The Oslo city council announced, “foodstuffs coming from Israeli-occupied areas must be labelled with the area from which the product comes and must indicate that it is from an Israeli settlement, if that is its source.”

The Norwegian government had already made a rule in 2022 that goods from the Occupied Territories could not be marked “Made in Israel,” only those produced inside Israel within its 1949 borders.

It may not be an accident that Oslo made this decision now. Daniel Boguslaw at The Intercept raised the question of whether the far, far right government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which is filled with open racists, fascists and Jewish supremacists, might be the best ally the movement for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel has ever had. Global headlines have been full of the hate filled comments of cabinet ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich urged the ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian hamlet.

The Geneva Convention on occupied territories of 1949 and the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court in 2002 both strictly forbid countries that occupy the territory of neighbors in wartime from settling their own citizens in this territory. The stricture came in response to atrocities committed by the Axis powers in World War II, as when Germany occupied Poland in 1939 and settled it with German citizens even as the Nazis killed and displaced Poles– in a bid to make Poland German and “Aryan” and to wipe out Slavs.

Israeli authorities have since the 1970s assiduously ignored international law and have subsidized the settling of hundreds of thousands of squatters on privately owned Palestinian farms, orchards and town property. At the same time, the Israeli state permanently locked some 300,000 Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza and has exerted various forms of pressure on them to emigrate abroad. They have also illegally annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem and part of the Palestinian West Bank near it, into which they are also putting squatters. Israeli squatter settlements are Jews-only and discriminate against Palestinian residents in Palestine itself.

Oslo’s principled stand is the form of BDS that I favor.

Via Pixabay: Oslo, file.

That is, I don’t think it is fair to boycott ordinary Israelis, many of whom do not like the squatters or their goals. Israel sits in the United Nations as a recognized state, and Oslo is not interested in boycotting companies or products produced in the state as it came into the UN, under the borders of the 1949 armistice. However, virtually everything Israeli authorities have done in the West Bank and Gaza since they were seized in 1967 has been grossly illegal. Worse, Israeli authorities have deprived the occupied Palestinians of the basic right to citizenship in the state, keeping them without even the right to have rights.

Much post-war international law was passed in an attempt to implement a “Never Again” policy — no more aggressive wars, no more annexations of neighbors’ territory, no more genocides against minorities such as Jews, Romani, gays and Poles. In flouting international law, Israeli authorities undermine their own alleged commitment to the principle of “Never again.” They have launched aggressive wars, displaced hundreds of thousands of people (who now have 11 million descendants), illegally annexed territory, and have squatted on occupied territory. The Holocaust can be viewed through the lens of Jewish nationalism or Zionism, such that it becomes a justification for Jews to refuse to be bound by international law or yield to outside pressure. Or it can be viewed through the lens of a humanist universalism, such that it is one of many horrific genocides in the twentieth century — the Armenian, the Polish, the Cambodian, and so forth — and the lesson we take away from it is not a Likud or Religious Zionism ‘get out of jail free’ card allowing the flouting of all laws and norms but the urgent necessity of upholding the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute with a determination that the lawlessness of the Nazis, of Mussolini’s black shirts, and of the Japanese imperial armed forces should never be repeated.

Oslo’s boycott is in furtherance of a rules-based international order, and is therefore highly praiseworthy.

By responding to the Palestinian call for boycotting apartheid Israel, the ice cream giant has delivered a blow to Israel’s attempts at criminalising and, ultimately, ending the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

What differentiates Ben & Jerry’s decision to abandon the ever-growing market of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank from previous decisions by other international corporations is the fact that the ice cream company has made it clear that its move was morally motivated. Indeed, Ben & Jerry’s did not attempt to mask or delude their decision in any way. “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a statement by the Vermont, US-based company read on 19 July.

Expectedly, the Israeli government was infuriated by the decision, especially as it comes after years of a well-funded, state-sponsored, global campaign to discredit, demonise and altogether outlaw the BDS movement and any similar initiatives that aimed at boycotting Israel.

