Educational Protest: Ben & Jerry’s
Sunday, June 22nd from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. @ The House of Hope Presbyterian Church, 797 Summit Avenue, St. Paul
Ben Cohen & Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, will be speaking in the sanctuary of House of Hope at 2:00 p.m.about green business, business ethics and corporate responsibility. Yet its franchise in Israel is selling ice cream in Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. The settlements are illegal under international law. Ben & Jerry’s can help end the occupation, now in its 47th year, by refusing to do business with these settlements. Our purpose is to educate those attending the event about the fact that selling ice cream in the illegal settlements contradicts Ben & Jerry’s Social Mission which “seeks to meet human needs and eliminate injustices in our local, national and international communities.” In addition to our presence outside, some members will attend their talk and ask questions of Ben & Jerry themselves. Posters and flyers will be provided. Sponsored by: Middle East Peace Now (MEPN). FFI: Visit MEPN.org
Film showing – Checkpoints in Palestine
Checkpoints in Palestine
See Anna Baltzer’s documentary
In choosing a daycare for his little girl, a Palestinian dad couldn’t consider her quality of care, only
whether there would be a “flying checkpoint” set up so he would be unable to pick her up after work.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014, at 1:00 pm
First Unitarian Society 1900 Mt. Curve Ave., Minneapolis
Scholar Ed Schwartzbauer will be there to answer questions after the documentary.
Book reading and discussion: Wrapped in the Flag of Israel
WRAPPED IN THE FLAG OF ISRAEL
Mizrahi Single Mothers and Bureaucratic Torture
Wednesday, April 23 at 12:00 noon
235 Blegen Hall, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
AND
Thursday, April 24, 2014 at 7:00 pm
May Day Books, 301 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis, MN
UPDATE April 21: There are two opportunities to see Smadar Lavie: a brownbag lunch at Blegen Hall on the University and May Day Books on 301 Cedar Ave. Hope to see you there!
Smadar Lavie Visiting Fellow, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley; Visiting Professor, Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st, Century, University College Cork
What is the relationship between social protest movements in the State of Israel, violence in Gaza, and the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran? Why did the mass social protests in the State of Israel of summer 2011 ultimately fail? Wrapped in the Flag of Israel discusses social protest movements from the 2003 Single Mothers’ March led by Mizrahi Vicky Knafo, to the “Tahrir is Here” Israeli mass protests of summer 2011. Equating bureaucratic entanglements with pain—what, arguably, can be seen as torture, Smadar Lavie explores the conundrum of loving and staying loyal to a state that repeatedly inflicts pain on its non-European Jewish women citizens through its bureaucratic system. The book presents a model of bureaucracy as divine cosmology and posits that Israeli State bureaucracy is based on a theological essence that fuses the categories of religion, gender, and race into the foundation of citizenship.
Smadar Lavie is a visiting fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley, and a visiting professor at the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century, University College Cork. Lavie spent nine years as Assistant and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis. She specializes in the Anthropology of Egypt, the State of Israel, and Palestine, with emphasis on issues of race, gender, and religion. Her publications include The Poetics of Military Occupation (University of California Press) that received an Honorable Mention for the Victor Turner Award for Ethnographic Writing in 1990. She is also the co-editor of Creativity/Anthropology (Cornell UP, 1993), and Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity (Duke UP 1996). She is a winner of the American Studies Association¹s 2009 Gloria Anzaldúa Prize, and of the 2013 “Heart at East” Honor Plaque for lifetime service to Mizrahi communities in the State of Israel.
University of Minnesota Israeli Apartheid Week
Join the Students for Justice in Palestine
for Israeli Apartheid Week
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MONDAY, APRIL 7
10:30 am – 2:30 pm
Visual Display – COFFMAN FRONT PLAZA
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
What is Apartheid? – COFFMAN MEMORIAL UNION 325
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
5:30 pm – 8:00 pm
“Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine” Film & Discussion – MOOS 2-520
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9
10:30 am – 2:30 pm
Visual Display – COFFMAN FRONT PLAZA
4:00 pm – 5:15 pm
Life in Palestine: Student Panel – MCB 2-122
THURSDAY, APRIL 10
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
Trigger-Happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank – CMU 325
FRIDAY, APRIL 11
11:30 am
Die-in – 2nd Floor CMU
Land Day Commemoration – Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund
Minneapolis, MN, March 30, 2014, 5:00 pm at Mayday Books, 301 Cedar Avenue
In 1976, in response to a non-violent demonstration against announced Israeli appropriation of Palestinian land, Israel’s army shot dead six Palestinians, wounded hundreds and arrested hundreds more. The commemoration of this massacre has been called Land Day. This year the Stop the JNF Campaign and other organizations (see below) mark the anniversary with the showing of a documentary film by Alex Safron, called Enduring Roots: Over a Century of Resistance to the Jewish National Fund.
