Update: G4S to divest completely from apartheid Israel
Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), June 1, 2023
In a major win for human rights activism against corporate complicity, the world’s largest private security company Allied Universal, which owns G4S, has decided to sell all its remaining business in apartheid Israel. This follows years of an effective #StopG4S campaign waged by the BDS movement for Palestinian rights.
This victory comes after human rights campaigns caused G4S serious “reputational damage” and some lucrative investments and contracts. Along with the BDS movement, several other human rights campaigns have also targeted G4S over its long, violent record of human rights abuses against prisoners, migrants, and other communities worldwide, including the UK, South Africa and the US.
The BDS campaign against G4S was launched by Palestinian prisoners’ rights and human rights organizations in 2012 to support the major hunger strike waged then by Palestinian political prisoners. This pressure led to high profile divestment from G4S by the Church of Sweden, the United Methodist Church, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a Kuwaiti investment fund, UN agencies, trade unions, universities, restaurant chains, among others, compelling the company in 2016 to divest from Israel’s prison system, military checkpoints and illegal settlements.
Yet, the #StopG4S campaign kept up the pressure to get G4S to divest from its remaining stake in the consortium that operates Policity, Israel’s police academy, given the well documented war crimes and grave human rights violations perpetrated by Israeli police over decades. Allied Universal, which acquired G4S in 2021, is now finally selling this share in Policity to the Israeli company G1 that is notorious for its complicity in human rights violations. The sale is pending approval by the Israeli authorities.
The final straw that compelled Allied Universal to end its complicity in apartheid Israel’s human rights abuses against Indigenous Palestinians seems to be the strong position taken by the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), which manages the funds of the Quebec Pension Plan and other public pension plans. Trade unions and BDS campaigners, led by BDS Quebec and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), have been pressuring CDPQ since Allied Universal’s acquisition of G4S, raising the issue in direct conversation with the fund and with members of parliament.
CDPQ became the largest shareholder in Allied Universal in 2019, and supported the company in its bidding for the takeover of G4S, in direct violation of its commitment to ethical and socially responsible investment. When a Quebec lawmaker earlier this month criticized CDPQ’s investment in Allied Universal in a parliamentary committee, saying that “cases of [Israeli] torture against Palestinian political prisoners, including children, are widely documented by human rights organizations,” CDPQ’s CEO replied: “I completely agree with you. This is not the kind of activity we endorse at all.”
Given apartheid Israel’s rising economic and financial troubles, especially the drying up of investments in high-tech, we may see an increasing number of multinationals divesting from it.
The BDS movement, with its intersectional partnerships worldwide, calls for intensifying pressure on other corporate criminals to make them respect their human rights obligations and stop profiting from oppression and injustice. Despite the enormous financial, legal and propaganda resources that multinationals have wielded against us, and despite the support they have received from Israel and its partners in crime, mainly the US, EU and UK, our strategic and collective pressure over the years has brought many of them to their knees, forcing them to divest from apartheid Israel.
They try to sear into our consciousness the impossibility of prevailing over them, but we have prevailed. With the growing support from racial, economic, climate, social and gender justice movements worldwide, we surely can prevail in many more corporate accountability struggles in pursuit of freedom, justice and equality.
Jewish doctor denied payment for refusing Israel pledge
Dr. Steve Feldman, pictured on a trip to the West Bank. Feldman was denied payment from the state of Arkansas for refusing to sign a pledge promising not to boycott Israel. (Courtesy of Steve Feldman)
ANDREW LAPIN, JEWISH TELEGRAPHIC AGENCY, MAY 3, 2023
Dr. Steve Feldman, a dermatologist, delivered a Zoom lecture to University of Arkansas at Little Rock medical students in February, for which he was entitled to a $500 honorarium from the state. But Feldman said that the state is withholding payment because he refused to sign a pledge, required for public contractors under Arkansas law since 2017, to commit to not boycotting Israel.
“They have a law in place that makes contracts with Arkansas dependent on your agreement not to boycott Israel, which I think is wrong,” Feldman, who is a professor at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “To me, growing up Jewish, the very strong lesson of the Holocaust that I learned is it’s wrong to mistreat other people.”