For years, the Israeli government has viewed the boycott movement as a real, tangible threat. Some Israeli officials went as far as perceiving the ‘delegitimisation’ resulting from the boycott campaign as the primary threat faced by Israel at the present time. Well attended conferences were held in Las Vegas, Brussels, Jerusalem and elsewhere, hundreds of millions of dollars raised, fiery speeches delivered, while politicians and ‘philanthropists’ lined up at many occasions, vowing their undying allegiance to Israel and accusing anyone who dare criticise the ‘Jewish State’ of ‘anti-Semitism’.

However, Israel’s biggest challenge was, and remains, its near complete reliance on the support of self-serving politicians. True, those ‘friends of Israel’ can be quite helpful in formulating laws that, for example, falsely equate between criticising Israel and anti-Semitism, or render the act of boycott illegal, and so on. In fact, many US states and European parliaments have bowed down to Israeli pressure to criminalise the BDS movement and its supporters, whether in the realm of business or even at the level of civil society and individuals. All of this is amounting to very little.

Additionally, Israel doubled down on its attempts to control the narrative in mainstream media, in academia and wherever the anti-Israeli occupation debate proved to be consequential. Through a Kafkaesque, and often bizarre logic, Israel and its supporters deliberately misinterpreted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, applying it at every platform where criticism of Israel or its Zionist ideology is found. The reckless Israeli dialectics was, sadly – albeit predictably – embraced by many of Israel’s Western benefactors, including the US, Canada and Italy, among others.

Yet, none of this has ended or even slowed down the momentum of the Palestinian boycott movement. This fact should hardly come as a surprise, for boycott movements are fundamentally designed to circumvent governmental control and to place pressure on politicians, state and corporate apparatuses, so that they may heed the calls of civil society. Thus, the more Israel attempts to use its allies to illegalise, delegitimise and suppress dissent, the more it actually fuels it.

The above is the secret of the BDS success and Israel’s very Achilles’ heel. By ignoring the boycott campaign, the movement grows exponentially; and by fighting it, using traditional means and predictable language, it grows even faster.

In order to appreciate Tel Aviv’s unsolvable quandary, just marvel at this odd response, which was offered by top Israeli officials in response to Ben & Jerry’s decision. Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, warned the British company that acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, of “severe consequences”, threatening that Israel will take “strong action”, most likely referring to legal action.

But what was truly strange was the language used by Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who accused Ben & Jerry’s of participating in “a new form of terrorism”, namely, “economic terrorism”. On 21 July, Herzog vowed to fight “this boycott and terrorism in any form.”

Note how the Israeli response to the continued success of the Palestinian boycott movement remains confined in terms of options and language. Yet on the legal front, most attempts at indicting BDS activists have repeatedly failed, as the recent court rulings in Washington demonstrate. On the other hand, the act of accusing an ice cream company of ‘terrorism’ deserves some serious examination.

Historically, Israel has situated its anti-Palestinian propaganda war within a handful of redundant terminology, predicated on the claim that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, the security and very existence of which is constantly being threatened by terrorists and undermined by anti-Semites.

The above mantra may have succeeded in shielding Israel from criticism and tarnishing Israel’s victims, the Palestinians. However, it is no longer a guarantor of international sympathy and solidarity. Not only is the Palestinian struggle for freedom gaining global traction, but the pro-Israeli discourse is finally discovering its limitations.

By calling an ice cream company ‘terrorist’ for simply adhering to international law, Herzog has revealed the growing lack of credibility and absurdity of the official Israeli language.

But this is not the end of Israel’s problems. Regardless of whether they are branded successful or unsuccessful, all BDS campaigns are equally beneficial in the sense that each campaign kickstarts a conversation that often goes global, as we have seen repeatedly in the past. Airbnb, G4S, and SodaStream, are but a few of many such examples. Any global debate on Israel’s military occupation and apartheid is a BDS success story.

