Israel’s nuclear program and the US policy of “ambiguity” on that program violate the foreign assistance act, which was amended in the 70s to bar federal assistance to clandestine nuclear nations. The US is set to provide unprecedented aid to Israel. IRMEP has sued to stop the aid.
A group of Berlin queers against pinkwashing apartheid were attacked when they protested the fact that the annual pride day march invited the Israeli ambassador. One attacker used the Israeli flag as a club.
The National Labor Relations Board has reaffirmed its dismissal an unfair labor practice charge brought by an Israeli law firm against a U.S. union, the United Electrical Workers, over its support of protests against Israeli policies including the union’s endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) movement. UE National President Peter Knowlton said that UE in the past had “withstood attempts by the U.S. government to silence us during the McCarthy era in the 1950s,” and was “unbowed by the latest attempt of a surrogate of the Israeli government to stifle our call for justice for Palestinian and Israeli workers.”
From July 26th to 28th Palestinian physicists and the international group “Scientists for Palestine,” are organizing the first ever ‘Palestinian Advanced Physics School’ at the Arab American University in Jenin. Professor Stephen Hawking, a member of the project’s International Advisory Board, says “Physics does not respect borders and international collaborations are the engines of rapid scientific progress. I am delighted to see that physics education and research in Palestine continues to grow and strengthen its international connections. I wish the students the best of luck!”
The Presbyterian Church (USA) continued its strong support for Palestinian rights with the passage of several overtures at its biennial conference including calling on RE/MAX to end sales of houses in illegal Israeli settlements and affirming the use of boycott as a tool for social change.
Today, Center for Constitutional Rights, Palestine Legal and Jewish Voice for Peace filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request seeking documents relating to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s recent executive order that will blacklist institutions and companies that abide by Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns related to Israeli human rights abuses and violations of international law.
Twenty members of Congress signed a letter to President Barack Obama on Monday, urging the appointment of a Special Envoy for Palestinian Children to ensure the U.S. government prioritizes Palestinian children’s rights.
Scholar and writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction winner and associate professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, has endorsed BDS and the cultural and academic boycott of Israel in support of Palestinian rights. “Always remember, never forget. These powerful words compel us to think about both the injustices of the past and the injustices of the present. One of those contemporary injustices that we struggle to remember is the Israeli occupation and the deprivation of Palestinian rights. For any of us concerned with justice, the imperative is clear: we must stand with the disempowered and the forgotten against militarism and the state,” said Nguyen.
A group of BDS and Open Hillel activists have produced a darkly humorous web video series about campus divestment from Israel called act-iv-ist. The season finale aired earlier this week.
A video of the March 24 killings of two Palestinians in Hebron after an alleged attack on an Israeli soldier shows a soldier kicking a knife in the street closer to the incapacitated form of one of the alleged assailants, Abd asl Fatah al-Sharif. The group Human Rights Defenders released the video.