From the opening scenes showing a Jewish National Fund bulldozer destroying a Bedouin’s tent in the Naqab to interviews with the victims of on-going ethnic cleansing, the 39-minute film Enduring Roots gives a clear and honest picture of the devastating impact that the Jewish National Fund (JNF or JNF-KKL) has on the lives of Palestinians. For over a century the JNF has been instrumental in expelling Palestinians from their homes and land and creating towns, villages and parks for Israeli Jews out of the ruins. This film shows the expulsion, how Palestinian civilians are affected and the ways that Palestinians are resisting that expulsion.
The event is sponsored by Stop the JNF Campaign, Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC), and the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN). The film showing will be followed by a discussion. Join us on Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 5:00 pm at Mayday Books, 301 Cedar Ave., Minneapolis. $5.00 suggested donation (no one turned away).
Film Showing: Al Helm: Martin Luther King in Palestine
This year African American History Month overlaps with Israeli Apartheid Week.
Join us at 7:00 pm on Friday, February 28 at 4200 Cedar Ave. S., Minneapolis for a film showing of Al Helm [The Dream]: Martin Luther King in Palestine. (Suggested donation $5.00; no one turned away).
“What would happen if African-American Christians – the same group who served as exemplars of the Civil Rights Movement – could witness first-hand the plight of Palestinians today?” asks the Vancouver International film festival. The film is about an African-American gospel choir visiting Palestine to produce Clayborne Carson’s play about Martin Luther King Jr., called Passages of Martin Luther King. They witness life under occupation and the non-violent movement for social justice. You can watch the trailer here: http://www.clarityfilms.org/mlk/.
Jim Haber, in his review of the film on Mondoweiss writes, “Beyond its excellent production quality, Al Helm—Arabic for “the dream”— has great crossover potential because it shows several (largely) apolitical, Black Americans meeting a people still locked in the nightmare of oppression. Their experiences at first seem just confusing to them, then political, and ultimately political and very personal.”
This film showing is sponsored by Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign (MN BBC) and the University of Minnesota Students for Justice in Palestine (MN SJP).
2014 Precinct Caucuses February 4!
The 2014 Precinct Caucuses will be held all over the state on Tuesday evening February 4. We are encouraging all our members to attend the caucus in your district and bring forward one of the two following resolutions. The first resolution specifically mentions Israel, as in “the State of Minnesota shall immediately divest from any investments in government bonds of the State of Israel.” The second resolution says only that the State of Minnesota shall divest from and not invest in any country which commits serious human rights abuses and war crimes. These are similar to each other and similar to other resolutions some of you have already brought to your precinct caucus in past years, but there are reasons you might want to bring one over the other.
For example, if your caucus two years ago did not pass the resolution which specifically mentions Israel, people voting against it would have a hard time justifying a vote against human rights. On the other hand, some people might find a resolution not specifically mentioning Israel to be somewhat cagey and untruthful. You might think that it’s important to say out loud what you mean.
Note that there are no “whereas clauses” in these proposed resolutions. Resolutions that get passed in the DFL precinct caucuses move up to the Senate District caucuses stripped of the whereas clauses, so these resolutions include everything right in the text.
These resolutions are catering to stated Democratic and DFL principles. If you are going to a Republican caucus you can also bring a divestment resolution forward but you may want to rewrite it using different rationale (whereas clauses). That’s fine.
After your caucus is over, please send us the following:
- your name, email address, and house district (or address)
- which party caucus you attended
- which resolution you brought (send us the entire text of the resolution if you made your own)
- whether it passed or not and by how much
- whether you signed up to be a delegate at the next convention
We will compile all the information and possibly ask for your help in meeting with your state senator and representative with the results.
Have fun! It should be a great time to meet your neighbors!
Here are the two resolutions:
Israel Bond Specific:
Be it resolved that the Minnesota State Board of Investment, the State agency responsible for the investment management of various public employee retirement funds, trust funds and cash accounts totaling approximately $69 billion, shall not invest in the government bonds of the State of Israel and shall immediately divest from any investments in the government bonds of the State of Israel, a portion of the proceeds of which are used to finance Israel’s continued occupation and construction of illegal settlements in the Palestinian occupied territories, until Israel is found to be in full compliance with its obligations under international law as determined by the cognizant agencies of the United Nations, including the International Court of Justice and the UN Human Rights Council.
