UK under pressure from US to adopt aggressive anti-BDS posture in post-Brexit negotiations

Middle East Monitor

 

The UK is under pressure to adopt a more aggressive posture towards the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in exchange for better trade deals with the US in post-Brexit negotiations between the two countries.

Details of the post-Brexit trade negotiations-which suggest Britain is unlikely to get softer treatment than other US allies-were released last week in an 18-page document by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), led by Robert Lighthizer. Listed amongst the “negotiating objectives” of the Trump administration is a demand for the UK to take a more hostile stance towards BDS.

With respect to commercial partnership between the two countries, USTR said it wanted to “discourage actions that directly or indirectly prejudice or otherwise discourage commercial activity solely between the United States and Israel.” BDS was identified as a major threat by the US trade representative who called to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.”

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Israel Anti Boycott Act

If Americans Knew

Israel partisans are pushing bills that impede Americans’ right to boycott. These are being enacted in state legislatures and introduced in Congress… while politicians are poised to give Israel even more money.

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Texas Speech Pathologist Fired for Refusal to Sign Pro-Israel Oath

Comment: From December of last year. It shows how desperate the Israeli lobby is becoming and how effective the Boycott really is. 

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The Intercept

A 2018 report shows that American citizens are actively being stripped of their First Amendment rights. As Glenn Greenwald, reported, 26 states have enacted Israel loyalty oath requirements for contract workers, and 13 other US states have similar bills pending. Greenwald’s reported cited figures from Legal Palestine, an independent organization that protects the civil rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom.

The laws allow the state governments to sanction and impose limits on citizens who participate in political boycotts of Israel. The First Amendment is supposed to protect citizens from being punished for expressing their political beliefs, Greenwald reported, but for Bahia Amawi, a children’s speech pathologist in Texas, this has not been the case.

Amawi has been helping developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students as a contract worker in the Western District of Texas for over nine years. When it was time for her to sign her annual contract renewal, she was shocked to see that the contract required her to sign an oath pledging that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. Amawi could not agree to the terms of the contract because she and her family had made a personal choice to avoid purchasing Israeli goods to boycott the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Her decision to not support the Israeli economy is not only her right as a consumer, but also, her right as an American citizen.

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Senate Unites to Ban US Citizens From Boycotting Israel, Give Israel $38B

Chris Menahan
InformationLiberation

The Senate can't agree on anything to help America but they can agree fully on making it illegal for Americans to boycott the state of Israel and giving Israel $38 billion from US taxpayers.

From the Times Of Israel:

The United States Senate overwhelmingly passed controversial legislation on Monday to curb boycotts against Israel, its first move since returning from a several-week government shutdown.

The Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act, known as S.1, advanced in the upper chamber by a vote of 74-19.

While the Israel Anti-Boycott Act would make it illegal under federal statute to boycott the Jewish state, the Combating BDS Act would grant federal protection to the 26 states that have already passed similar laws targeting Israel boycotters.

The act also incorporates a separate measure to codify into federal law an agreement for the US to provide Israel with $38 billion over 10 years in security assistance.

As The Forward reported last month, the ADL said in a private memo that the anti-BDS law was blatantly unconstitutional and would create antisemitism, but they backed it anyways.

As a reminder, Trump can't get $5 billion to secure a few sections of America's border, but Israel can get $38 billion from US taxpayers to build up their defenses to the hilt -- which includes multiple giant, nearly impenetrable walls (which they defend with deadly force).

Bloomberg reports the bill also includes new sanctions on Syria:

The Senate advanced legislation that would impose new sanctions on Syria, more than a month after President Donald Trump said he would withdraw American forces from the conflict there.

The measure would direct the Trump administration to impose sanctions on entities that do business with the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, such as selling petroleum products or aircraft parts.

The government should have never been reopened.

