Feature Archives

In an open letter to Amnesty International, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) states: "In May, PACBI called on singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen to heed the Palestinian call for a cultural boycott of Israel and avoid complicity with Israel’s violations of international law by cancelling his planned September concert in Israel, particularly in view of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza earlier this year. Sadly, Amnesty International USA has agreed to cooperate with Cohen in dealing with Israel on the basis of business as usual."

On Saturday, July 25, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival will show Rachel, a documentary about Rachel Corrie, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. This film by Simone Bitton is a critical, in-depth look at the life and tragic death of Rachel Corrie, the American activist killed in Gaza in 2003 by a Caterpillar bulldozer operated by the Israeli military. Rachel, working with the International Solidarity Movement, was killed while trying to prevent the demolition of a Palestinian family's home.

Max Blumenthal writes: "On May 27, journalist Jesse Rosenfeld and I set out on the streets of Tel Aviv to probe the political opinions of young local residents. We started the day filming Jewish and Palestinian Israeli students protesting a proposed law that would criminalize public observance of the Nakba, or the mass expulsion and killing of Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948. There, we interviewed Palestinian Israeli students about the rising climate of repression, then spoke to another group of students who gathered nearby to heckle their Arab classmates and demand their deportation."

Friday, 26 June 2009: Bil’in village holds press conference and a demonstration against construction of the Apartheid Wall. Palestinian residents, alongside international and Israeli activists gathered today in Bil’in to demonstrate against the Apartheid Wall.

On June 24, nearly five months after opening an investigation of University of California sociology professor William I. Robinson for alleged faculty misconduct, university officials abruptly announced that they have dismissed all charges and terminated the case. Robinson has been targeted by the Anti-Defamation League for forwarding images that made a historical comparison to the state violence of the Israeli military actions in Gaza with that of German Nazi Wehrmacht in Warsaw.

Richard Silverstein writes, "YouTube may have banned Max Blumenthal’s Feel the Hate video, but I guess the hasbara (pro-Israel propaganda) crowd hasn’t yet gotten around to complaining about the multiple YouTube abuse videos documenting verbal and emotional abuse of innocent Palestinian civilians by thuggish Israeli Border Police."

On Saturday, June 20, activists gathered at Trader Joe’s in Oakland and San Francisco to demand that the company stop carrying Israeli goods. Protesters removed Israeli products from the shelves in order to show customers which products they should not buy. They also met with the store managers and asked them to notify their headquarters that they no longer wanted to carry Israeli herbs, couscous and cheese. Similar actions were held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington, and Sacramento, California. The activists were inspired by campaigns to deshelve Israeli products in Wales and France.