Generic:
Be it resolved that the Minnesota State Board of Investment, the State agency responsible for the investment management of various public employee retirement funds, trust funds and cash accounts totaling approximately $69 billion, shall not invest in the government bonds of any country that is engaged in the violation of human rights as defined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights or in the commission of war crimes in violation of international law.
Liberation Through Boycott and Divestment from Cape Town to Gaza
The following commentary by Robert Kosuth (Twin Ports Break the Bonds Campaign) was published in the Hillsider Duluth Community Newspaper (Volume 14 Issue 1, January, 2014).
Since his death, Nelson Mandela has been rightfully praised for his leading role in the ending of apartheid in South Africa. No less important were the many thousands of activists in the struggle as well as the millions around the world who participated in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against the notorious all white regime.
Since 2005 there has been a call by Palestinian civil society groups for a BDS movement against the state of Israel along the lines of the successful 1980s movement against apartheid South Africa. Physicist Stephen Hawking has boycotted conferences in Israel and author Alice Walker has said that conditions for Palestinians are far worse than what she experienced in the segregated South. Archbishop Desmond Tutu says the same about the conditions of Black South Africans under apartheid there.
With the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, upwards of a million Arab Palestinians were forced off their land by Jewish settlers primarily from Europe. The political doctrine of Zionism sought to establish a state exclusively for Jews in historical Palestine. Western guilt for having done almost nothing to save European Jews from Nazi gas chambers facilitated the process. In time, desire to control Mid East oil and politics led the US to become a staunch supporter of Israel. Under the US umbrella, Israel acts with near total impunity demolishing Palestinian homes, appropriating land, and maintaining an apartheid system similar to the one that existed in white-ruled South Africa.
The US-Israel relationship is both a linchpin and weak point for the US empire. To ask hard questions about this relationship and the treatment of Palestinians is to ask hard questions about the true nature of US policy goals. It also echoes similar US government appropriation of Native American lands and denial of human rights of African American slaves.
In Minnesota, we are especially focused on the divestment of our state’s $23 million in Israel bonds, which were bought with taxpayer money and used in a host of ways to maintain Israel’s apartheid state. A statewide group, Minnesota Break the Bonds, is working on divestment and we have a local affiliate as well. (http://mn.breakthebonds.org/; http://twinportsbbc.blogspot.com/). We are also involved in a wide range of education and outreach activities. Currently, there is a worldwide boycott aimed at SodaStream home carbonation systems, which are sold at Target and many other chains. These products are made by an Israeli company in illegally occupied Palestinian territory, where local Palestinian workers are paid bare minimum wages. Like the workers on Soweto in the past, Palestinians are subjected to constant security checks and have to commute to homes in restricted areas because they are not permitted to live in exclusively Jewish settlement areas.
History is on the side of the Palestinians. Check out these websites and join this unstoppable effort for Palestinian rights. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/; http://www.bdsmovement.net/
Film Series – Inside Israel/Palestine – Scenes You Won’t Find in the Mainstream Media
All films are Mondays at 7:00 pm. Discussion afterwards. Admission is $6.
>January 27: Budrus
Budrus is about the non-violent demonstrations in 2000 conducted by residents of the Palestinian town of Budrus against the building of the Israeli separation wall inside the village causing the loss of 300 acres of land and 3,000 olive trees. Several turns of events including the active participation of Israeli peace activists bring about an unexpected outcome.
>February 3: The Gatekeepers
The Gatekeepers brings together six former heads of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, who detail their methods against Palestinian militants and civilians in the Occupied Territories, including targeted killings, torture, recruiting informants, and the suppression of mass protests during two intifadas.
>February 10: Man From Plains
President Jimmy Carter ignites a firestorm of controversy when he tours the country to promote “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” his book which theorizes a Middle East peace solution and asserts that Israel’s staunch stance has negatively affected the region.
> February 17: Five Broken Cameras
Fiver Broken Cameras, nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Documentary Film, tells the story of non-violent resistance in the village of Bilin to the building of the Annexation Wall and expansion of nearby Jewish only settlements. It is told through the experience of Palestinian villager Emad Burnat, who filmed the majority of the documentary. The IDF, unhappy that their actions were being documented, broke five of his cameras and committed many other acts of violence against the demonstrators, at least two of whom died of their injuries.
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Sponsored by the Twin Ports chapter of the Break the Bonds Campaign: www.twinportsbbc.blogspot.com