That said, there is one strategy that will surely end the BDS campaign, and that is ending the Israeli occupation, dismantling the racial system of apartheid and giving Palestinians their freedom as enshrined and protected by international law. Alas, this is the only strategy that Israeli officials are yet to consider.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

—–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

MSNBC: “Mehdi Hasan Rants On Ben & Jerry’s Israel Drama”

After years of BDS campaign appeals to them, the US ice cream maker declared that it would no longer be selling its products in Israeli settlements in the West Bank – on stolen Palestinian land, in other words.

The BDS movement has welcomed the move as a step in the right direction, calling on Ben and Jerry’s to go further and withdraw from Israel altogether.

Palestine’s BDS National Committee (or BNC) said it was: “A decisive step towards ending the company’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of Palestinian rights.”

The BNC hailed the company for: “Finally bringing its policy on Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians in line with its progressive positions on Black Lives Matter and other justice struggles.”

Starting as a small business in Vermont, Ben and Jerry’s has a reputation as a socially responsible company. It has an official policy of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, declaring in 2016 that: “Systemic and institutionalised racism are the defining civil rights and social justice issues of our time.”

Although it broadly welcomed Ben and Jerry’s move on Monday, the BNC concluded its statement calling for the company to do more and to: “End all operations in apartheid Israel.”

The Israeli licensee for Ben and Jerry’s told reporters that he had declined the US company’s request to end its supply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “I refuse it,” he said, stating that such an action would likely fall foul of Israel’s anti-BDS laws. As such, the licencing agreement it has with its Israeli distributor – which ends at the end of next year – will not be renewed.

Some activists on social media were unimpressed, demanding that Ben and Jerry’s withdraw from Israel altogether.

In my view, it was at least a step in the right direction, and the company is soon going to come up against the sharp wall of Israel’s support for its West Bank settlements. The West Bank settlements are Israel – and the reality is that all of Israel is a settlement. The West Bank settlements are fully integrated into Israel’s economy, laws and state infrastructure.

Palestinians in the West Bank, of course, are fully discriminated against by Israel’s apartheid system. Indigenous Palestinians living in the same areas as the newly-arrived Israeli settlers illegally squatting on their stolen land have none of the same rights as the Israelis.

That is a prime example of exactly why Israel is an apartheid system.

The reactions from Israeli government officials, politicians and anti-Palestinian propagandists in the West have been nothing short of unhinged.

Israel lobbyist Ian Austin (a former MP who left the Labour Party over Jeremy Corbyn’s support of Palestinian rights and who relentlessly smeared the former leader as “anti-Semitic”) tweeted openly anti-Palestinian racism, mocking up a fake Ben and Jerry’s ice cream tub that included the name of Hamas.

Former prime minister and opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared – with no sense of irony or self-awareness – a boycott of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

The current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, dubbed Ben and Jerry’s an “anti-Israel ice cream” and declared that the government would fight the boycott “with all our might“.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (a former TV news host) smeared the ice cream maker as anti-Semitic and demanded that states in the US with anti-BDS laws apply them in this case.

In reality, every single time that US states’ anti-BDS laws have been brought before superior courts, they have been repealed as blatantly unconstitutional. Five states have already done so.

Israel’s president – supposedly a “moderate” – threw an even wilder tantrum, claiming the frozen dessert maker’s actions were “a new kind of terrorism“.

There is going to be a reckoning: it is almost certainly going to be impossible for Ben and Jerry’s to supply companies in “Israel proper” only, and not to West Bank settlements. In practice, the Israeli economy makes no distinction between the two. Ben and Jerry’s is ultimately going to have to make one of two decisions: to reverse the announcement it made on Monday, or to withdraw from Israel altogether. We must ensure it makes the latter.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

——-

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

WION: “The West Asia Post | Meltdown over ice cream in Israel”

In 2019 documentary film-maker Abby Martin was invited to speak at a planned 2020 conference at Georgia Southern University and offered a $1000 honorarium plus travel expenses. Judge Cohen’s judgement says, “One week later, a professor at GSU and conference co-chair emailed several professors at other academic institutions to inform them that Martin had been selected as the keynote speaker for the Conference.In that email, the professor referred to Martin as a “fantastic Key Note,” and planning for the Conference continued.”

