JAI: An Eye on Palestine – 1 April 2016

The YMCA-YWCA Joint Advocacy Initiative issues this bi-weekly newsletter to keep you updated on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories related to the Israeli occupation.

What is Palestine’s Land Day?

On this day in 1976, thousands of Palestinians marched in towns and villages across the Galilee region, in the north of present-day Israel, to protest Israel’s expropriation of vast tracts of land as part of its openly declared policy to “Judaize” the area at the expense of the indigenous population.  Read more

Why exposing the Hebron murder benefits Israelis

Both the Israeli Right and Left need ‘rotten apples’ like the Hebron shooter in order to justify their Orwellian worldview.

I waited and waited. Abed Fatah al-Sharif is his name. Not “the Palestinian” or “the terrorist.” I waited and waited for one of Israel’s major media outlets – not including tabloids such as Israel Hayom, Yedioth Ahronoth, or Walla! – but rather Haaretz and Channel 10 to open their items on last week’s the Hebron shooting by including al-Sharif’s name. I am still waiting for something that will likely not come.  Read more

“EU complicit in Israeli war crimes”, says leadership of global BDS Movement

Responding to comments made today by Lars Faaborg-Andersen, the EU Ambassador to Israel, that “settlement products are welcome on the EU market,” Mahmoud Nawajaa, a spokesperson for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), said: “The European Union has once again abandoned its own policies that consider Israel’s settlements illegal. By failing to vote at the UN Human Rights Council for establishing a UN registry of companies implicated in Israel’s occupation regime and by joining the far-right Israeli government’s fight against BDS, the largest nonviolent Palestinian-led human rights movement, the EU is underlining its already well-known hypocrisy and declaring its disregard for human rights.”  Read more

UNHRC Blacklists Israeli Firms Working in Settlements

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has voted on Thursday to establish a database of Israeli companies working in settlements in order to blacklist them. According to news reports, this measure was one of four Palestinian Authority (PA) proposals approved by the council. Efforts to establish the database was fiercely opposed by Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas described the decision as a victory for the PA’s fight for Palestinian human rights.  Read more