Arkansas is one of dozens of states that have passed laws aiming to combat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement targeting Israel. The laws either bar the state from investing in companies that boycott Israel or, as in Arkansas’ case, mandate that state contractors promise not to boycott the country. Most of those laws have been struck down by courts, but Feldman’s lecture took place the same month the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to Arkansas’ law. His case is the latest example of how such laws are affecting what would otherwise be ordinary state business transactions.
Feldman has close relatives who live in Israel. But he said the pledge conflicted with his religious and moral views. In addition to his medical work, he is a pro-Palestinian activist who created the online-only Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience. The website says that the Jewish commitment to fighting injustice should lead Jews to stand up for Palestinian rights. Feldman said he does support boycotting Israel.
“I think the only thing that will lead to Israel allowing Palestinian families to return to their homes, so that everybody can live together peacefully, will be some kind of boycott,” he said.
While the Arkansas law, passed in 2017, applies only to contractors earning more than $1,000 from the state, Feldman said he was still refused his $500 payment. The justification, he said, was that being added to the state’s vendor system would make him eligible for future assignments that could add up to more than $1,000.
Feldman told JTA he is exploring his legal options and wouldn’t rule out a lawsuit against the state as a means of advocating for Palestinian rights and challenging last year’s federal Eighth Circuit Court ruling that the law was constitutionally protected. “I would love to sue and have the Circuit Court either retract what they said, or go to the Supreme Court in order for people to see things that they didn’t know,” he said.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, has said the law combats discrimination on the basis of nationality. Following the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case, he told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he works to “ensure that taxpayers aren’t required to pay for anti-Israel and anti-Israeli discrimination.”
Feldman’s story was first reported by the Arkansas Times, a publication that has itself become entangled in the state’s anti-boycott law. The paper’s publisher, Alan Leveritt, challenged the law in court after he was asked to sign the anti-boycott pledge so that the paper could run advertising from a state university. The suit, which is the one that reached the Supreme Court, argued that the law was a violation of the publication’s First Amendment rights and attracted support from progressive Jewish groups, as well as opposition from some pro-Israel groups. Leveritt argued that he doesn’t have strong feelings about Israel boycotts but that his paper does not take political positions in exchange for advertising.
Since the inception of state-level laws prohibiting Israel boycotts, some state lawmakers have used them as a template for legislation barring other types of divestment campaigns, such as those targeting fossil fuels or the firearms industry.
Feldman mused that he could have signed the pledge, taken the money and then engaged in an Israel boycott to see how the state would react, but concluded, “I can’t lie on a form. That also goes against my Jewish moral character.”
Israelis, welcome to BDS
Though not named as such, BDS tactics have been central to Israel’s anti-government protests. And the hypocrisy is not lost on Palestinians.
Israeli protesters clash with police on horseback while blocking Ayalon Highway during an anti-government demonstration, March 16, 2023. (Oren Ziv)
Amjad Iraqi, +972 Magazine, March 19, 2023
This article originally appeared in “The Landline,” +972’s weekly newsletter. Subscribe here.
It took only two months for Israelis to shatter one of their biggest political taboos in the fight against the far-right government. Riled by the coalition’s relentless power trip, Jewish opposition parties have pledged not to participate in the Knesset’s final votes on legislation aimed at overhauling the judiciary. Israeli diplomats and envoys are quitting their posts in protest. Army reservists are objecting to service en masse, affecting every unit from combat troops to the air force. Tech companies and venture capital firms are relocating abroad and transferring out hundreds of millions of dollars. Artists, writers, and intellectuals are calling on world leaders to shun meetings with senior Israeli officials, including the prime minister.
None of these groups will admit it, but this is, by all accounts, one of the most impressive BDS campaigns ever witnessed.
In the topsy-turvy Israel of today, boycotts, divestments, and sanctions — though not explicitly named as such — have become central strategies of the Israeli protest movement. Large swathes of society are not just distancing themselves from the government’s agenda, but are actively pursuing nationwide disruption and international intervention to stop it. The economy, security, and day-to-day life are all necessary sacrifices in the name of saving “democracy.” At this scale, the movement has gone beyond merely ending public complicity; it is, in effect, a civil revolt.
