Marc Lamont Hill delivered an inspiring keynote address to a standing-room only celebration of radical organizing for Palestine as the organization Existence is Resistance celebrated its 10-year anniversary in New York City.
Michia Moncho reports on the amazing success of 2018’s Israeli Apartheid Week in South Africa which saw over 150 activities, including events with over 5,000 people in attendance: “Not out of arrogance, but humility, we can confidently claim that in this last year’s #IsraeliApartheidWeek, South African civil society (across the gender, racial and religious spectrum) undoubtedly played a role in advancing the struggle for the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Over a dozen Palestinian activists, along with Israeli and international supporters, blockaded the entrance to Israel’s new ‘Apartheid Road’ in the central occupied West Bank district of Jerusalem on Wednesday morning. The group of activists closed the gates to the newly opened road and formed a human chain, raising banners in Arabic, English, and Hebrew saying “No to Apartheid” and “No to Annexation.”
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, over 350 scholars of the Civil Rights and Black Freedom Movements, and veterans of these historic struggles, along with educators and human rights advocates, issued the following statement in support of Palestinian human rights, and in defense of, Angela Y. Davis, who was publicly dishonored three weeks ago by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute when it abruptly reversed its decision to recognize her with its annual award because of her stand on Palestinian rights.
The decision by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute to withdraw an award to Angela Davis because of her support for BDS has become a giant embarrassment to the Institute and the Jewish groups that put pressure on it to reconsider. Both the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center and the Birmingham Jewish Federations have tried to walk back statements critical of the award.
Angela Y. Davis on the cancellation of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award: “Although the BCRI refused my requests to reveal the substantive reasons for this action, I later learned that my long-term support of justice for Palestine was at issue. This seemed particularly unfortunate, given that my own freedom was secured – and indeed my life was saved – by a vast international movement. And I have devoted much of my own activism to international solidarity and, specifically, to linking struggles in other parts of the world to U.S. grassroots campaigns against police violence, the prison industrial complex, and racism more broadly. The rescinding of this invitation was thus not primarily an attack against me but rather against the spirit of the indivisibility of justice.”
David Kattenburg gives an update on his effort to prevent wine from Israeli West Bank settlements labeled “Product of Israel” from being sold on Canadian store shelves.