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UK Government Should Cancel Prince William’s Visit to Apartheid Israel

BDS

Prince William’s scheduled trip to Israel this summer would contravene seven decades of British policy against official visits to Israel by the royal family. Despite many invitations, the royal family has avoided visits to avoid giving a royal stamp of approval to Israel’s decades-old violations of Palestinian human rights. As Israel’s far-right government intensifies its violations of international law, this is no time to change this precedent. The UK should pressure Israel to end its violations of Palestinian rights and cancel Prince William's trip. 

On March 1, the British monarchy announced that Prince William will visit Israel as part of a regional trip this summer, becoming the first royal family member to do so. Palestinian civil society, as represented in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), calls on the UK Government to cancel Prince William’s visit to avoid adding insult to the many injuries inflicted by British imperialism on the indigenous people of Palestine.
 
The Israeli government has a well-documented record of using international visits to mask its grave human rights abuses. It will use this visit to cover up its ongoing piecemeal massacre against unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza demanding freedom and the UN-stipulated right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin.

“Royal-washing” Israel’s decades-old military occupation and apartheid against the Palestinian people is wrong. And it is exceptionally offensive when coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba, or catastrophe, when Palestinian society was destroyed and most Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, largely due to official British complicity in the Zionist settler-colonial project in Palestine.

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Ireland: Dublin City Council votes for Israel boycott

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intifada

Dublin City Council passed a motion Monday night endorsing the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

And on Tuesday, Israel claimed to have barred Dublin's mayor from entering territory it controls, but a short time later the mayor appeared to be tweeting from Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.

"Since its violent establishment in 1948 through the ethnic cleansing of more than half of the indigenous people of Palestine, the state of Israel has denied Palestinians their fundamental rights and has refused to comply with international law," the motion states.

It adds that: "Israel continues to illegally occupy and colonize Palestinian land, discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, imposes an inhumane blockade and siege of Gaza and denies Palestinian refugees the right to return to their homes." Israeli embassy interference The motion commits the Irish capital to discontinue contracts with Hewlett-Packard (HP), an information technology firm that has long been complicit in Israel's military occupation in Palestine, and with its spin-off DXC.

Although the official vote tally had not yet been published at the council's website, John Lyons, the People Before Profit councilor who sponsored the motion, told The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday that the measure passed by 30-8 with five abstentions.

Fatin Al Tamimi, chair of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, stated: "Speaking as a Palestinian and a Dubliner I'm so proud that the local government of my adoptive city has voted to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people's struggle for freedom, justice and equality."

Al Tamimi thanked the council for adopting the motion in spite of interference by the Israeli embassy. "It is concerning that, once again, officials of the Israeli embassy sought to attempt to interfere in Irish democracy by writing to the Lord Mayor demanding he block the motion from even being discussed," Al Tamimi said.
 
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Israel's hidden propaganda war, hidden impacts

Meron Rapoport
Middle East Eye

 Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was in a triumphant mood last week. His coalition has managed to pass a few controversial laws and his government was about approve its record high budget for 2019: 400 billion Shekel ($117bn).
"Israel finds itself in an unprecedented phase of political might, economic might and military might and it changes the country beyond recognition," he said in a speech at an economic conference in Jerusalem on Thursday.

As with every politician, there was a certain amount of bragging in Netanyahu's words. Yet it cannot be denied that Israel looks good in numbers. Its economy grew three percent in 2017, its exports passed the $100bn mark for the first time and the exports of Israeli high-tech companies have more than doubled to a record of $23bn. Israel's GDP per capita has passed the $40,000 bar, higher than France. Only 10 years ago it stood at $25,000 per capita.

Yet early in the same week in which Netanyahu delivered his jubilant speech, his government announced new measures again the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement: it prohibited activists from several allegedly pro-BDS organisations from entering Israel. If Israel's economy is going so well, what has it to fear from a boycott movement which does not seem to have had any real effect so far?

Last week's move was just another step in a battle Israel is waging against the boycott movement. In 2011 it passed a law which defined any boycott of Israel or "areas under its control" - a legal term used to describe the occupied West Bank - as a "civil wrong". Anyone infringing this law is libel to pay compensation for the damage done.