Ironically, these methods of civil resistance are being encouraged by figures who spent years undermining those who used them. Yair Lapid, the Knesset opposition leader and former prime minister, is continuing to call for mass demonstrations and strikes, and has urged municipalities not to cooperate with certain government ministry units, later describing such political expression as part of Israelis’ “deep democratic instinct.” This is the same Lapid who accused Israeli anti-occupation groups of “subversion” for exposing military abuses; oversaw the outlawing of Palestinian human rights NGOs as “terrorists”; and demanded American anti-BDS laws be used to punish the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s for not selling products in illegal West Bank settlements, blasting the divestment as a “shameful surrender to antisemitism.”
Activists carry a BDS banner during a protest calling for the liberation of Palestine and to protest the recent Israeli assault on Gaza, Paris, May 22, 2021. (Anne Paq/Activestills.org)
Israel’s own anti-boycott law, enacted in 2011, now technically hovers over all these new dissidents, enabling any citizen to sue the protesters for causing “financial or reputational harm” to the state and other entities under its control. The Israeli Supreme Court — the institution that the protest movement has been fighting so hard to defend — enthusiastically approved the anti-democratic law in 2015, calling boycotts a form of “political terror,” “bigoted, dishonest, and shameful,” and an attempt to “annihilate” the Jewish state. Israeli politicians, including from the center and center-left, saw the price tag on civil rights as necessary not just to stifle Palestinians, but to deter Jewish Israelis from boycotting the settlements. Now, if the right chooses so, the anti-government movement could be made to pay a literal price for its sedition.
‘We told you so’
The cognitive dissonance of this moment is not lost on Palestinians. In the two decades since the BDS movement was launched, Palestinians and their allies have been smeared, censored, and attacked for calling on citizens, companies, and governments to use nonviolent tactics to pressure Israel into ending its human rights abuses. Its demands, explicitly rooted in international law, are to achieve equality for Palestinians in Israel, end military rule in the occupied territories, and allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland — basic rights which, in any other country, would not be so controversial.
However, far from even respecting the right to challenge Israel, BDS has been aggressively denounced as “counterproductive” at best and “antisemitic” at worst. A slew of U.S. and European laws and policies are effectively criminalizing the movement and defining it as a form of racism. Even liberal American Jewish groups — some of whom entertain the idea of conditioning military aid to Israel, and last week called for revoking the visa of Israel’s finance minister — still adamantly insist that they neither support nor participate in the BDS movement.
That distancing is, in many ways, a cop out that reveals the hypocrisy and racism at the heart of the debate around BDS. It is perfectly reasonable, it seems, to shun Israeli officials, cut off financial ties, and disrupt public spaces when mainstream Jews call for it. But when Palestinians living under Israeli oppression demand the same, their calls are to be scrutinized, rejected, even punished. It is also telling that BDS tactics are currently being legitimized in the name of helping Jewish Israelis protect a status quo ante in which racial supremacy and military occupation were the norm, albeit wrapped in more democratic clothing; using BDS in the name of equality, freedom, and justice for Palestinians, though, is an existential threat.
The speed at which many abroad are suddenly embracing harsher language and policy ideas against the Israeli government, including members of the U.S. Congress, shows how even well-intentioned groups are still acting as gatekeepers to what Palestinians are allowed to say, do, and have. The discrediting of Palestinian voices, the conditioning of their rights on Israeli diktats, and the refusal to hold the “only Jewish state” accountable to international law, is precisely what has bought Israel the time and impunity to arrive at its latest fascistic stage.
It is therefore very tempting for Palestinians to tell the world “we told you so.” But for now, in the hope that this moment may serve as a lesson, perhaps it is best to simply say to all of Israel’s new BDS activists: welcome.
Amjad Iraqi is a senior editor at +972 Magazine. He is also a policy analyst at the think tank Al-Shabaka, and was previously an advocacy coordinator at the legal center Adalah. In addition to +972, his writings have appeared in the London Review of Books, The Nation, The Guardian, and Le Monde Diplomatique, among others. He is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, based in Haifa.
