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.

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.