Leeds University Union agreed last week, by a vote of 12 to 11, to send a motion to referendum which will label anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and silence pro-Palestinian groups on campus. The motion, shrouded in the language of combating anti-Semitism, is a reversal of a motion passed two years ago which gave Palestinian activists at Leeds University the rights enjoyed by their counterparts throughout the country. If passed, organizations which have an anti-Zionist platform, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will be prevented from receiving funding from the union and prevented from holding many of their events. Read more about Leeds University referendum threatens to silence Palestinian activists 

Canada’s Museum of Civilization is part of Canadians’ acknowledgement and atonement for the colonial ethnic cleansing of First Peoples. By providing space for the Jewish National Funds’s Negev Dinner, however, the museum is aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing in Palestine and facilitating the celebration of these actions next to the exhibit of aboriginal culture in the Museum’s Great Hall. This discredits our nation’s understanding of its own egregious colonial past and raises questions about the sincerity of our apologies to aboriginal peoples in Canada. Read more about Protest fundraiser for agency that abets Israeli land confiscation 

Adalah-NY has learned that the jewelry of Israeli billionaire and settlement-builder Lev Leviev will be on sale at this week’s gala opening of the luxury hotel Atlantis, The Palm in Dubai. Despite Leviev’s ongoing construction of Israeli settlements and claims by United Arab Emirates officials that Leviev would receive no license to sell his jewelry there, the New York-based human rights coalition Adalah-NY has confirmed that Leviev’s jewelry will be on sale at the Atlantis branch of the Levant Jewelry chain on the fabled Palm Jumeirah island. Read more about Settlement financier to sell jewelry at Dubai hotel despite ban 

Eight groups representing tens of thousands of people in the United States, Palestine and Israel have called on the Marriott Marquis hotel in Manhattan to cancel the 17 November dinner for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund aiming to raise money for Israeli settlers in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Hebron. In a 7 November letter the groups stated: “The Marriot Marquis will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and US foreign policy, actively promote racial discrimination, and, at least indirectly, support brutal Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian civilians and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Hebron.” Read more about Groups protest settlement fundraiser at New York hotel 

Oxford University’s Balliol College has decided to honor Shimon Peres and the apartheid state of Israel by inviting him to speak in Oxford, and by planning to establish a lecture series in his name. Peres will deliver his lecture on Tuesday, 18 November 2008 under the title “The Globalization of Peace.” Read more about Tell Oxford not to create lecture series in Peres' honor 

We, representatives of international civil society meeting in Bilbao, agree that the State of Israel must be held legally accountable. By granting Israel impunity for its persistent and systematic violations of international law and fundamental human rights, treating it as an exception above the law of nations, and providing it with unlimited political, economic, scientific, cultural and diplomatic support, the United States, the EU and other players in the so-called international community are guilty of complicity in perpetuating Israeli apartheid and colonial rule. Read more about Bilbao initiative: declaration and action plan