But before GSU could pay her, they needed her to sign a pledge that she would not boycott Israel. Martin, who later did a documentary on Gaza and views Israel as a settler-colonial apartheid state, refused to sign the pledge. Cohen writes,

“Martin responded the same day, stating:

‘I’m sure you know, a lot of my work advocates the boycott of Israel, and my new film features that call to action.I cannot sign any form promising not to boycott Israel.’

As a result,Defendants prevented Martin from speaking at the Conference and receiving the$1,000 honorarium, and subsequently cancelled the Conference.

.As a result, Martin was deprived of her ability to speak on the GSU campus, to receive the honorarium, and to showcase her work.”

The GSU invitation was then withdrawn and the conference she was to have addressed, on critical media theory, was canceled.

Then governor Nathan Deal had signed SB 327 into law in 2016. It obligated any person or company that contracted with the state of Georgia for services of $1000 or more to vow not to boycott the Israeli government as a result of its treatment of Palestinians.

Judge Cohen’s ruling concluded,

“The requirement contained in O.C.G.A. § 50-5-85 that parties seeking to contract with the state of Georgia sign a certification that they are not engaged in a boycott of Israel also is unconstitutional compelled speech. “[W]hen a State attempts to make inquiries about a person’s beliefs or associations, its power is limited by the First Amendment. Broad and sweeping state inquiries into these protected areas . . . discourage citizens from exercising rights protected by the Constitution.” Baird v. State Bar of Ariz. 401 U.S. 1, 6 (1971). “Similarly, the State may not condition employment ‘on an oath denying past, or abjuring future/protected speech and associational activities.” Amawi, 373 F. Supp. 3d at 754(quoting Cole, 405 U.S. at 680).Because O.C.G.A. § 50-5-85 discriminates based on the motive for engaging in a boycott against Israel, the certification requirement forces parties contracting21Case 1:20-cv-00596-MHC Document 53 Filed 05/21/21 Page 21 of 29 with the state of Georgia to publicly assign a motive and speech element to what Defendants deem merely economic conduct. The certification that one is not engaged in a boycott of Israel is no different that requiring a person to espouse certain political beliefs or to engage in certain political associations. The Supreme Court has found similar requirements to be unconstitutional on their face.”

It is fascinating the degree to which Cohen’s ruling depended for its reasoning on the previous federal district court decisions striking down anti-boycott laws relating to Israel in Kansas, Texas and Arizona.

These rulings underlined the importance of Claiborne (1982), and Cohen concurred.

I pointed out that without political boycotts the Civil Rights movement might well not have succeeded. Charles Evers and the NAACP boycotted Claiborne Hardware store in Mississippi, and the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so, writing, “While States have broad power to regulate economic activities, there is no comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case.”

Martin gained the backing of the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations {CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in launching a lawsuit against the state, alleging that requiring her to sign that pledge violated her first amendment rights.

What is not widely understood is that professors, journalists and others who speak at state universities are considered contractors with the state, so that this law directly interfered with freedom of speech and academic freedom. Most such speakers cannot afford to fly around giving public talks on their own dime, so if the university cannot pick up the tab, those ideas don’t get shared. And, further note that the speaker would not be necessarily speaking on Israel-Palestine. Some people who have been economically harmed by these bills who don’t in fact boycott Israel, but simply won’t sign a loyalty pledge of any sort since it injures their constitutional rights.

The University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College “cancelled their ads with Little Rock’s Arkansas Times because owner Alan Leveritt won’t sign a pledge that his business does not boycott Israel. Leveritt doesn’t boycott Israel, but he considers a state law passed by Arkansas and 27 other states to be unconstitutional and he would rather risk his business than surrender his First Amendment rights.” The federal 8th circuit court eventually struck down the Arkansas law, though it is still in litigation.

