Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.687513

Europe's Largest Department Store Removes Israeli Products From Shelves

KaDeWe in Berlin will re-label products following the EU's decision to mark Israeli settlement goods, spokeswoman says.

Europe's largest department store, the Kaufhaus des Westens (KaDeWe) in Berlin, has removed Israeli products from the shelves following the European Union's decision to label Israeli products from the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel published on Friday, the store's spokewoman, Petra Fladenhofer said: "Only after fixing the labels, we'll return the products to our shelves." She did not elaborate on what kinds of products were pulled.

http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.premium-1.687546

U.S. Anthropologists Massively Back Boycott of Israel

American Anthropological Association vote goes 1,040 for, 136 against; association’s 12,000 members worldwide will now be asked to approve or reject decision.

Has israel joined the fight against ISIL ?

About 90 years ago!

There are similarities between ISIL and Israel. ISIL wants to reestablish a Caliphate. There has been a Caliphate off and on in the region since the seventh century. The last one finished in 1912. It has become a driving ambition of Sunni Muslims to recreate a Caliphate. Israel is similarly driven to reestablish ancient Israel, not just where they are now but on all the land from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean. This is being done despite it currently being someone else's land. ISIL is attempting their plans with obvious violence. Israel is going about their land grab in a more subtle and devious manner coupled with as much violence as they can get away with as they are concerned with public opinion.

n this day in 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine between two newly created Arab and Jewish states while placing Jerusalem under a “special international regime.”

Passage of the resolution required a two-thirds majority -- not counting abstaining and absent members -- of the then 56-member assembly. When the crunch came, 33 delegations (72 percent) voted for partition, 13 voted against and 10 abstained.

Some wavering countries received a telegram signed by 26 U.S. senators seeking their support for the plan. At the time, the Senate was considering a foreign aid package that included $60 million for China, which abstained.

President Harry S. Truman later said: “The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been seen there before, but that the White House, too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders—actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats—disturbed and annoyed me.”

The partition plan was never implemented because all Arab governments rejected it, arguing it violated the principles of national self-determination embedded in the U.N. charter.

After Israel declared its independence on May 15, 1948, the civil war between Arabs and Jews became an inter-state conflict as a combined invasion by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, together with expeditionary forces from Iraq, entered Palestine. The ensuing 10-month war ended with an armistice under which Israel retained not only the area demarcated by the partition plan but also nearly 60 percent of the land that the U.N. resolution had allocated to Palestinian Arabs. Other territory ended up in the hands of Jordan and Egypt.

Some 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from Israel, becoming refugees.

Greg

How do you resolve the inner conflict and hypocrisy you must feel as an IT Technician when trying to promote a boycott of Israeli goods and services by making posts on a BB and website written in PHP and thereby contributing to profits for the Zend corporation and its Israeli founders, financial backers and technicians?

How does your cognitive process allow you to reach the conclusion that Israeli PHP from MAM is OK but Israeli tomatoes from Tesco are bad? Or do you prefer to brush such questions aside?

Well G, because he can buy tomatoes elsewhere.. but where on the net can he get so much high end, intellectual and stimulation conversation -):

http://m.jpost.com/?Mobileid=1#article=6017RDg2NEUyMDlCM0U0RDY1NTAwNUFCOUJFQjJCRUU2MTU=

German foreign minister backs EU labels of Israeli settlement products

Germany’s foreign minister announced on Friday his ministry’s support for the European Union’s labeling of Israeli products from the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

In an email to The Jerusalem Post, the Foreign Ministry defended the EU label, saying it “does not deal with a stigmatized warning decal, as many have presented…What Brussels wants is, however, only a clear designation of the origin of the products.”

The Post sent a press query to German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Social Democratic Party) asking if he was for or against EU guidelines marking products and whether he viewed the labeling system as a modern form of anti-Semitism.

The German Foreign Ministry added “there will not be an Israel boycott in Germany” and “Israeli products will, of course, continue to receive preferential market access.”

Steinmeir’s position appears to contradict Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement last month in which he praised “…the German government, which came out against product labeling.”

Israel’s National Infrastructure, Energy and Water Minister Yuval Steinitz termed the EU label measure “disguised anti-Semitism.”

