But EMET is not the only group involved in the controversy to have direct ties to Israel.

The Clarion Fund has also been criticized for initially denying its ties to the Israel’s Aish Hatorah, which were first disclosed publicly by an IPS investigation last year. Honestreporting.com, an organization set up by Aish Hatorah and also a client of Ben-David, admitted to IPS that it had aided the production of the film.

The Clarion Fund and Aish Hatorah are headed by twin Israeli-Canadian brothers Raphael and Ephraim Shore, respectively. The two groups appear to be connected as Clarion is incorporated in Delaware to the New York offices of Aish Hatorah.

“It seems that the Clarion Fund, from what we can tell, is just a virtual organization that is a front for Aish Hatorah,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “They don’t have staff, they don’t have a physical address. Nothing.”

Little is known about the shadowy Clarion Fund, which is listed with the New York Secretary of State’s office as a “foreign not-for-profit foundation”. The group has rejected requests for information about its donors.

IPS has uncovered one donor to the Clarion Fund, the Mamiye Foundation, which gave it $25,000 in August 2007, according to tax filings. Four Mamiye members: Charles M, Charles D, Hyman and Abraham, are listed as trustees on the forms.

According to filings with the New York Secretary of State, a contact listed for a Mamiye company is also the same man listed as a contact and counsel for the Clarion Fund – Eli D Greenberg of the law firm Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman and Herz.

Blog About Palestine Day – May 15th 2008

Posted on by
Reply

In order to support “Blog About Palestine” Day, the editors of Ijtema.net would like to highlight the best entries from this event on the site, insha’Allah. So if you are planning to join in, please remember to forward us the link to your post on May 15th. You can e-mail us at editor[at]ijtema[dot]net, with the subject “Blog About Palestine Day“, or leave a comment on this page: http://ijtema.net/blog-about-palestine-day/

From the Facebook event page:

Help raise awareness about the Palestinian plight and the everyday experiences of an average Palestinian. On May 15th 2008, right an article or a blog post that is related Palestine or the Palestinians in any way.

It does not have to political, it could talk about the past, present, or future. It could talk about social issues, economical issues, political issues, even about art. You could talk about how do people go about their day lives, how do they travel, how do they go to school, how do they live ..etc. You could talk about your parents’ or grandparents’ memories of the Nakba of 1948, or about the life in forced exile, or about outlooks for possible peaceful resolutions.

You don’t have to be a Palestinian or an Arab to participate. You could offer your views as a non-Palestinian on the issue. We just seek to get the word out and inform people about us.

Please spread the word about this initiative – click here for some cool blog buttons and banners.