The botched Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip on 12 November is delineating Tel Aviv’s failure to utilise its army as a tool to achieve Palestinian political concessions.
Now that Palestinian popular resistance has gone global through the exponential rise and growing success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, the Israeli government is fighting two desperate wars.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A leaked Al Jazeera documentary detailing the tactics of the Israeli lobby in the United States and elsewhere has revealed that pro-Israel groups regularly invented smears, including false accusations of sexual assault, to discredit professors and students on U.S. university campuses that support equal rights for Palestinians and the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Israel’s gross diamond exports have crashed by a staggering 45 percent since the 2014 massacre in Gaza that resulted in the death of over 2,200 people, mainly civilians including over 550 children.
The net value of Israel’s diamond exports has fallen even further, by 60 percent from $11.25 billion to $4.4 billion over the period. This is about the same as the value of Israel’s total arms exports.
In its ongoing battle against the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign Israel is pushing for European political parties to declare the movement “fundamentally anti-Semitic.” The latest drive saw Israel’s Minister of Jerusalem Affairs, Ze’ev Elkin, attending a conference in Brussels backed by the Israeli government which proposed a text for prospective MEPs and political parties to sign up to before European elections in May next year.
The Jewish Forward reports that a hugely popular pro-Israel speaker and writer, Hen Mazzig, has been secretly working directly for the Israeli government. It appears that his actions may have violated U.S. espionage laws.
An American student of Palestinian descent detained in Israel’s airport for nearly a fortnight has become an unexpected cause celebre. Lara Alqasem was refused entry under legislation passed last year against boycott activists, and Israeli courts are now deciding whether allowing her to study human rights at an Israeli university threatens public order.
Usually, those held at the border are swiftly deported, but Ms. Alqasem appealed against the decision, becoming in the process an improbable “prisoner of conscience” for the boycott cause.
NEW YORK — As Israeli soldiers gun down unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in the Great March of Return, their lethal operations depend on an array of contractors and suppliers, many of them companies based outside Israel.
After her legal challenge to end her detention was rejected by an Israeli district court on Friday, academics and activists pledged their support on Friday for Lara Alqasem, the 22-year-old U.S. graduate student who has been held for 10 days by Israel over accusations she has supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that demands rights and freedom for Palestinians.
An American student has become the latest victim of Israel’s law targeting supporters of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Lara Alqasem, 22, has been held since last Tuesday at Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport.
Alqasem is a graduate of the University of Florida and a US citizen whose grandparents are Palestinian She tried to enter Israel to study on a Master’s degree programme at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, having been granted a student visa by the Israeli Consulate General in Miami.