The European Union says products made in settlements beyond the Green Line are incorrectly demarcated if they say “made in Israel.” The EU does not recognize the settlements as part of Israel proper.

Haystack

I asked a question of you that, if you'd care to answer, really needs the tiniest bit of original thought and explanation from you. Perhaps when you've finished your latest round of mindless cut and paste you can ponder this question and perhaps give a reasoned and rational response:

How do you resolve the inner conflict and hypocrisy you must feel as an IT Technician when trying to promote a boycott of Israeli goods and services by making posts on a BB and website written in PHP and thereby contributing to profits for the Zend corporation and its Israeli founders, financial backers and technicians?

How does your cognitive process allow you to reach the conclusion that Israeli PHP from MAM is OK but Israeli tomatoes from Tesco are bad? Or do you prefer to brush such questions aside?

tesco??????
you mean jack and tessa cohen's corner shop?

Lol. I hope Haystack's not frantically googling for an answer he could cut and paste. Google, of course, also uses PHP .....

It is a question of choice. If there is a situation where I have a choice then I take that choice. I know there are times where my choice is limited or non existent but that does not stop me making a choice when I have one.

In particular, settlement goods are currently supplied fraudulently. They are labeled Israel, even though they come from across the Green Line in Palestine. When it comes to goods that are actually from 'Israel', the same applies as all of 'Israel' is in fact still Palestine and always will be.

Hay - is Clem's Chamber not a valid alternative choice? Admittedly it's inferior to MAM, but don't claim there's no choice on BBs. Them's clearly the words of a hypocrite. I think what you're saying is 'I actively support the boycott where it suits me and campaign for others to support it better than I do'.

A fascinating insight into how your cognitive processes work fit together.

It is not practical to avoid php as it is not obvious which sites use it. Avoiding it would have no impact on Israel which is the key purpose. BDS does have an impact on Israel. It affects them financially as increasing numbers of groups and countries boycott their goods. It affects them culturally as some musicians and artists avoid Israel. It affects them academically as large numbers of academics avoid Israeli institutions and will not cooperate and collaborate on projects or research. The overall effect tends to isolate Israel as an apartheid state. The BDS movement is growing albeit slowly.

It is not practical to avoid php as it is not obvious which sites use it.

Let me help you with that. The url for this thread is "http://www.moneyam.com/TradersRoom/posts.php?tid=13642" See the bit in bold? That's your clue. Look out for it in future and avoid any such imperialist zionist occupier supporting sites, and perhaps you can then look at yourself in the mirror in the morning and say 'here stands a misguided but principled man'.

If a successful boycott believes it can earn a strategic win by closing down a west bank tomato farm and cause local unskilled palestinian bread winners to lose their menial jobs and meagre salaries with the nasty and oppressive imperialists who invested in the west bank economy and built the farm then the same logic must apply to boycotting and closing down those great big Zend R&D offices in the Tel Aviv suburb where the fat cat Israeli oppressor programmers earn their daily caviar. Except that boycotting the latter is inconvenient for a simple minded boycott hypocrite who prefers to bury his head in the sand than to support a logically consistent political position.

The Israeli economy earns a massive proportion of its exports through technology licensing deals - it earns hugely more, for example, on each of licenses for Android, IOS and Intel chips than it does on its entire salad export business. (I hope you're boycotting these technologies too - cos that would be logically consistent and really might make a difference to the Israeli economy)

Your facile 'smoked salmon socialist' argument is ill conceived and holds no water. Like dropping a teaspoonful of sugar into the ocean and saying 'behold - it is sweeter'.

G

The settlement labeling is important for the publicity that it generates. The value of the sales is insignificant. The products can still be sold in the EU, but they have to show that they are coming from illegal settlements in an occupied country. The publicity maintains pressure on Israel and encourages other countries and institutions to think of Israel as a pariah state. The purpose is to isolate and delegitimise Israel.

If the BDS movement is so ineffectual, who does it worry you? Surely a pointless boycott movement would be ignored by you.

27 October 2015
Israel's arms sales are down heavily as countries refuse to trade with them. Companies are finding doing business with Israel causes problems for them in other countries.

