Feature Archives

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.

In the early hours of Monday, June 22, 2009, settlers from the Bat ‘Ain settlement set fire and cut down more than 125 grapevines and fruit trees. Israeli soldiers said they saw a fire in the Palestinian agricultural fields some time during the night and went to put it out, though they did nothing to collect the evidence; kerosene canisters and matches were still there the next morning when activists from the Palestine Solidarity Project accompanied the farmer’s family to survey the damage.

On June 21st, the Israeli State Prosecutor ordered police to start an investigation of Indymedia Israel. At the heart of the investigation is an article posted to the website with a picture of a soldier who, according to witnesses, murdered protest organizer Abu Rahma on April 17th. The posting with the heading “murderer“ asks for the name and any other relevant information of that soldier so that he can face murder charges.

On, Saturday, June 6, hundreds came to the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, to protest 42 years of an ongoing occupation of the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and Gaza since the Six Days War in 1967. Organized by the Communist Party of Israel (Hadash), protesters held signs calling to end the clocked and bombardment of Gaza and for a just peace.