The Georgia law is one of 38 passed by state legislatures around the United States. Whenever they have been challenged in court they have been struck down. The laws have been pushed by the US Israel lobbies, likely in conjunction with the Israeli government itself, in a frontal assault on the US constitution and American freedoms of expression and the press. The groups include Agudath Israel of America, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, Israel Action Network, Israel Allies Foundation, Israel Project, Israeli-American Coalition for Action, (IAC for Action) an offshoot to the Israeli-American Council (IAC, Jewish Federations of North America, StandWithUs, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Zionist Organization of America. Jewish Americans in earlier decades had been absolutely crucial to the expansion of American liberties under the First Amendment, and Judge Cohen stands in that proud tradition. It is sad to see this hard line pro-Likud section of them now attempt to impose a Communist-style censorship on other Americans.

This country began with the Boston Tea Party, which was a boycott of the British East India Company.

—-

Bonus Video:

The Humanist Report: “Abby Martin WINS Lawsuit Against Georgia—Court Strikes Down Their Anti-BDS Law”

In a bid to please his evangelical constituency and potential Jewish big money backers like Sheldon Adelson, Pompeo made two announcements. He declared that goods produced by the Israeli squatter settlers on Palestinian property (which they have stolen from living Palestinian families), and which are imported into the US, will be labeled “Made in Israel.” In contrast, the European Union’s highest court has ruled that goods produced by Israeli squatters on the West Bank must be labeled as such when imported into Europe.

Pompeo also pledged to deny Federal funds to any group that advocates the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel for its Apartheid policies and war crimes against the Palestinian people.

The far right wing Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has been attempting to destroy the US First Amendment for years, so as to push through laws in the US that would forbid criticism of Israel. In Trump and Pompeo he has found willing accomplices.

State legislatures have also attempted to deny funding to individuals and organizations that practice BDS toward Israel, and the courts have consistently struck down these unconstitutional laws. Likewise, the European Court of Human Rights has struck down French government attempts to penalize BDS advocates, in a landmark decision this past summer that affects all 27 EU member states. (See below for more on this).

The WaPo reporters note that neither policy will likely survive more than than the two months the Trump administration has left in office.

What they don’t say is that the denial of funds to BDS advocates is unconstitutional, and would be struck down even by the present the Supreme Court if it remained in place.

A further important point: White supremacists have been trying to ban boycotts since the Civil Rights Movement, and Pompeo’s measures on Thursday were intended to weaken that key First Amendment right.

I have explained before:

Boycotts aren’t illegal, and we have Supreme Court cases to prove it . . .
The key case is NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware.

Wikipedia explains,

[I]n 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and a young black man, Roosevelt Jackson was shot and killed by two Port Gibson police officers. On April 19, 1968, the field secretary of the NAACP for Mississippi, Charles Evers, led a march to the Claiborne County courthouse and demanded that the entire Port Jefferson police force be discharged When the demand was not met, the boycott on the merchants was [imposed]. On April 21, Evers made a speech in which he said, “If we catch any of you going into these racist stores, we’re going to break your damn neck . . .

“In a decision by Justice Stevens, the Supreme Court reversed the Supreme Court of Mississippi’s decision, holding that the nonviolent elements of the petitioners’ activities were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and holding that the petitioners were not liable in damages for the consequences of their nonviolent, protected activity. This decision means that “boycotts and related activities to bring about political, social and economic change are political speech, occupying “the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”

The Supreme Court found for the NAACP and against Claiborne Hardware in 1982: “While States have broad power to regulate economic activities, there is no comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case.”

It is important to explain that Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza in 1967, even though the civilian populations there were not active in the Six Day War, which was fought among states. International law, as with the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, envisages relatively short military occupations. It forbids the occupying power to alter the life ways of the occupied population, and strictly prohibits the settling of the Occupier’s population in the occupied territory.

h/t Wikimedia..