Film Boycott Now Available to Stream
D.C. Court Dismisses Lawsuit Against Israeli Boycott
Court dismisses claims arising from 2013 Boycott Resolution as a SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), siding with Steven Salaita and others
March 2, 2023, Washington, D.C. – The D.C. Superior Court yesterday dismissed a lawsuit against the American Studies Association (ASA) and some of its former leaders for a 2013 resolution endorsing the academic boycott against Israel. The court found that the claims primarily arose from advocacy on an issue of public interest and were not likely to succeed. Those targeted by the suit included Dr. Steven Salaita, an advocate for Palestinian rights represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which secured dismissal of all the claims against him under a D.C. law to deter SLAPPs, or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
“I welcome the judge’s decision to dismiss this long-running lawsuit as a waste of time and money,” said Salaita. “I am happy to finally be freed of this burden and hope that the ruling will deter pro-Israel outfits with no means of winning a debate beyond harassment and defamation from trying to impoverish those of us committed to the wellbeing of the Palestinian people.”
In 2013, two-thirds of ASA members voted to join a boycott of Israeli academic institutions as part of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to generate opposition to Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians. Four professors originally sued the ASA and some of its leaders in federal court, claiming that the vote had violated the group’s by-laws and that its officers had breached their fiduciary duties. In 2018, they amended the suit to add several defendants, including Salaita, even though he had joined the ASA board two years after the vote.
A federal court dismissed the lawsuit in 2019, and the plaintiffs promptly filed a nearly identical complaint in the D.C Superior Court. The court initially denied the anti-SLAPP motion, but in response to an appeal by Salaita and the other defendants, the D.C. Court of Appeals ordered the court to reanalyze the case, resulting in yesterday’s ruling.
The purpose of anti-SLAPP laws is to deter lawsuits that target people who speak out on matters of public concern. Often, the goal of plaintiffs in such cases is not to win in court but simply to harass and intimidate advocates. Under the D.C. anti-SLAPP law, once the defendants show that the lawsuit is based on protected advocacy, plaintiffs must show that they are nonetheless likely to prevail in court; if they cannot, the suit is dismissed as it was in this case, and defendants may collect attorney’s fees from the plaintiffs.
“This ruling should send a clear message to those trying to silence advocates speaking out against Israel’s human rights abuses: boycotts are legally protected, and attempts to stifle such advocacy through the misuse of courts will not be tolerated,” said Astha Sharma Pokharel, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “These lawsuits will face strong opposition that will only grow the movement for justice and freedom in Palestine.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights also represented Salaita in his case against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which unlawfully fired him in retaliation for his criticism of Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza. The lawsuit against him and the other academics is part of a broader nationwide effort to suppress speech critical of Israel, advocates say. The Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal have documented censorship efforts on college campuses and at other institutions.
Defendants Lisa Duggan, Curtis Marez, Neferti Tadiar, Sunaina Maira, Chandan Reddy, John Stephens, and the American Studies Association were represented by Whiteford, Taylor & Preston L.L.P., and defendants J. Kehaulani Kauanui and Jasbir Puar were represented by Mark Allen Kleiman and Richard Renner.
For more information, visit the Center for Constitutional Rights’ case page.
Victory! ABA removes controversial definition of antisemitism
Proposed resolution targeted Palestinian rights advocacy
In January, we sent letters urging the American Bar Association (ABA) to remove its reference to the “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism” in its proposed Resolution 514, explaining that rather than fighting antisemitism, the controversial IHRA definition is used to silence Palestinian rights advocates. In a victory for human rights and free speech, the ABA decided to drop the definition in passing its resolution.
Meanwhile, we continue to fight the use of IHRA as it is being pushed through in various arenas to suppress Palestinian voices. Virginia legislators are considering HB 1606 which would adopt IHRA, including its contemporary examples related to Israel, as a tool and guide for recognizing and combating antisemitic discrimination and hate crimes in Virginia. We joined Palestine Legal and other groups in a letter to legislators explaining the dangers of the definition, and how it has widely been used to suppress criticism of Israel, not to combat antisemitism. The bill passed out of committee on Friday, and the fight continues.
