A wide coalition of Palestinian and international organizations denounced FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s failure to compel Israel’s national football league to exclude six football teams based in illegal Israeli settlements and called for the dissolution of the FIFA Monitoring Committee Israel-Palestine.
On March 8, three anti-BDS bills were fast-tracked out of committee and passed without debate by the New York State Senate. Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights oppose the move saying: “These bills are blatantly unconstitutional attacks on First Amendment rights to protest and dissent. They resurrect widely-condemned tactics used to undermine democracy: creating McCarthyite blacklists, punishing dissent, attacking academic freedom, and cracking down on student organizing.”
A new Israeli law bars entry to those involved in boycotting Israel and criminalizes even those who have supported a ‘partial’ boycott targeting settlements. Activists and organizations, even the liberal Zionist ones who have supported boycott of settlements, now have to ask themselves: If Israel does not differentiate between itself and its occupied territories, if Israel bars entry to any foreigner who boycotts (even if they are Zionist), why should the boycotters make the differentiation between Israel and its settlements?
BDS movement: The global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for freedom, justice and equality of the Palestinian people is an inclusive, nonviolent human rights movement that rejects all forms of racism and racial discrimination. The principles of the BDS movement call for proactive solidarity with oppressed communities worldwide and with all the victims of racist acts and rhetoric, as ours is a common cause.
Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer and political activist specializing in international human rights law, tells Mondoweiss it is difficult to know how Israel’s controversial new law aimed at barring boycott activists from entering the country will actually be enforced, but he says the law is in direct violation of international law. “Countries have wide discretion to allow are deny entry to foreigners,” Sfard says. “However, International Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination on the basis of a person’s opinion and provides freedom of conscious and thought. The law is definitely a violation of both.”
British pro-Israel blogger David Collier purports to discover that 42 percent of Palestinian solidarity campaigners are anti-Semitic. Jonathan Ofir exposes his methods as laughable and ideological.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is out of step with his own people when he opposes sanctions on Israel’s conduct. A cartoon by Carlos Latuff.
Ilan Pappe: I call upon the German public and media to treat individuals who challenge zionist belief systems fairly, not only but especially within the academia. This entails the space to express their views and to engage in public debate without fearing to be smeared and degraded.
Palestinian students in Gaza call on students across the world to get involved in Israeli Apartheid Week this year and grow the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on campuses.
Activists for Palestinian rights have long known that our universities are overwhelmingly hostile environments where freedom of speech about, and critical inquiry into, Israel’s oppressive policies are heavily censored. Over the past few weeks, two separate and noteworthy incidents have illustrated this heavy-handed approach.