What is it like when Proud Boys and Zionists attack you online at the same time?
Dave Reed speaks with Olivia Katbi Smith, national U.S. organizer for the BDS Movement and co-chair of the Portland chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. In the last few weeks, Olivia was one of the targets of a doxxing attack by a member of the Proud Boys. Shortly after, she was named the “Anti-Semite of the Week” by a right-wing organization created to harass pro-Palestinian activists.
Michael Arria spoke to Meera Shah, senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, about their new website that tracks anti-BDS legislation around the U.S. These bills, in both federal and state legislatures, are direct attacks on basic free speech protections and will have repercussions far beyond the movement to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Links:
- News & Observer: NCSU investigating employee accused of Proud Boys membership. He calls it ‘slander.’
- Willamette Week: Portland’s Democratic Socialists of America Co-Chair Is Suing an Alleged Proud Boy for Doxxing
- Anonymous Comrads Collective: Doxer Gets Doxed: “Proud Boy” Chadwick Jason Seagraves of NCSU
- DSA’s BDS and Palestine Working Group on Twitter
- BDS Movement
- Palestine Legal and their new legislation tracker site.
As the old adage goes: “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Meanwhile:
Haaretz.Com
“Almost a third of Israelis living in poverty since COVID hit, report finds.” Haaretz, Dec. 9/20, by Lee Yaron
EXCERPT:
“143,000 more families became food insecure since the pandemic began; Nonprofit founder says 2020 is the worst year for poverty in Israel. The poverty rate in Israel jumped from about a fifth of all families to almost a third since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic this year, figures from the annual ‘Alternative Poverty Report’ from the Latet (To Give) nonprofit organization show. According to the report, in 2020, the poverty rate rose from 20.1 percent, or 582,000 households, to 29.3 percent, 850,000 households. This means 268,000 families fell into poverty – and 143,000 additional households face food and nutritional insecurity.
“Latet’s data show that 422,000 Israeli households are in financial distress – a rise of 14.5 percent since the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Out of 656,000 families (22.6 percent) living in nutritional insecurity, 286,000 (9.9 percent) of them live in dangerously low nutritional insecurity. Before the pandemic, 513,000 Israeli households had low nutritional insecurity (17.8 percent) and 252,000 (8.8 percent) had severe food insecurity – according to data from the National Insurance Institute for 2018.
“The NII has not released new figures on food insecurity since 2018, when the data for 2016 was published. Gilles Darmon, the president and founder of Latet, said the alternative poverty report this year is without a doubt the worst ever since Latet began researching poverty in Israel over 15 years ago.”
In Ontario, too, there was a bill in the legislature to officially adopt the IHRA definition. The Conservative government withdrew it and the premier did it by executive order instead. Why? No doubt because legislation requires public consultation, which would have meant Jews like me speaking against it. They didn’t want to risk that.