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Publishing this video might be a crime in France, unless you ACT!

 

IJAN-Labor participated in two Labor for Palestine BDS workshops at the LaborNotes conference in Detroit. The April 23 session, attended by thirty people,was addressed by Elias Al Jelda (PGFTU-Gaza), Hasan Newash (US PalestinianCommunity Network), Katherine Nastovski (CUPE-Ontario; Labour forPalestine-Canada) and Michael Letwin (Labor for Palestine-U.S.; IJAN-Labor). OnApril 24, twenty people reconvened for a follow-up strategy session that agreedto support BDS through local efforts; a U.S. speaking tour by Palestinian,South African and/or Irish trade unionists; and a LFP-U.S. national organizingconference in 2011. Coverage of these sessions is posted at: http://rustbeltradical.wordpress.com/2010/04/28/labor-notes-conference-unions-and-palestine/and  http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2010/04/labor-for-palestine-canadaus-report.html

IJAN US is represented on the National Planning Committee of the US Social Forum. In this role IJAN is supporting the overall coordination, outreach for, and organizing toward the Social Forum, and to support the integration of anti-Zionist, anti-racist and internationalist politics and organizing across the Social Forum. IJAN is working most actively on the Program and Culture Committee, the People’s Movement Assembly Committee, and the International Committee.

The US Social Forum (USSF) which will be held in Detoit, MI June 22-26, 2010 “is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression. The USSF will provide space to build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities and movements face, and bring increased strength, unity, and renewed insight and inspiration. It will help develop leadership and develop consciousness, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world.” 

IJAN’s role in the USSF process brings our Jewish anti-Zionist voice into the conversation and allows us to build our relationships outside of our explicit Jewish anti-Zionist network. In addition to the pre-USSF anti-Zionist Jewish Convening that IJAN is part of organizing, we will participate in the building of a Justice for Palestine, Confronting Islamophobia and BDS series at the Social Forum.

Aftera year of preparation, in May, and in collaboration with the Palestinian BNCand host, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Committee, IJAN co-convened ameeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, to build aninternationally coordinated campaign against the Jewish National Fund (JNF).Representatives from IJAN France, Netherlands,Switzerland, England, and the US joined with activists,organizers, and lawyers from around the world as part of our commitment to playa role in launching and coordinating campaigns to challenge the charity statusof the JNF across the places where the network organizes. We understand thiscampaign as fulfilling a central role of IJAN – the direct confrontation ofZionist institutions. The campaign will include popular, legal, and internationaldiplomacy components as reflected in the call to action. TO SIGN YOUR ORGANIZATION ONTO THE JNF CALL, FOLLOW THISLINK: http://stopthejnf.bdsmovement.net/.

Inthe United States,the campaign has the support of a strong legal team and preparations areunderway to launch the popular campaign. In October, IJAN Atlanta is callingfor a protest at the annual JNF conference being held there. In the first halfof 2011, a tour is being discussed to bring a Bedouin activist to the US to describe the ethnic cleansing in which theJNF is currently involved inside of Israel. In the London,IJAN England organized a public meeting with Professor Uri Davis at the School of Oriental and African Studies. IJANFrance continues its on-going demonstrations against the JNF and IJAN Netherlandsmet with BADIL staff member and BNC representative Hazem Jamjoum to develop aplan for the campaign.

  

To download a factsheet on the Jewish National Fund produced by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, click "read more.  

 

Severalscholar-activists represented IJAN’s Academic Work Group at the US Assembly ofJews Confronting Israeli Apartheid and Racism, where we attended and directedworkshops, participated in roundtable discussions, and met as academics growingour network within IJAN and across anti-imperialist movements.  Currently,the IJAN Academic Work Group is collecting material for an anthology of reflections, essays, speeches, presentations and creative work presented at or emerging out of the US Assembly of Jews.  The Call for Papers is attached and downloadable by choosing "reed more" at the bottom of this text. Please send submissions to: academic.network@ijsn.net.

The IJANAcademic Work Group will hold its first meeting at the Critical Ethnic StudiesConference at UC Irvine in February 2011.  Please see the IJAN academicnetwork’s statement of purpose in the entry directly below.

 

Inthe United States, IJAN spent the first half of the year preparing for andhosting the first national anti-Zionist Jewish gathering, "The US Assembly ofJews: Confronting Israeli Apartheid and Racism," from June 19-22 in Detroit. The Assembly wasa great success with over 200 participants exploring and developinganti-Zionist Jewish politics, organizing and activism. Our gathering securedover fifty endorsements from organizations in the US and internationally, wasintergenerational, and included partners from the Palestinian liberationmovement and other anti-racist, anti-imperialist struggles.

Following theAssembly we participated in the US Social Forum which brought together over15,000 activists and community members. IJAN was part of the National PlanningCouncil and with the US Palestinian Network built relationships betweenconfronting Zionism and movements against racism and imperialism, for economic,gender and environmental justice, and immigrant and indigenous rights.

Click HERE to go to the Assembly web site.

Click HERE to seevideo clips, audio excerpts and blog entries.

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Here are someof the press articles & letters arising out of the Never Again – ForAnyone tour, beginning with a major piece on Dr Hajo Meyer in theprestigious Huffington Post An Ethical Tradition Betrayed. 

 

The tour beganin Scotland – the Glasgow Herald published Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israelacts like Nazis’ but not IJAN’s letterin response. The Jewish Chronicle, in one of a number of attacks on the meetingin the House of Commons on Holocaust Memorial Day, wrote Gaza ethnic cleansing talkattacked as ‘an appalling offence’, and did not publish our letter, nor would theIndependent on Sunday publish Yael Kahn’s letter.

 

The Camden NewJournal wrote a very positive article Auschwitz survivor, 86, takeson the protesters, as did Press TV Auschwitz survivor sees Naziacts in Israel.  The letters column of the Camden New Journalhas carried more attacks, and more letters defendingDr Meyer.  And finally East London Lines reported on the "controversial"Goldsmiths meeting Auschwitz survivor sees Naziacts in Israel.

 

For a video ofDr Meyer’s speech on the tour, please click here.  Andfor three of Dr Eid’s speeches, made especially for this tour, please click here & here & here.  Seemore on the Never Again website.

 

Followingthe House of Commons meeting, a number of people who had offeredtestimony on the genocide of theircommunities, are continuing to work together.  We met at a full-day meeting (no Zionists allowed!). Fromthis came a collective process to challenge the exclusivity ofHolocaust Memorial Day in the UK, and insteadspeak of genocide rather than holocaust; to make explicit the genocides andethnic cleansings historically and today; and to confront Zionism and the manyforms of racism we all face.  Wewill soon be giving you a report of this effort, and asking for your input.