Tag Archives: International

Mondoweiss: Jewish Library cancels panel on Jewish activism because participant supports BDS

Posted on April 1, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Mondoweiss: Jewish Library cancels panel on Jewish activism because participant supports BDS

Mondoweiss, April 1, 2012, by Rae Abileah 

I was scheduled to be a panelist on an event in May at the Jewish Library in San Francisco– “Reclaiming Jewish Activism.” After a library funder, the Bureau of Jewish Education, found out I was on the panel, the news traveled up to the Jewish Federation which put pressure on the Library to cancel the event because I was too controversial–apparently because of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco guidelines re Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).  Continue reading →

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Muzzlewatch: Dershowitz v. MJ Rosenberg, Harvard One-State Conference

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Muzzlewatch: Dershowitz v. MJ Rosenberg, Harvard One-State Conference

 The campaign to silence the indomitable, indispensible MJ Rosenberg (whose analysis of Netanyahu, Obama and AIPAC is the only glimmer of light we’ve seen) continues. The Emergency Committee for Israel (a truer McCarthyite organization there never was) published an attack in the NYTimes against MJ’s employer, Media Matters, as well as the Center for American Progress, two organizations with close ties to the Democratic Party. The ad quotes Alan Dershowitz’s critique of Media Matters and CAP, and Dershowitz didn’t like that – and in his articles and interviews opposing the ECI’s use of his words, Dersh has been very clear that he won’t stop until Media Matters fires MJ or the White House fires Media Matters.

MJ is the latest target of this chief muzzler, or “heresy hunter from Harvard,” as Jeremiah Haber calls Dershowitz, whose targets have included Richard Goldstone, Norm Finkelstein, Shlomo Sand, Anat Matar, Rachel Giora – at least MJ is in good company. JJ Goldberg of the Forward defends MJ here and MJ’s latest column is as smart, impassioned, insightful and indispensible as ever, proving, once again, how much we need his thinking, his intuition, his guts, and his voice. May he only get stronger and louder.  Continue reading →

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Electronic Intifada: Zionist group fails to disrupt Ilan Pappe’s tour at California state universities

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Electronic Intifada: Zionist group fails to disrupt Ilan Pappe’s tour at California state universities

Electronic Intifada, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Feb 18, 2012

The California State University (CSU) system has sent a letter in response to a Zionist group, rejecting their claim that Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian and a frequent contributor to The Electronic Intifada, should not receive CSU sponsorship during his upcoming campus tour because of his criticism of Israeli policies.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith, professors and co-founders of theAMCHA initiative, appealed to the CSU chancellor and the presidents of CSU-Northridge, Cal Poly, and CSU-Fresno, urging them to “revoke sponsorship of Ilan Pappe’s tour.”  Continue reading →

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Electronic Intifada: Paris university pulls plug on “Israeli apartheid” talk

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Electronic Intifada: Paris university pulls plug on “Israeli apartheid” talk

Electronic Intifada, Feb 17, 2012, David Cronin

A Paris university has withdrawn permission for a Palestine solidarity conference at the behest of the Zionist lobby.

In a statement issued today, the authorities at the University of Paris 8 said that the title of the conference – “Israel: an apartheid state?” – was “of a strongly polemical character.” Because there had been strong reactions to its theme, the university predicted there could be a “serious risk posed to public order” if the event scheduled for 27 and 28 February went ahead.

The complaint against the conference was made by the representative council for Jewish organizations in France, or CRIF as it’s better known. It had objected to the participation of Omar Barghouti, coordinator of the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Continue reading →

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Ken Starr Pulling “a Clinton” on a Jewish Studies Professor at Baylor U?

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Ken Starr Pulling “a Clinton” on a Jewish Studies Professor at Baylor U?

By Keira Feldman, Religion Dispatches

“… the investigation consisted of “sort of announc[ing] to people, ‘Here’s what Marc [Ellis]’s guilty of. Now tell us what you know about him.’”

The rabbi began, “I have a special blessing-slash-prayer for Judge Starr.”

Early September 2010: fresh from a five-year stint as Dean of Pepperdine Law School, Baylor University’s newly anointed president Ken Starr celebrated the High Holidays with his Jewish colleagues. A former federal judge, though best known as independent counsel overseeing the Whitewater investigation and the Monica Lewinsky affair, Starr’s name is often accompanied by “Clinton nemesis,” or “yes, that Ken Starr.”