Last year Israel went one step further and passed a law allowing the minister of interior to bar entry to anyone promoting boycott or sanctions against it. The measures announced last week were taken according to the entry ban law.

There is no doubt that these new measures take Israel further away from its claim to be "the only democracy in the Middle East". Among the organisations named in last week's announcement is the American Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). 

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UN rapporteur for human rights urges sanctions on Israel for driving Palestinians 'back to the dark ages' (VIDEO)

Philip Weiss
Mondoweiss

Last week there was a significant development in the international response to the Israeli occupation when the UN rapporteur for human rights in the occupied territories came out with a harsh report saying the world was too passive about the occupation. The "duration of this occupation is without precedent or parallel in today's world," the report said. Israel has "driven Gaza back to the dark ages" due to denial of water and electricity and freedom of movement. There is a "darkening stain" on the world's legal framework because other countries have treated the occupation as normal, and done nothing to resist Israel's "colonial ambition par excellence," which includes two sets of laws for Israelis and Palestinians.

At a press conference about his report, S. Michael Lynk, a Canadian professor of law and human rights expert, said it is time the international community reach into its "toolbox" of enforcement mechanisms, so as to "raise the stakes" against the occupation and change international "opinion" of Israel. The country had been worried by the Goldstone Report in 2009 and is today worried by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS), Lynk said; so if the international community took "unified actions on an escalating basis" to declare the occupation illegal and demand Israel's withdrawal, Israel would respond. That means sanctions.

Israel is very dependent upon trade with the outside world, it's very dependent upon its market with the United States, it's very dependent upon its market with Europe. If there was an understanding that all of a sudden Israelis wanting to travel abroad needed to have visas, if all of a sudden Israel wasn't going to get preferential trading agreements with the EU. If all of a sudden, the many and multitude of forms of military or economic cooperation or academic cooperation with Israel were now going to come to an end as long as Israel continued that, I think you'd begin to see a sea-change in the attitude of ordinary Israelis and in the attitude of the Israeli government.... Every journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.

"I didn't use the word boycott," Lynk said in the press conference, though he called for a refusal to purchase settlement goods.

He got an immediate reaction. US ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley on Friday said that the U.S. was "deeply disturbed" by Lynk's report and by his support for "economic and academic boycott" of Israel. The Jerusalem Post turned on Lynk for seeking to turn Israel into a "pariah state" (don't worry, it's happening on its own). 

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UK academics are planning a boycott of Israeli universities

The Independent i100

Several hundred British-based scholars have vowed not to work with Israeli universities in the biggest academic boycott of the country.
 
The 343 academics have pledged to refuse invitations to visit educational institutions in Israel, take part in conferences in which they are involved or "otherwise cooperate with them".

The signatories include some of Britain's most respected professors, and feature fellows of the Royal Society and the British Academy. They are protesting at human rights abuses against Palestinians.

In a statement published today, they say their action is prompted by "Israel's illegal occupation of Palestinian land, the intolerable human rights violations that it inflicts on all sections of the Palestinian people, and its apparent determination to resist any feasible settlement".

Those taking part include Sir Tom Kibble, emeritus professor of theoretical physics at Imperial College London, and Sir Iain Chalmers, co-founder of the Cochrane Collaboration.

But Ronnie Fraser, director of Academic Friends of Israel, said: "Less than a quarter of one per cent of the 194,245 academics working in the UK have expressed a wish to boycott Israeli universities."

Chris Hedges, Gaza Rally in NYC: God's Covenant in the Promised Land

Boycott Israel

Against the Machine Like Rage

Brian Eno: Today I saw a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic bag of meat: it was his son

stopwar.org.uk

Dear All of You:

I sense I'm breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can't keep quiet any more.

Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He'd been shredded (the hospital's word) by an Israeli missile attack - apparently using their fab new weapon, flechette bombs. You probably know what those are - hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was 4 years old.
  I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won't sign up to it.