The Geneva Convention’s outlawing of settling the occupied territory was intended to prevent schemes like the one Nazi Germany attempted to implement in Poland once it invaded and occupied it, whereby Berlin sought to expel the Poles and replace them with ethnic Germans, creating a greater Germany that stretched east, and erasing the Polish nationality.

Netanyahu wants to prevent criticism of his government for its monstrous plan forever to keep Palestinians stateless and without rights, and to gradually displace them by Israeli squatters. The Founding Fathers’ First Amendment is extremely inconvenient for him, and thus he wants to chip away at it, deploying sleazy politicians like Pompeo.

I wrote earlier,

Economic boycotts have been part and parcel of American political striving for liberty from the beginning. I have three words for you: Boston Tea Party. What do you think the American colonists were doing when they tossed 342 chests of British tea into the harbor? They were boycotting, divesting and sanctioning the injustice of King George III.

Two Federal judges have already found state laws that attempt to punish companies or individuals for boycotting Israel unconstitutional, one in Kansas and one in Arizona.

When Kansas fired Mennonite school teacher Esther Koontz from a program to train other teachers over her refusal to certify that she doesn’t boycott Israel (she does), the ACLU took the case to court and a Federal judge struck down the Kansas statute. The state legislature then reformulated so that it only affected big businesses under certain circumstances, which is also unconstitutional, but made it a little unlikely that the law would affect anyone.

The same tactic is being pursued in the Arizona legislature, after a broad anti-boycott law was struck down by the courts. The GOP is now redoing the law in such a way that it is unlikely to affect anyone in the real world and so unlikely to be further challenged.

Of course they are unconstitutional. They are also racist, aimed at keeping brown Palestinians down.

It should be noted that the laws do not only punish companies. Most states treat individuals providing them services as companies categorized as “sole proprietors.” University professors invited to speak on campus in the states with these horrid laws have been asked to sign statements they don’t boycott Israel before being allowed to speak. These procedures are the most dangerous assault on free speech in the United States since the McCarthy era.

As for the European Court of Human Rights, here is that story:

The French government actually arrested some members of the Left Front (Front de Gauche) political coalition, which has seats in the French National Assembly and in the European Union, for boycotting Israel, charging them with engaging in discriminatory practices. The Israeli far right, which is about as racist as the come, cynically manipulates public opinion in Europe and the US by claiming that criticizing its war crimes against Palestinians is a form of racial bigotry directed at Jews. This ridiculous charge is often actually taken seriously by people who should know better, including, apparently a French magistrate.

The defendants in the French case took it to the European Court of Human Rights, which on Thursday struck down the French court decision with prejudice, saying it had “no relevant and sufficient grounds,” and ordered the French government to pay over $100,000 in damages to the defendants. Since the decision affects all 27 EU member states, it is a huge defeat for the Israeli far right, and a big victory in Europe for freedom of speech.

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Bonus Video:

TRT World: “American journalist banned for rejecting pledge to not boycott Israel”

The decision on June 19, 2020, by two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee, continues a string of victories for the ASA in a case it has defended since April 2016. Thomas C. Mugavero of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston L.L.P. argued the cause for appellees with counsel on the joint brief from Mark Allen Kleiman, and Maria C. LaHood and Shayana D. Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Background
In December 2013, with the recognition that “there is no effective or substantive academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars under conditions of Israeli occupation” and that “Israeli institutions of higher learning are a party to Israeli state policies that violate human rights,” the ASA’s National Council endorsed “the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” This resolution was ratified by the ASA’s membership with a vote of 66.05% “yes,” 30.5% “no,” and 3.43% “abstain.”

The ASA has previously won dismissal of two cases in New York brought by Israeli organizations, the International Legal Forum (ILF) and Athenaeum Blue & White. (The latter was incorporated by David Abrams on the day he filed the lawsuit. Founder of the Zionist Advocacy Center, which is a registered foreign agent for the ILF, Abrams has sued a wide range of entities, including the Carter Center, the National Lawyers Guild, the City of Durham, and at least three universities. He also petitioned the IRS to revoke the charitable status of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders.)

