[News] Pro-Israel groups targeting Palestinian organizations in US, report finds

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theguardian.com 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/30/pro-israel-groups-pro-palestinian-report> 



  Pro-Israel groups targeting Palestinian organizations in US, report finds

Amanda Holpuch
30 September 2015
*http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/30/pro-israel-groups-pro-palestinian-report*

Pro-Israel organizations are increasingly targeting pro-Palestinian 
groups in the US, according to a report released by two legal advocacy 
groups on Wednesday.

In a report co-authored with the Center for Constitutional Rights, legal 
group Palestine Legal said it was called in to respond to**nearly 300 
incidents of attempted suppression of pro-Palestine activism and 
rhetoric in the past 18 months.

“These numbers aren’t telling the full story,” said Dima Khalidi, 
director of Palestine Legal. “They are really the tip of the iceberg 
with incidents that go unreported.”

The report found that, overwhelmingly, these incidents took place on 
university campuses, which have become the focus of the Boycott, 
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in recent years.

The movement encourages organizations and institutions to boycott and 
divest from Israel <http://www.theguardian.com/world/israel> until “the 
fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel” have been 
recognized.

It has been branded antisemitic by several pro-Israel groups and the 
Israeli government 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/03/israel-brands-palestinian-boycott-strategic-threat-netanyahu>. 
Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson held a closed-door meeting of fellow 
pro-Israel billionaires and activists in June 
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/05/sheldon-adelson-looks-to-stamp-out-growing-us-movement-to-boycott-israel> 
in an attempt to combat efforts to divest from Israel.

The report’s authors say that conflating pro-Palestine activism with 
antisemitism is one of the key ways pro-Israel groups attempt to 
constrain their activities.

Incidents documented in the report include criminal investigations, 
lawsuits, and the suspension of pro-Palestine student groups.

In one such example, more than 175 faculty members from 16 New York City 
colleges wrote an open letter to the City University of New York system 
in September 2014 
<http://ticker.baruchconnect.com/article/cuny-faculty-call-for-student-right-to-free-speech-in-open-letter/>,**alleging 
that pro-Palestinian student groups were treated unfairly, compared to 
other student groups.

The report also mentioned an incident in May 
<http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/27/website-targets-pro-palestinian-students-harm-job-prospects>, 
when an unknown group launched a website which profiled people 
associated with pro-Palestinian student groups, to dissuade potential 
employers from hiring them.

“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s 
employees,” the Canary Mission website**warned.

Of the 152 incidents Palestine Legal responded to**in 2014, only 12 were 
not campus-related. This year, it has so far responded to**140 
incidents, 28 of which were not campus-related.

“We’re not just talking about a handful of isolated incidents,” Khalidi 
said. “This is really a widespread problem that affects hundreds of 
people across the country.”

The report claims that dozens of pro-Israel groups are connected to 
attempts to suppress free speech, including the Zionist Organization of 
America (ZOA) <http://zoa.org/>, the AMCHA Initiative 
<http://www.amchainitiative.org/> and StandWithUs.

Roz Rothstein, CEO of pro-Israel group StandWithUs 
<http://www.standwithus.com/>, was critical of the report. She said that 
pro-Palestinian activists in the US were simply upset because they 
wanted to continue participating in work that was both anti-semitic and 
anti-Israel.

“The perpetrators are crying victim,” Rothstein said. “They are 
harassing the pro-Israel community on campus and they are crying victim.”

She said she considers the work of these groups anti-semitic because it 
meets the “3D test of antisemitism 
<http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-sharansky-f04.htm>”, defined as 
demonization, double standards and delegitimization.

“If you apply the 3Ds it is antisemitism and they can cry all they want, 
but it happens to meet the definition of antisemitic,” she said.

Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights are calling on 
universities to be more responsive to activities that they believe 
suppress pro-Palestine groups’ right to freedom of speech.

They also called on the US government to be more clear about the 
difference between criticizing Israel’s policies and antisemitism.

**************************************
Link to Palestine Legal's report 
http://palestinelegal.org/the-palestine-exception 
<http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fpalestinelegal.org%2Fthe-palestine-exception&h=JAQGmaHyTAQH4GvhkAn-ES4-qa3hz7TE67f-yN8llai4IEQ&enc=AZOFHy4DEWnQokF6oi7TDvxNURMgd8QojZMdsykumzxDXb_lp2bdm7GASfFhaK49pHxq2Qj941b9jrODZpYPI-vKd_Y1KxdpJZoedcqEV281GChqG8MHyqpCWWGYOxw0iRMXVojoOO-ErHHkoJ8CKlvxcsys7CHho7K7DjBbis5hyA&s=1> 

ALSO The Business of Backlash report by the International Jewish 
Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN)
http://www.ijan.org/resources/business-of-backlash/

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