Statement on Impact of Grand Jury Subpoenas on Students’ First Amendment Rights

Students for Justice in Palestine National Solidarity Statement on Impact of Grand Jury Subpoenas on Students’ First Amendment Rights December 29, 2010

The federal government stepped up its witch-hunt against antiwar, pro-Palestinian rights and socialist activists last month with a new round of subpoenas that demand testimony before a federal grand jury.

The investigation is apparently focused on groups and individuals that the government appears to suspect of providing "material support" to groups designated as "terrorist" organizations--but activists say that the probe is a fishing expedition with the potential for criminalizing any number of international solidarity campaigns. All the targets of the subpoenas say they will refuse to testify, even though this means they could be incarcerated.

Activists protest Israeli army sergeant's campus propaganda visit

Christopher Clark, The Electronic Intifada, 14 December 2010

On 2 December, the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Palestine organized a protest of an event entitled "Overcoming Terror: A True Story" which took place on the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst. Israeli army sergeant Kenny Sachs was the guest speaker at the event, an on-call speaker for Israeli propaganda groups Upstart Activist and Divestment Watch, and the event was sponsored by the Student Alliance for Israel (SAFI) and the University of Massachusetts Hillel House. Though the topic of discussion was what happened in Gaza, the event description never named Palestinians. Instead, "terrorists" was the term used to describe those who "attacked" Sergeant Sachs at the Erez checkpoint in northern Gaza. The rest of the description was a muddled account of a shootout between Sachs and aforementioned "terrorists" which resulted in Sachs losing his ability to play basketball after being shot in the leg.

Why we walked out

Ahmad Hasan and Danielle Bäck, The Electronic Intifada, 3 December 2010

Students across the US are protesting a public relations campaign that brings soldiers from the Israeli army to speak on campuses. These tours are an attempt to justify recent war crimes committed by the army and are coordinated by various organizations, the most well-known being the Zionist organization StandWithUs.

Rabbis say 'no housing for Arabs'

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/12/2010121015160984116.html

Rabbis say 'no housing for Arabs'

Mya Guarnieri Last Modified: 10 Dec 2010 17:26 GMT

Hundreds of Israeli rabbis have signed a religious edict forbidding Jews from renting or selling homes or land to Arabs and other non-Jews. The public letter instructs Jews to "ostracise" those who disobey the order, which is widely viewed as an attack on the country's Palestinian citizens.

U of T slammed over ‘Jewish racism’ thesis

Daniel Dale

Staff Reporter, Toronto Star

The University of Toronto is being criticized by Jewish groups, a prominent historian and Holocaust survivors for accepting a master’s thesis that calls two Holocaust education programs “racist.”

The thesis, titled “The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education,” was written by Jenny Peto, a Jewish activist with theCoalition Against Israeli Apartheid. It denounces the March of Remembrance and Hope, for which young adults of diverse backgrounds travel with Holocaust survivors to sites of Nazi atrocities in Poland, and March of the Living Canada, which takes young Jews with survivors to Poland and Israel.

Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967

Tuesday, 26 October 2010 14:13

By Richard Falk

Summary
The present report considers developments relevant to the obligations of Israel under international law, as well as the situation of people living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Emphasis is given to the cumulative impact of Israeli policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem arising from prolonged occupation, which exhibits features of colonialism and apartheid, as well as transforming a de jure condition of occupation into a circumstance of de facto annexation.

These developments encroach on the inalienable Palestinian right of self-determination in fundamentally detrimental ways. Attention is also devoted to habitual concerns involving settlement growth in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the problems posed by the continued construction of the separation wall, issues of collective punishment, and a variety of other human rights concerns, including concern over the health-related and other adverse impacts of the continuing blockade of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza, consideration of the "Freedom Flotilla" incident of 31 May 2010 and the continuing effort to assess whether Israel and the responsible Palestinian authorities have carried out adequate investigations of war crimes allegations arising from the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009.

Download the full report

http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/reports-and-publications/1683-report-of-the-special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-the-palestinian-territories-occupied-since-1967

The Zionist Organization of America’s Effort to Criminalize Campus Activism through Federal Civil Rights Legislation

Posted on MuzzleWatch on October 29 2010 by Cecilie Surasky under Educational Institutions.  

By Eyal Mazor

Under the leadership of Mort Klein, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) is celebrating its success in its efforts to expand federal anti-bullying guidelines stipulated under the US Civil Rights Act of 1964.  So why in the world would Mort Klein and his pro-occupation and pro-settlement ZOA be interested in federal civil rights and anti-bullying policy in the first place? Perhaps a new-found interest in protecting religious practice and reigning in on all instances of discrimination? Of course not. Read on and prepare yourself to be outraged.