In their lawsuits alleging ASA’s boycott resolution and activities violate state and city human rights laws, the ILF and Abrams complained that the ASA does not permit Israeli organizations to become members, despite ILF’s admission that it never attempted to apply for membership and Abrams admission that his group’s application was fulfilled by ASA. The courts ruled that these organizations, having suffered no injury, had no standing to sue the ASA. The judge in Manhattan went a step further to opine: “Moreover, even if ILF’s claims were ripe, this court strains to see how ASA’s actions, as alleged by ILF, would not be protected under ASA’s right to freedom of association.”
The United States Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Bronner, et al. v. Duggan, et al, caps a succession of rejections of the Plaintiffs’ claims and arguments in the federal courts.

• In March 2017, the district court dismissed “derivative claims” brought by the Bronner, et al., who made a failed attempt to represent what they claimed were the interests of the ASA.
• By February 2019, the district court dismissed all remaining claims against the ASA, including the “ultra vires” claim in which Bronner, et al., accused the ASA of violating its own express purposes and bylaws in passing, implementing, and defending the boycott resolution.
• As the court noted, Bronner, et al., also claimed “that—merely by their position as ASA members—they are entitled to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the ASA and individual defendants for alleged misuse related to the boycott resolution. The ASA’s successful repudiation of this claim—made by academics who, while burdening the ASA with legal fees for several years, profess to be concerned about the ASA’s well-being—has protected these resources for the interests of our organization and the concerns of our diverse membership.

New Court of Appeals Ruling
With its ruling of June 19, 2020, the Court of Appeals has thoroughly rejected the arguments of Bronner, et al, to overturn these dismissals. It twice cited Bronner, Rockland, Kupfer, and Barton for stretching the relevance of case law “too far” and elsewhere opined that “the case law does not corroborate their unsupported assertions.” It repudiated the attempts of Bronner, et al., to utilize a valid direct claim as a “Trojan horse to sneak” invalid “derivative claims past the bulwarks of the federal courts.” The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claims for punitive damages. What may be of particular interest to ASA members is the court’s ruling denying the standing of Bronner, et al., to have their case heard in federal court based on the value of their alleged damages. “The Professors have provided nothing beyond a bare-bones assertion of jurisdictional sufficiency,” the judges declared, “to suggest that the monetary damages arising from their direct claims even remotely approach [the required threshold of] $75,000.” In other words, even if one took the major leap to assume that their claims were valid for the sake of argument, Bronner, et al., were deemed to have wildly overstated the maximum potential value of the damages they claimed to have suffer.
The decision by the federal Court of Appeals points out that that Bronner, et al., despite having multiple opportunities to do so, have offered no evidence that they suffered in any measurable way from decisions ASA leaders have made from the passage of the boycott resolution to the filing of their complaints. Regarding their apparent inability to identify any actual damages, the federal Court of Appeals noted:

“The Professors nowhere explain how they have suffered economic or reputational damage. They assert no loss of standing within their universities. They do not purport to have been denied tenure, promotions or other prestigious honors. Nor do they claim to have had their writings rejected by academic journals.”

This repeated failure by Bronner, et. al, moved the Court to cite a passage from a prior case: “a litigant has an obligation to spell out its arguments squarely and distinctly, or else forever hold its peace.”

Forward in this Generation
Although this victory leaves other pending litigation unresolved, the ASA will keep moving forward in these urgent times. We will continue to defend our work, our reputation, and our members who come under attack. We will continue to form principled alliances in the interests of academic freedom and social justice. Through our meetings, journal, elections, chapters, committees, caucuses, and other communications, we will continue to host dialogue, debate, and disagreement among those who value and appreciate critical and engaged scholarship that rises to the challenges of this moment in history.

We thank you for your solidarity and support.