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Electronic Intifada: California professor under attack for opposing “study in Israel” scheme

Posted on January 25, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Electronic Intifada: California professor under attack for opposing “study in Israel” scheme
Nora Barrows-Friedman, Electronic Intifada ,25 January 2012

A mathematics professor at the California State University at Northridge is the target of an attack campaign by various pro-Israel lobby groups and individuals because he maintains a website that supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies.

Recently, Dr. David Klein has come under fire for organizing in opposition to the 23-campus-wide California State University (CSU) system’s resumption of a study abroad program in Israel, which was discontinued in 2002 because of a US State Departmentwarning on travel to the region during the second Palestinian intifada.  Continue reading →

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USPCN: Standing Up for Our Rights! Pledge to Defend Human and Civil Rights

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on USPCN: Standing Up for Our Rights! Pledge to Defend Human and Civil Rights

www.uspcn.org

The US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) passed the following resolution at its planning meeting on January 6-8, 2012, committing itself to work for the civil and human rights of the Palestinian community, particularly those targeted for FBI repression and a grand jury investigation. Those targeted in the case include labor activists, antiwar organizers, and seven Palestinian USPCN members and leaders in Chicago. For more information on the case, please see the website of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

USPCN is circulating a Pledge to Defend Civil and Human Rights and calls upon all of its members and supporters to both sign the petition online and distribute the hard-copy form at your events and activities. Send the signatures you collect to defend_peoples_rights@uspcn.org! Click here to sign the pledge now!

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Electronic Intifada: French BDS activists acquitted of crime in calling for boycott

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Electronic Intifada: French BDS activists acquitted of crime in calling for boycott

Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, Sun, 12/18/2011

Twelve French activists from a group called Boycott 68 have been acquitted on charges of “inciting discrimination and racial hatred” for calling on French shoppers to boycott Israeli goods.

The court judgment in the eastern city of Mulhouse deals a blow to efforts by French prosecutors and Zionist groups to outlaw the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. The acquittal received wide coverage in French media.

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Electronic Intifada: Fight continues for academic freedom in the US

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on Electronic Intifada: Fight continues for academic freedom in the US

Electronic Intifada, by nora, Thu, 12/15/2011

A professor at North Carolina State University is fighting the university and the state government over what seems to be a clear-cut case of discrimination and censorship due to her outspoken criticism of Israeli policy in Palestine.

Dr. Terri Ginsberg was a popular film studies professor at NCSU. But after she began publicly criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, the US-Israel alliance and Zionism (inside and outside the classroom), Ginsberg faced immediate retaliation from the university administration. As I reported back in January 2010 for The Electronic Intifada, she was “punished with partial removal from — and interference in — duty, non-renewal of contract and rejection from a tenure-track position” in 2008.

In a phone interview several days ago, Ginsberg told me that since she lost her job at NCSU, she has been essentially “blacklisted from other university teaching positions” across the country. She added that she’s applied to more than 150 jobs, and she can’t even get an interview — something, she said, that is very unusual for her and for someone with her publishing and teaching track record.

After nearly a year of exploratory panels, grievance reviews, litigation hearings and mediations by and with the university administration, Ginsberg and her lawyer, Rima Kapitan, filed a lawsuit with the North Carolina Superior Court, which in October 2010 dismissed the case, thereby favoring NCSU’s denial of tenure.

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salon.com: Exploiting the anti-Semitism smear now backfiring

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Seriously Free Speech Committee| Comments Off on salon.com: Exploiting the anti-Semitism smear now backfiring

Salon.com, December 14, 2011, Glenn Greenwald

A significant and potentially consequential controversy erupted last week whenPolitico‘s Ben Smith — seemingly out of nowhere — wrote about what he described as deviations from “the bipartisan consensus on Israel” from several writers and bloggers at two of Washington’s most well-connected Democratic political organizations: Center for American Progress and Media Matters. Naming Matt Duss, Eli Clifton, Eric Alterman and Ali Ghraib at CAP, along with former AIPAC employee MJ Rosenberg at Media Matters, Smith wrote that they regularly offer “a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins” and added: “warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP’s] blogs.” The article included a quote from a former AIPAC official accusing the two groups of publishing “anti-Israel” and “borderline anti-Semitic stuff.”

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