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The Israel on Campus Coalition and the David Project: Sponsored by US oil and Israeli bank profits?

Bob Feldman 25 April 2005


The surplus oil industry wealth of the now-deceased former Samson Investment Company CEO is apparently being used to help subsidize the activity of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) and its affiliated David Project. In 2004, for instance, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation — with assets of $100 million — gave a $1,050,000 grant to Hillel to support the Israel on Campus Coalition [ICC] project, according to its website. 

AIPAC Finally Fires Two Employees

22 April 2005


After a month of speculation, the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories on 21 April 2005 that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee had finally seen the light and fired two of its top officials as a result of an FBI espionage investigation into its activities.� Though their lawyers were reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency declaring that the men had “not violated any U.S. law or AIPAC policy,” Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s policy director, and Keith Weissman, senior analyst on Iran, were let go.� Ha’aretz’s reporter compared the firings to removing a cancer and expected AIPAC to emerge healthy and intact.� 

My First Settler Attack

As-Sawiya 25 April 2005


21 April 2005 — Last week, I witnessed my first settler attack. “It was nothing,” my friend Arafat told me afterwards, and I know that he was speaking in comparison to other attacks when people have been injured and even killed. Here, the Palestinian farmers were simply forced off their land. Too simply. Too easily. But what can they do? They don’t have any weapons, unless you count their farming tools, as one woman joked to me. Only the Israeli settlers and soldiers have real weapons. 

Amnesty: Israeli authorities must put an immediate end to settler violence

25 April 2005


Amnesty International calls on the Israeli authorities to investigate recent incidents of poisoning of Palestinian fields and the increasingly frequent attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villagers in the West Bank. Scores of sheep as well as gazelles and other animals have been contaminated by the toxins and several have died. Palestinian farmers have been forced to quarantine their flocks and stop using the milk, cheese and meat from them, effectively depriving them of their livelihood. 

Association of University Teachers to boycott Israeli institutions

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel 22 April 2005


The Association of University Teachers (AUT) in the UK voted in its Council meeting today to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan Universities[1] and to disseminate to all its chapters our Call for Boycott of Israeli academic institutions. This historic decision, which sets a landmark precedent, stands as a major achievement in the struggle to attain a just peace in our region. Finally, boycotting Israeli institutions, as a morally and politically sound response to Israel�s crimes, is on the mainstream agenda in the west; and no one can ignore it now. 

Film review: "Sense of Need"

Jenny Gheith 21 April 2005


Sense of Need (2004) begins simply enough with the main character narrating his life for the viewer. Almost switched at birth with a red-haired Jewish boy, Palestinian Joseph was born while Israel was at war with Egypt. At the age of seven his father bought him his first piano and then “began his life in color.” At first one might take this as purely a poetic metaphor, but this is not the case in newcomer Shady Srour’s psychologically complicated and loosely autobiographical plot. Srour, a man of many talents, wrote, directed, and produced his first full-length feature film. He also portrays the protagonist Joseph, a twenty-seven year old aspiring musician who lives in San Francisco and is just a week away from finishing his masters degree. 

West Bank wasteland

Atef Saad 21 April 2005


At the beginning of April 2002, the Israeli army reoccupied a number of cities in the West Bank as part of a wide-scale military operation dubbed “Defensive Shield”. The goal of the operation, as stated by the Israeli government, was to “eliminate the infrastructure of Palestinian terrorism and to prevent suicide bombers from executing their operations in the heart of Israeli cities inside the Green Line.” At the time, no attention was given to an artillery force that snuck up the hills to a quarry - the largest in the West Bank, which is located in the cradle of a huge hill west of Nablus. “We were shocked when we saw that the quarry was being taken over,” says the director of the quarry, Ihab Abu Shusheh. 

Weekly report on human rights violations

21 April 2005


This week, Israeli forces extra-judicially killed a Palestinian and wounded 10 Palestinians, including four children. Construction of the “annexation wall” in the West Bank has continued; more areas of Palestinian land were confiscated and the Israeli High Court issued a decision allowing the construction of a section of the wall in Beit Sahour. Israeli forces arrested at least 20 Palestinians, including four children. At the crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel, Israeli authorities arrested five Palestinians, including two children. Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinians and their property. The siege imposed on the occupied territories remained in force. 

Rabble, Straight Goods, Indymedia

Lisa Sarracini 20 April 2005


Electronic Intifada (EI) began in 2001, a year after Palestine’s Second Intifada. This site is packed with information that is organized, accessible, and thorough. It offers visitors historical, legal, cultural, and political information about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Laurie King-Irani, one of the site’s cofounders, says EI’s most popular aspect is its diaries — live reports from people on the ground in occupied Palestine. In 2002, the EI team decided that instead of critiquing the media, they would become the ideal. “Too often, we aren’t getting the whole story. What we do at EI is deliver the missing part,” cofounder Arjan El Fassed says. “We call it supplementary news, rather than alternative news.” 

Behind the smoke screen of the Gaza pullout

Tanya Reinhart 19 April 2005


Ariel Sharon travelled to the United States as a hero of peace, as if he had already evacuated Gaza and only the follow-up remained to be worked out. What has completely disappeared from the public agenda is what is happening, meanwhile, in the West Bank. Behind the smoke screen of disengagement, a process of slow and hidden transfer is being carried out in the West Bank today. Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart looks at recent developments.