Link to the opinion filed by Judge Henderson: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/19-7017/19-7017-2020-06-19.html

Via American Studies Association

Reprinted with permission.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

American Studies Association: “#2019ASA Decolonizing Methodologies: 20 Years of Research for Indigenous Peoples and Social Justice”

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) called for the action to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as part of its “Apartheid Off Campus” campaign, which seeks to highlight how universities’ investment and partnership policies tacitly support and enable Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and human rights.

Actions include rallies, marches and banner drops, as well as a range of creative actions such as the construction of a Separation Wall and staging a die in.

“We’re joining thousands of students across the UK taking action today because we believe students should have a say in the investments and partnerships made by their universities, and we do not want those links to contribute to the ongoing oppression of Palestinian people,” Chair of KCL Action Palestine Society Zobia Shahid said.

READ: Repression of the BDS movement is a sure sign of its success

“At KCL, we’ve just launched a campaign against the university’s links with the Technion which has helped create machines which destroy Palestinian homes. We will not accept this happening in our name,” she added.

Huda Ammori, campaigns officer at the PSC, said: “Despite most institutions holding ‘social responsibility policies’ which often include restrictions on investing in companies who conduct business which leads to human rights violations, UK universities remain deeply complicit with Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. In the face of such blatant hypocrisy by UK universities, students are doing vital work holding their institutions to account and demanding they live up to their word.”

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

——–

Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The Real News: “Historian Ilan Pappe of Exeter U.: ‘We Need Sustained International Pressure on Israel’ Pt. 2”

Twenty-two-year-old student Lara al-Qassem was granted an A/2 Student Visa for her master’s degree at the Hebrew University by the Israeli consulate in Miami, US, for an entire year.

However, when al-Qassem landed at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv she was refused entry into Israel and is still held in Israeli detention at the Ben Gurion Airport.

The Israeli Population, Immigration and Border Authority said that al-Qassem was denied entry “because of boycott activity,” and added that she will remain at the airport until her appeal against the planned deportation is heard.

The boycott activity referred to a period when al-Qassem was studying for her bachelor’s degree and was president of Florida state’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which had less than 10 members, that promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel as a way to battle the occupation.

The Israeli Authority added that the concession of the student visa from the Israeli consulate in Miami was due to “lack of coordination” with other Israeli missions around the world.

In addition, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry said that al-Qassem was a member of an organization known as “National Students for Justice in Palestine,” which supposedly added to the reasons of being rejected entry into Israel.

According to al-Qassem’s lawyer, Yotam Ben Hillel, despite her receiving a valid visa, the official reason was “the prevention of illegal immigration” and “concern for public order.”

Al-Qassem spoke to Hebrew-language news outlets, and said that interviewers inquired about her ethnicity and the names of her father and grandfather.

Israeli Minister of Public Security and Strategic Affairs, Gilad Erdan, posted on his official Twitter account that Israel would reconsider its position regarding al-Qassem’s entry to Israel, if she declares clearly and explicitly that she was wrong in the past, and that she believes today that supporting the boycott of Israel and BDS is a mistake.

Additionally, the ministry denied the request of a group of academics from the Hebrew University, where al-Qassem was to study for her master’s degree, to visit her in the airport’s detention facility.

Following al-Qassem being denied entry, three Israeli MKs from the Meretz party, Party leader Tamar Zandberg, Mossi Raz and Issawi Frej, visited her after an intervention by Arye Dery, the Israeli Minister of Interior.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement is a global campaign promoting various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets what the campaign describes as “Israel’s obligations under international law,” which include its withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation wall in the occupied West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens in Israel, and promotion of the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homelands, now known as Israel.

Although the BDS movement has been opposed by many Jews around the world, the movement still gained numerous supporters, including celebrities, such as Roger Waters and Stephen Hawking.

In response to the movement, Israel passed a law in 2017 prohibiting the entry of foreigners who call for boycotts on Israel or its illegal settlements. The law truly banned several Americans who planned to visit Israel, including Ariel Elyse Gold, a Jewish American BDS activist and national co-director of CODEPINK, a women’s peace organization.

Via Maan News Agency