BDS

US jazz vocalist Cassandra Wilson has canceled her gig this weekend at the Women’s Festival in Holon, following appeals by boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists encouraging her to respect the Palestinian call for boycott.

On the occasion of Valentine’s Day, Palestine solidarity activists in Chicago attempted to deliver a giant heart-shaped petition to Obama’s campaign headquarters in Chicago which called for an end to US aid to Israel.

The Embassy of Israel in Washington, DC and PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) will host Anat Avissar, the foreign policy director of The Israeli Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Association (The Aguda) for an “informal conversation” this Wednesday on the topic of “equality” and “the cultural differences that impact support, education and advocacy in Israel.”

The California State University (CSU) system has sent a letter to a Zionist group rejecting their claim that Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and a frequent contributor to The Electronic Intifada, should not receive CSU sponsorship during his upcoming campus tour.

A regular roundup of news from the global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement: BDS motion passes at a Canadian university; the Olympia Food Co-op, heading to court, rallies supporters; Palestinian youth urge France to stop selling weaponry to the Israeli military, and more.

CRIF, the leading Israel lobby group in France, is once again seeking to deny the right to free speech.

On 16 February, Ali Abunimah and Huwaida Arraf appeared on Aljazeera English’s The Stream. Major topics included Palestinian hunger striker Khader Adnan, the “reconciliation” deal between Hamas and Fatah, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

The BDS National Committee (BNC), the Palestinian civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement, has called on activists to use the BDS Global Day of Action to take action to highlight the success of the movement and mobilise for the World Social Forum Free Palestine due to take place in Port Alegre, Brazil, in November 2012

Under heavy police protection, Israel demolished a Palestinian community center and a children’s playground in occupied East Jerusalem on 13 February 2012.