Quote from article below: “Now, as the government of Israel is carrying out an unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it is more important than ever that activists be free to speak out without fear,” the attorney said.
Not in these “people’s” eyes! Who needs AIPAC, when they have the Republican Party and its Oligarchs like Charles Koch, Miriam Adelson, Peter Thiel, et al.?
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"A recent New York Times article titled “GOP’s Israel Support Deepens as Political Contributions Shift” notes that Tom Cotton and other Republicans “benefited from millions in campaign spending in 2014 by several pro-Israel Republican billionaires and other influential American donors who helped them topple Democratic opponents …. The alliances in Congress that pro-Israel donors have built will certainly be tested as they lobby lawmakers to oppose the deal with Iran and perhaps even expand sanctions against the country, despite objections from the Obama administration. Donors say the trend toward Republicans among wealthy, hawkish contributors is at least partly responsible for inspiring stronger support for Israel among party lawmakers who already had pro-Israel views.”
. . .
"Critically, this kind of intrusion into the U.S. political process is echoed by very similar kinds of actions in the academy. This is well worth looking at carefully, for it is precisely in the academy that critical knowledge and oppositional points of view are supposed not only to be protected, but they should thrive there. Now it has been disclosed that these same wealthy donors and others are working to suppress perfectly legal criticism of Israel, which they characterize as “delegitimizing” Israel."
"The Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson (and other top donors such as the Schusterman Family Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Becker Foundations, the Seth Klarman Family Foundation, the Russell Berrie Foundation, the Moskowitz Foundation and the Fairbrook Foundation) are not only donating huge sums of money toward squelching academic freedom and freedom of speech, they are hiding their involvement by filtering their donations through seemingly innocuous organizations.
"The report finds that this network has invested
[O]ver $300 million in propaganda, surveillance, and lawfare directly aimed at silencing dissent and solidarity with Palestine... These individual donors and their foundations mask their involvement in funding Zionist backlash and Islamophobia through providing grants to donor-advised funds, community foundations and other intermediaries.
Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum receives funding from eight of the eleven major donors involved in backlash … In turn, MEF funds over a dozen other backlash and Islamophobia outlets, and provided the seed funding for Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). SPME gave seed money for the AMCHA Initiative, the pro-Israel watchdog based out of California, whose co-founders Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith have both served on the Board of SPME. MEF publishes the Middle East Quarterly and sponsors Campus Watch, Islamist Watch, the Legal Project, and the Washington Project.
"The Koch brothers and their ilk certainly have the money, but moral outrage over such behind-the-scenes rigging of these attacks, and the ethical rightness of the Palestinian struggle, give tremendous strength and energy to BDS. One increasingly gets the sense that it is those who are forming links of solidarity with the Palestinians, defying the bogus charges of anti-Semitism, who are on the right side of history. With the Republican majority willing to sell what passes for their soul, the work of grass-roots popular movements in the academy and elsewhere is essential.”
The latter point is what Conservatives and libertarians call “Wokeism!"
On Jan 23, 2024, at 7:22 PM, @listserve.com> wrote:
US Supreme Court Rejects ‘Attempt to Silence’ Palestinian Advocacy Group
United States Supreme Court Building. (Photo: Joe Ravi, via Wikimedia Commons)
The US Supreme Court has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and several US citizens who live in Israel against a Palestinian human rights organization based in the US.
Citing the speech and expressive activities of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), including its support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, the lawsuit argued that the group provided “material support” for terrorism.
The dismissal by the district court had been unanimously affirmed by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This lawsuit is just one example of a long line of efforts to silence Palestinians for advocating for their freedom – in this case, by wielding the accusation of support for terrorism to discredit and dehumanize Palestinians for their advocacy, including their support for boycotts,” the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) said in a statement on Monday. The CCR is a non-profit legal advocacy group based in New York.
Multiple organizations with histories of seeking to silence Palestinian rights filed their own briefs in an effort to have the Supreme Court of the United States endorse their suppression effort.
The statement added that USCPR’s attorneys said Monday’s decision to let the lower court rulings stand is “an important win for the movement and definitively sets the record straight.”
As the DC Circuit Court of Appeals found, “[a]dvocating and coordinating a boycott of Israel – ‘economically, academically[,] and diplomatically,’… – is not unlawful,” it continued.
“USCPR’s message is justice for all and an end to funding genocide. There’s no lawsuit in the world that can stop us from pushing our demands for human rights,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
“We will remain focused on opposing Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and pursuing justice and freedom for the Palestinian people.”
‘Fishing Expedition’
The statement by the CCR stated that the JNF, headquartered in Jerusalem, “is a quasi-state institution that acquires and administers land for the sole benefit of Jewish Israelis.”
The JNF’s lawsuit alleges that USCPR bears responsibility for “incendiary terror balloons and kites” sent from Gaza onto JNF land during the 2018 Great Return March, it added.
According to the statement, at issue were USCPR’s fiscal sponsorship of the Boycott National Committee and expressions of support for the rights and demands of Palestinians participating in the Great Return March.
The latter was when Palestinians protested to demand respect for their right to return to the villages from which they were expelled in 1948.
“These two activities, the lawsuit claimed, amount to a violation of the U.S.’s Antiterrorism Act, which prohibits “material support” for terrorism,” the statement said.
“The JNF’s prolonged and egregious pursuit of a fishing expedition to silence and intimidate urgent advocacy for Palestinian rights has been definitively put to rest by the Supreme Court,” said Diala Shamas, a Senior Staff Attorney at the CCR.
Shamas added that “The JNF’s accusations were baseless, as recognized by the district court, the court of appeals, and now confirmed by the Supreme Court.”
“Now, as the government of Israel is carrying out an unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it is more important than ever that activists be free to speak out without fear,” the attorney said.
She stressed that “This is an important victory, but USCPR shouldn’t have been subjected to these smears in the first place.”
(PC, MEMO)