What is going on in America? 

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Danny Glover Calls for Cultural Boycott of Israel

The Bow Spring

Actor Danny Glover and others featured in a documentary about a 98-year-old Asian-American activist are protesting the film’s screening at a Tel Aviv film festival.

In a statement released Monday, participants in “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs,” including Boggs, said:

“We stand in solidarity with the people of Palestine, and support their call for cultural and academic boycott of Israel.

As people featured in the film American Revolutionary: the Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, we were shocked to find the film slated to be screened at the DocAviv festival in Israel on May 13th and 15th. This was scheduled without our knowledge.

We immediately took action to have the film withdrawn from the festival. The festival organizers and film producers informed us that this was not possible and they would move forward with the screening, over our objections.”

Boggs, a philosopher and writer who has been involved in left-wing American social movements, “has explicitly stated her support of the boycott and believes this screening is in direct contradiction to her legacy and ongoing work as a revolutionary,” the statement continued.

The producers posted the statement on the film’s website, but prefaced it by saying they had been “unaware that playing in the festival would be an issue for the participants of the film. We respect their position and regret the discomfort this has caused for them.

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Human rights organisation accuses Israel of war crimes

Press TV

A Palestinian human rights organization says crimes committed by Israelis against Palestinian children amount to war crimes, Press TV reports.

"Killing children in armed conflicts is a war crime and that is exactly what Israeli forces did to Palestinian children," Samir Zaqut, an official from al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, told Press TV. He further noted, "Israeli forces killed and injured thousands of Palestinian children in the past 14 years."
"There is also arbitrary arrest of the Palestinian children ...," he added.

Last year, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) voiced alarm over the Israeli regime's use of violence against Palestinian children.

In its report, the agency said some 700 Palestinian children aged 12 to 17 are arrested, interrogated and detained by the Israeli forces every year in the occupied West Bank.

The UNICEF report blamed Israeli authorities for practices that "amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture."

On Saturday, the Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Social Affairs Kamal al-Sharafi said Israeli forces have killed 1,520 Palestinian children and wounded 6,000 more over the past fourteen years.

He said more than 10,000 Palestinian kids have been arrested, 200 of whom are being held in Israeli detention centers.

The taboo on boycotting Israel has been broken

The Electronic Intifada

David Lloyd

Something extraordinary happened on Saturday evening at the American Studies Association’s annual meeting in Washington, DC.

At a packed open meeting called by the ASA’s National Executive Council to discuss a resolution to “endorse and honor” the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, speaker after speaker rose to express strong support for the resolution.

They urged the council to vote on it without further delay or deferral.

Israel and US complicity

Out of 44 speakers, whose names were submitted in writing and then drawn at random from a box, 37 spoke in favor of the boycott. They ranged from senior professors to graduate students and even undergraduate members of the association. All recalled the association’s fundamental commitment to the study and critique of racism and the US histories of imperialism and settler colonialism.

Many made the connection between Israel as a settler colony and US complicity in politically and materially supporting its colonial projects. In doing so, several remarked that they were members of the association because its commitment to anti-racist and anti-colonial scholarship made it especially hospitable to their work. For them, the connection was self-evident between anti-racist work within the United States and solidarity work with the victims of a settler colonial project that has the fullest support of the United States.

Over and over, speakers refuted the charge that endorsing the boycott is a contradiction that engages in limiting academic freedom in the name of academic freedom. They pointed out that this assertion is simply false, in the face of a campaign of misrepresentation evidenced in the room by a “Frequently Asked Questions” flyer opposing the resolution. That campaign implied that the boycott targets individuals on account of their national belonging or identity.

If anything, the resolution stands to further academic freedom — in particular that of Palestinians whose access to normal scholarly life is continually infringed by occupation, blockade, collective punishment in the form of school closures, and the denial of the fundamental right to travel. No Israeli scholar would be denied the right to express or publish an opinion, attend a conference, do research, or travel wherever they wished.

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