Showing posts with label Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Intel Talks Up It's New Partnership With Israel - Israel Today

Intel Talks Up It's New Partnership With Israel

Tuesday, March 21, 2017 |  Israel Today Staff
Hi-tech behemoth Intel is really excited about its acquisition of Israel’s autonomous driving company Mobileye, and its new base of operations in the Jewish state.
At a press conference announcing the acquisition, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said: “We think of ourselves as an Israeli company as much as a US company.”
Intel paid a whopping $15 billion for Mobileye. It’s the largest ever exit for an Israeli hi-tech company. But it’s also the second largest acquisition Intel has ever made.
The chip-maker believes so much in Israeli innovation, that it’s going to make Mobileye’s Jerusalem headquarters the new central base of operations for all of Intel’s autonomous vehicle efforts.
Mobileye “will lead Intel’s overall autonomous vehicle efforts, across the whole company, not just here in Israel,” said Krzanich. “We will be folding in operations in the US underneath the operations here.”
That’s a major vote of confidence in Israel, and a major blow to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates

Monday, April 18, 2016

Now BDS Battle Is Moving to State Capitols - EITAN AROM/JNS.ORG CHARISMA NEWS

Israel Construction
The BDS Movement continues to build steam on college campuses, prompting pro-Israel groups to turn to statehouses to slow its advance. (Reuters photo)


Now BDS Battle Is Moving to State Capitols

Close observers of the anti-Israel Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement have long kept a weather eye on California. But that attention has mostly focused on university campuses, including the prominent 10-school University of California system.
Now, the Golden State is the latest battleground in a nationwide effort to draft and pass anti-BDS laws in U.S. state capitols, and pro-Israel advocates hope that success on the state-government level will curb the boycott movement's momentum on campus. At a Los Angeles conference on fighting BDS that was hosted earlier this month by the pro-Israel education group StandWithUs, California Assemblyman Travis Allen had a message for the movement's proponents: "Boycotting a trade partner of ours doesn't make sense."
A Republican from Huntington Beach, Allen has styled himself as an early adopter of a trend now sweeping state legislatures to bar companies that boycott Israel from contracting with state governments. That trend inspired not one, but two bills that have been introduced in the California Assembly since January, the first by Allen and another by Assemblyman Richard Bloom, a Santa Monica Democrat. 
Allen has since become a co-author of Bloom's bill—which, unlike Allen's similar measure, enjoys the support of the California Jewish Legislative Caucus. Bloom's measure, Assembly Bill (AB) 2844, won approval on April 12 from the Accountability and Administrative Review Committee, the first of two legislative committees set to review it.
"I am very pleased that others have now joined in support of the effort, and it looks like we will now get a substantive law that will affirmatively state that California won't support the boycott of Israel," Allen said in an interview.
The bill was not without its opponents. Cristina Garcia, a Democrat from southeastern Los Angeles County who chairs the accountability committee, recommended rejecting the measure. But the support of the committee's three Republicans put the bill over the top, and it passed in a 5-1vote, with three Democrats abstaining.
"With unanimous Republican support, I am extremely confident that the current efforts to pass AB 2844 will be successful," Allen said.
Allen has touted the wide and diverse support for legislative efforts to combat BDS, including from members of Congress and Israeli Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein. As calls to alienate Israel or its government have grown louder, anti-boycott activists have looked to state capitols to provide businesses with the political cover to reject those calls.
In addition to the state contractor bill, Allen authored another piece of legislation that would prevent state pension funds—worth hundreds of billions of dollars—from investing in companies that boycott Israel. 
If California passes any of the bills, it would become the eighth U.S. state to formally legislate against BDS, according to Peggy Shapiro, the Midwest director for StandWithUs. So far, Illinois, South Carolina, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Arizona, and Florida have passed such laws, she said. Florida and Arizona have passed laws applying both to contractors and state pension funds, while the other states have done one or the other.
State legislation has become an increasingly important part of the anti-BDS arsenal, Shapiro said. StandWithUs has found "smart, willing, cooperative partners" in state capitols, working "hand in glove, reaching out to legislators, educating them about the destructive goals of BDS," she said.
Pro-Israel groups started advocating for such legislation after the European Union (EU) began discussing labeling laws for products from Judea and Samaria. Last November, the EU decided to make such labels mandatory for some goods, removing their "Made in Israel" labels.
The increasing popularity of legislative tactics to fight BDS has corresponded with a somewhat disappointing year for campus advocates of Israeli government policy, as student resolutions seen as unfavorable have passed at an increasing number of schools.
In the past, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB), a group dedicated to protecting Jewish civil and human rights, was able to keep a list of campuses where pro-BDS resolutions were likely to crop up.
"We're now at the point where, sad to say, the BDS movement has saturated the country to the extent that it is no longer so predictable—you can no longer focus on a discrete number of campuses," LDB President Kenneth L. Marcus said at the StandWithUs conference.
Part of the idea behind moving the battleground to state legislatures is to find more favorable turf for the anti-BDS message, said pro-Israel activist Noah Pollak, executive director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, who has supported the nationwide legislative effort.
"You don't want to fight on your enemy's terrain," Pollak said, speaking alongside Assemblyman Allen at the conference. The "enemy," he said, "picked out campuses for a reason."
Victories in state legislatures could subsequently spread to college campuses, said Pollak.
According to Pollak, legislating against BDS tells its proponents, "While you were doing your campus antics, the grown-ups were in the state legislatures passing laws that make your cause improbable." The laws are meant to dent the morale of BDS advocates, who enjoy a number of advantages on campus, he said.
Among those advantages, the Palestinian narrative of Israeli "oppression" and "racism" holds a certain intrinsic pull for some minority communities, allowing groups like Students for Justice in Palestine to build diverse coalitions around their cause.
Roz Rothstein, the CEO of StandWithUs, admitted that when it comes to building diverse coalitions, "we're very bad at that."
"The other side is doing it to a fault—that's all they do," she said.
According to Estee Chandler, the founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the pro-BDS organization Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-BDS bills are unconstitutional and part of a sustained effort to shield Israel from being held accountable for decades of "occupation" and "human rights abuses." She calls the bills a "misleading attempt to squelch the BDS movement, which has only grown exponentially in spite of years of efforts to oppose it both on and off of college and university campuses."
Chagrined by the state of play among student governments, some in the anti-BDS camp are hoping one group of allies—state legislators—will make the diverse coalition on the other side obsolete.
Besides, the bills have the advantage of putting Jewish organizations in a position where they don't normally find themselves: on the offensive.
"We're always on the defensive; we're always responding to pro-BDS activists," said Jacob Millner, a senior analyst at The Israel Project, a non-partisan policy and education group. "This is something we can do where we can be proactive."
Draw closer to God. Experience the presence of the Holy Spirit every month as you read Charisma magazine. Sign up now to get Charisma for as low as $1 per issue.
Has God called you to be a leader? Ministry Today magazine is the source that Christian leaders who want to serve with passion and purpose turn to. Subscribe now and receive a free leadership book.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Anti-Israel Groups Shakin' in Their Boots