Virtual Discussion on Corporate BDS Organizing
I am writing to invite you to join Omar Barghouti and me for a virtual discussion on corporate BDS organizing this Thursday, January 26 at 11 am ET/10 am CT/6 pm Palestine.
Adalah Justice Project has played a key role in campaigns to compel corporations like Ben & Jerry’s to withdraw their complicity from Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people. This webinar gives us an opportunity to reflect with Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement, on what these campaigns have accomplished and what more we can do together to advance BDS wins.
This event is hosted by our friends at Al-Shabaka and will be moderated by Al-Shabaka’s Nadim Bawalsa.
We hope you will be able to join us this Thursday, January 26.
You can register for the webinar here.
Warmly,
Sandra Tamari
Adalah Justice Project
U.S. Palestinian Rights Group in Federal Appeals Court
Confronts Challenge to Human Rights Advocacy
Last week a U.S.-based Palestinian rights organization asked the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Jewish National Fund and several U.S. citizens who live in Israel. Citing the speech and expressive activities of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, including its support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, the lawsuit had argued that the group provided “material support” for terrorism.
In dismissing the suit in March 2021, the lower court said the arguments were, “to say the least, not persuasive.” The suit is part of a broader effort to criminalize and silence the political activities of supporters of Palestinian rights, advocates say.
“The worldwide movement for Palestinian freedom is growing,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, Executive Director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. “USCPR’s work to advocate for Palestinian human rights is a critical part of that freedom struggle, or else right-wing forces allied with the Israeli government would not be repeatedly trying to silence us. All the more reason to keep up our work to build toward justice for all.”
Visit our website to learn more.
Distorted Definition: Redefining Antisemitism to Silence Advocacy for Palestinian Rights
One of the primary tactics opponents of the movement for Palestinian freedom have used to silence political debate is the branding of all support for Palestinian rights as anti-Jewish. Roughly half of the incidents of suppression Palestine Legal responds to each year include false accusations of antisemitism, totaling 895 incidents from 2014 to 2020.
In an effort to add legitimacy to this tactic, Israel lobby groups have employed a distorted definition of antisemitism that encompasses virtually all criticism of Israel and have attempted to entrench this definition through policy changes and legislation.
This page tracks the evolution of the cynical ways Israel lobby groups have abused the definition and the definition’s impact on advocates for Palestinian rights.
We invite you to explore the following components:
2004 – 2008
Origins of a Politicized Redefinition
After decades of attempting to smear Palestine advocacy with false antisemitism accusations, Israel lobby groups develop a new Israel-centered definition of antisemitism. It is adopted by an EU body, and the U.S. State Department cites it in a report.
2008 – 2014
Pro-Israel Groups Unsuccessfully Target Students in the U.S.
Lawyers affiliated with pro-Israel groups attempt multiple times to abuse U.S. civil rights law to claim that campus advocacy for Palestine is antisemitic, filing federal complaints against three University of California campuses and Rutgers University.
California cancels Palestinians
to Silence Criticism of Israel
Israeli lobby groups redefine antisemitism to include criticisms of Israel as a means of stifling speech
, The Electronic Intifada, 21 December 2022
In September, the West Hollywood City Council unanimously passed a resolution adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.
The council was following a global trend. Institutions around the world are increasingly adopting the IHRA definition which purports to be a tool for identifying and combating anti-Semitism.
In reality, it is merely the latest attempt to criminalize support for Palestinian liberation. Indeed, the West Hollywood City Council’s vote – and the public outcry it generated – provides valuable insight into the growing threat the adoption of this flawed definition poses to political activism and education.
The council’s actions were foreshadowed by the West Hollywood Public Safety Commission which, on 8 August, voted to recommend that the City Council adopt the IHRA definition. During that meeting, Public Safety Commissioner Tony Berger asked fellow commissioner Robert B. Oliver, who brought the proposal, what the purpose of a safety commission making such a recommendation would be.
“It’s not in our purview to do anything like this,” Berger said. “Aren’t we trying just to protect everybody?”
