Ever since EI Co-founder Ali Abunimah and DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein lectured separately at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University in the Spring of 2005, pro-Israel groups, who had attempted to block the appearances, have been conducting a campaign to silence free discussion of the Palestine-Israel conflict on campus. Abunimah responds to the latest salvos in the campaign, detailing some of the pro-Israel activist’s disruptive and defamatory tactics, and offering to appear before a university committee to answer any alleged concerns about the views he expressed in his lecture. Read more about EI co-founder responds to censorship campaign at Carnegie Mellon
In a press release dated September 28th, 2005, B’Nai Brith Canada claimed that the 2nd Annual Canada Palestine Film Festival, which opens today at Winnipeg’s prestigious Cinematheque theatre, is “about propaganda not art.” The implication, of course, is that defending the State of Israel — regardless of its behaviour — can be “objective” and “artistic,” whereas criticizing Israel’s actual human rights record, or portraying Palestinians as human beings with legitimate claims to self-determination, is by definition “propaganda,” or worse: anti-Semitism. Read more about B'Nai Brith Attacks the Canada Palestine Film Festival...Again!
The links between the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights were emphasized in a September 26th public hearing sponsored by the Council for the National Interest at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington DC. The speakers were Kevin Zeese, Director of Democracy Rising and a candidate for U.S Senate in Maryland; Phyllis Bennis, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies; and Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. Read more about CNI Public Hearing: "Dual Occupations, Dual Jeopardy"
Since the collapse of the Oslo accords nearly five years ago, Israeli leaders have been demanding that the Palestinian Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state in any prospective settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, have even used the concept of “state of the Jewish people”, with the connotation that Israel belongs not only to its citizens, but to Jews all over the world, including potential future converts. The idea, Israeli academics and intellectuals say, occupies “centre-stage” in Israel’s Zionist collective thinking. Read more about Jewish state idea mired in confusion
A document recently published by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled “Israeli Assistance Steps and Humanitarian Measures Towards the Palestinians,” reveals that the $50 million their congressional agents in Washington scrounged from the $200 million Palestinian aid package will go for the construction of high-tech processing terminals that will be located on the “separation lines” between Israel and Palestine. In other words, the money will be spent along the path of the Separation Wall that the Israelis have unilaterally constructed in the last two years and that lie within Palestinian territory. Read more about Israelis will use U.S. Tax Dollars on Illegal Border
The Case for Israel lacks objectivity, to say the least. Dershowitz treats evidence in much the same way Joan Peters does in From Time Immemorial, and the results are similar. Like Peters, Dershowitz selects facts to suit his theses. He employs distortion and fabrication while contending elsewhere that he knows the evidence he presents is distorted and falsified. He misconstrues sources in a tendentious manner. He draws hard conclusions from tenuous evidence. He adduces evidence that in no way supports his claims, even omitting “inconvenient” portions of quotations without inserting ellipses. He quotes sources completely out of context. Read more about The Case for Israel, a Critical Review
On June 7, 2005, the United States Institute for Peace held a conference entitled “How Israelis and Palestinians Negotiate: A Cross-Cultural Analysis of the Oslo Peace Process” that attempted to enunciate to the public a more in-depth understanding of the failure of the negotiations that took place at Camp David in the year 2000 and, more broadly, the Oslo peace process. Rather than simply reflecting on the issues that proved to be sticking points in the negotiations, the speakers attempted to evaluate the flaws that typified the negotiation styles of both Palestinians and Israelis, differences that dramatically flared up when they came together in at Camp David. Read more about Conference Critiques Negotiation Tactics of Palestinians and Israelis
Targeting the university is the latest mission of right-wing forces who have hijacked not only political power and political discourse in the United States but also the very vocabulary that can be used against them. The campaign of the last three years or so to attack US universities as the last bastion where a measure of freedom of thought is still protected is engineered to cancel out such freedom and ensure that scholars will not subvert the received political wisdom of the day. Read more about Targeting the university
Last week, an obscure UN body called the Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations decided to “defer” the application from the Badil Resource Center, a Palestinian organization working for Palestinian refugee rights based in Bethlehem. Badil was asking for “consultative status” that would allow it to make statements at official UN gatherings. The committee was supposed to decide if Badil’s work was consistent with the purposes of the UN. Germany demanded that Badil provide a copy of every statement it has ever made on terrorism. The US demanded to hear Badil’s position on the land issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Then the US asked if Badil had anything to do with the International Solidarity Movement. Read more about At the UN, Palestinian democracy tests American and Israeli limits
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. Read more about The Israel on Campus Coalition and the David Project: Sponsored by US oil and Israeli bank profits?