Anti-Israel Groups Shakin' in Their Boots

Monday, March 31, 2014 |  David Lazarus  ISRAEL TODAY
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, those Israel-hating, apartheid-mongers are cooked. Obsessively accusing Israel of everything from stealing water to targeting Palestinian children, these anti-everything Israel junkies have gone too far. Their compulsive Israel-hatred has stirred a massive grassroots counter-attack. Synagogues, churches, students, businesses and everyday folk have heard enough. They will be silent no more.
And it's not only Jews, or even Christians rising to the battle. Young Israeli Arabs, Druze and even Bedouins are up and out telling the world what Israel means to them.
Heeb, a 27-year-old Bedouin Muslim who participated in a "StandWithUs" pro-Israel advocacy program, said he was happy to have the opportunity to dispel the damaging myths perpetuated by Israeli Apartheid Week organizers. "I wanted to meet students and tell them the truth. This is one of my goals – to bring our image of Israel… Some did not know there are Arabs in Israel. A lot of people were surprised," said Heeb, a University of Haifa student working on an MA in public policy.
Another new innovative program is sending Israeli college students to speak at at university campuses, schools, synagogues, and churches across North America as part of their IDF reserve duty. These young people are passionately sharing about the real Israel with tens of thousands of students and community members each year. In 2013, groups sent by "StandWithUS" visited 150 different events and reached countless numbers of people through press coverage and social media.
"I see how Israel is misrepresented in the media," says Tepper, co-founder of Word Swap, another pro-Israel upstart. "They're accusing Israel of apartheid… and you know it's not true, but if you don't stand up and say it's not true, a lot of people are going to believe these lies."
Bader, a 23-year-old Tel Aviv University student studying for his BA in computer science and economics, said he meets university students who are shocked to learn that Arabs live in Israel. He tells them, "I am living proof," in Arabic of course, his mother tongue.
"Most of the people we talk to are from the Middle East, from Yemen, from Saudi Arabia, from Syria, from Lebanon. To them, Israel is just an entity – they call it Little Satan," says Bader. "I'm an Israeli Arab, my grandparents have lived there, I've lived there, I have full rights, I've served in the IDF, I work in Tel Aviv, I don't face discrimination. How can you say that if you haven't even been there?" he challenges them.
When students at a well known university in the US wanted to boycott Israel's Ben Gurion University, Heeb, the Israeli Bedouin, told them, "Listen guys, Ben Gurion University has the most Arab girls, Bedouin girls, studying there, more than [schools in] Arab countries." Heeb explained that he is a Bedouin student from the University of Haifa, and that the faculty would not be able to exchange their knowledge if there is a boycott. "They didn't answer," he said.
Never has there been a time when so many different people from so many places around the globe are working together for Israel. Synagogues and churches are running "Buy Israeli Goods" campaigns. Students of all ages and backgrounds are organizing lectures and debates on college campuses. But most impressive of all are the millions of everyday, work-a-day folks speaking up now because they are no longer willing to stomach the vicious lies about Israel. Join the gang! God IS on our side!
PHOTO: Ishmael Khaldi, a Bedouin Arab spokesman for Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is a regular visitor to university campuses around the world
Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates from ISRAEL TODAY.