Oliver, who is currently running for West Hollywood City Council, said his proposal was to recommend to the City Council that the city adopt the IHRA definition as a “non-legally binding working definition to inform the different agencies of our city what anti-Semitism is.”
The West Hollywood move came after both Manhattan Beach and Beverly Hills city councils voted to adopt the IHRA definition. Oliver cited the latter as a reason for West Hollywood to follow suit.
During public comment on 19 September – when the West Hollywood City Counci eventually voted to pass the IHRA definition in accordance with the public safety commission’s recommendation – Palestinian West Hollywood resident Rami Kabalawi said he felt the IHRA definition silenced Palestinians and was concerned with prohibiting criticisms of Israel rather than authentically challenging anti-Semitism.
Kabalawi told the council: “If it’s codified, it will position Palestinian freedom of speech as explicitly anti-Jewish and create a situation of divisiveness that is fueled not about ending bigotry, but classifying our right to speak out as a form of it.”
Recycled language
Many fear that Kabalawi is right.
What is the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and why is its passage by the West Hollywood City Council such a troubling development?
The story behind the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism begins with a working definition of anti-Semitism conceived of by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenobophia – a European Union agency – in the early noughties.
While the EUMC working definition is uncontroversial, it features several alleged examples of “anti-Semitism” that are simply criticisms of the Israeli state. This working definition was never formally endorsed by the EUMC.
However in 2016, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental organization formed in the late 1990s, adopted the EUMC’s definition of anti-Semitism as its own.
Despite its relatively unofficial status, the EUMC definition went on to form the basis for other non-binding definitions of anti-Semitism, such as that initially displayed by the US State Department on its website. The State Department now lists the IHRA definition on its website.
Recycled language conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism culled from this definition continues to be used in updated attempts to censor speech in support of Palestinian liberation. Just as Zionist organizations pushed for the University of California to adopt the so-called State Department definition of anti-Semitism in 2015, today there is a concerted push by Zionist organizations and individuals to ensure that governments and local councils adopt the IHRA definition.
The IHRA definition gives 11 examples of alleged anti-Semitism but seven of these are about criticism of Israel:
- Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.
- Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
- Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor.
- Applying double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
- Using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism (e.g. claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.
- Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
- Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
As the rights organization Palestine Legal puts it on its website, Israeli lobby groups have consistently used the strategy of redefining anti-Semitism to include criticisms of Israel as a means of stifling speech, and each version of these redefinitions is “fundamentally the same.”
Rowan Gaudet writes that the IHRA definition, which has repeatedly been used as a cudgel to silence and stigmatize international activism for Palestine since its adoption in 2016, is a “dangerous weapon” and “a grave threat to the Palestinian solidarity movement the world over.”
Voicing dissent
Small wonder that organizers felt compelled to voice their dissent.
A member of the local chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), who has requested anonymity, said that upon hearing of the effort to adopt the IHRA definition, PYM immediately forged a coalition with SoCal Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine at University of California – Los Angeles, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA to take action.
Akhil Gopal from the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition told The Electronic Intifada that opposing the adoption of the IHRA definition was in line with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s work around opposing racist and discriminatory surveillance practices being implemented by government and police bodies throughout Los Angeles.
“The adoption of the IHRA definition is connected for us to the LAPD’s Providing Alternatives to Hinder Violent Extremism (PATHE) program or the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) program, because with the adoption of IHRA, the state is trying to weaponize existing bureaucracy and infrastructure used for civil rights or to maintain a ‘multicultural’ set of liberal values to stigmatize Palestinian resistance as a form of bigotry,” Gopal said.
According to the anonymous PYM organizer, the organization co-created a call to action along with the aforementioned organizations and reached out to the community to encourage individuals to call into the Public Safety Commission meeting to ask the commission to reconsider their recommendation and to explicitly denounce the IHRA definition.
On 11 September, JVP UCLA tweeted a message urging followers to oppose the West Hollywood City Council’s adoption of the IHRA definition. The tweet included a link to a digital toolkit explaining how individuals could express their criticisms to the council.
The Public Safety Commission moved forward with its decision, regardless and despite the fact that a majority of community members spoke out against the council’s potential implementation of IHRA during public comment.