Activism News

Jaggi Singh, a Montreal based activist and writer was granted entry into Israel after winning an appeal filed by Israeli lawyer Shamai Leibowitz on December 16th in Tel Aviv by the District Court. An illegal deportation order was issued by Israeli authorities upon Jaggi’s arrival in Tel Aviv on December 14th. Jaggi spent 2 days in detention at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv fighting the illegal deportation order from Israel with support from many Israeli peace activists and international solidarity activists. Stefan Christoff reports.

On 3 December 2002, EI’s Ali Abunimah, historian Peter Novick, writer Emily Hauser and Rabbi Arnold Wolf met at the University of Chicago to consider the differences between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. EI presents the text of the opening remarks of the four panelists.

This summer, a little-known Manchester academic caused an international storm when she sacked two Israeli scholars from the editorial board of her journal. But was it an isolated freelance protest - or the first skirmish in a wider academic boycott? The Guardian’s Andy Beckett investigates.

Rainbow Grocery’s ban on carrying certain Israeli-made goods has angered some customers and prompted the Jewish Community Relations Council in San Francisco to demand that the Mission District co-op reverse its boycott immediately. Jenny Strasburg reports for The San Francisco Chronicle.

The tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have spilled into the aisles of a San Francisco supermarket, where certain departments of the co-op Rainbow Grocery have removed Israeli-made products from their shelves. Although Israeli products remain on the shelves of other Rainbow departments, which are run independently, some workers are pushing for a storewide boycott, an employee of the Mission District store said Tuesday. Jenny Strasburg reports in The San Francisco Chronicle.

Christian Peacemaker Teams visited the area where hundreds of Palestinian homes may be slated for demolition in an Israeli plan to expand illegal colonies in the Occupied West Bank. They urge immediate contact with public officials to stop the threatened demolitions.

David Williams was for many years Middle East history librarian for the Chicago Public Library. Williams was transferred from his job, he has learned, primarily in
retaliation for his activities to educate the city about Palestinian human rights and a lecture series he helped organize. He also believes that this retaliation was prompted by his informational leafletting of an appearance by Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and author and apologist for Israel, at the Chicago Public
 Library.

Last month a group of over seventy-five Columbia and Barnard faculty members launched a petition campaign demanding that Columbia University divest from all firms that produce or sell arms or military hardware to be used by the state of Israel. Tonight in an open hearing, the case will be presented to Columbia’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing.

Veteran Israeli peace activist Adam Keller attended the Rabin Memorial Rally on November 2nd, and spent the following two days protesting the destruction of olive groves in Falami, a Palestinian village that will be drastically affected by the ongoing construction of Israel’s “Berlin Wall”. Meanwhile, news of the collapse of the Sharon government broke.