Military exports drop from $7.5bn to $5.5bn
Industry leaders cite decline in willingness to purchase military products from Israel

Israeli military exports this year could decline to just 53% of their level in 2012 and “less desire for Israeli-made products” is a key factor, according to a letter from Israel’s four largest military companies.

Industry leaders are warning that military exports have steadily fallen since they reached $7.5bn in 2012. Sales in 2014 decline to $5.5bn and could drop to as low as $4bn this year, according to media reports about the letter.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been running highly visible campaigns against military trade with Israel that have seen 12 banks and pension funds exclude Israeli arms company Elbit Systems from their investment portfolio. Israeli owned arms factories have been blockaded, and a growing number of political parties and trade unions have called for an end to military ties with Israel.

The governments of Norway and Turkey have both announced military embargo policies against Israel in recent year.

1 September 2015 — The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and its worldwide partners are celebrating the withdrawal of the huge French corporation Veolia from the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR), an illegal rail system built to facilitate the growth and expansion of Israeli colonial settlements on occupied Palestinian territory.

The sale of its stake in the JLR project ends all of Veolia’s involvement in the Israeli market, including all projects that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.

The sale follows an extensive 7-year boycott campaign against Veolia, due to its complicity in the Israeli occupation, which cost it tenders around the world estimated to be worth over $20 billion.

Veolia sold nearly all of its business operations in Israel in April 2015 but had until now remained a 5% shareholder in the JLR project. On Thursday evening, the human rights research group Who Profits reported that Veolia had liquidated its 5% share in the JLR project.

Under BDS pressure, Veolia has failed to win massive contracts with local authorities across Europe, the US and Kuwait. City councils across Europe have passed resolutions excluding the firm from tenders due to its involvement in Israeli human rights violations.

3 December 2015

A UN body that has been facing pressure to end its links with security company G4S over its role in Israeli human rights abuses has announced that it no longer has contracts with the company.

G4S has been providing services to UNHCR in Jordan but a spokesperson told a reporter on Monday that the body does not have any contracts with the firm.

The announcement was made following a wave of protests online and at UN offices across 5 major cities over the weekend calling on the UN to end all of its contracts $22m worth of contracts with G4S.

G4S is the target of an international campaign over its role in Israeli prisons and check points and the fact it helps to run an Israeli police academy.

Investigations in September 2014 found G4S guards to be working at UNHCR buildings in Amman and at Syrian refugee camps in Zaatari and Azraq, leading to the start of BDS campaigning on the issue. UN documents show that UNHCR in Jordan had contracts with G4S worth $1.7m in 2014.

Sources familiar with the matter have told campaigners that UNHCR started moving security contracts from G4S to a local company earlier this year.

Other UN bodies including UNICEF, the UNDP and UNOPS still have contracts with the company. More than 200 organisations have called on the UN to bar the organisation from having contracts doing so violates the UN’s procurement code of conduct.

A report by Richard Falk, then a UN special rapporteur on Palestine, calling for a boycott of G4S over its role in Israeli human rights violations was approved by the UN General Assembly in 2012.

The #UNdropG4S campaign has set up a web page that makes it easy for people to write to the UN to voice their concerns and are urging people to join a Thunderclap social media action.

Yazeed Halaseh, member of the Jordan BDS group who campaign against G4S in Jordan, said:

“We welcome the announcement of UNHCR in Jordan that it is no longer hiring G4S. G4S is at the heart of Israel’s use of mass incarceration to repress Palestinian opposition to its military occupation and settler colonialism. We hope that the UN will listen to the thousands of people who are taking action and will end all of its contracts with G4S.”

Reverend Don Wagner, Friends of Sabeel North America, who began investigating the relationship between G4S and the UN in 2014, said:

“We were shocked to discover G4S agents ushering refugees into the UNHCR Amman office in September of 2014. News that this office no longer holds contracts with G4S is refreshing. It builds momentum for the UN as a whole to follow suit and to uphold human rights and human dignity everywhere.”

Rafat Sub Laban from Palestinian prisoner rights group Addameer, who started lobbying the UN on its contracts with G4S in April, said:

“Recent weeks have seen a wave of mass arrests by Israeli occupation forces aimed at repressing protests and imposing control and collective punishment on Palestinians in the occupied territory. Since the beginning of October, Israeli occupation forces arrested over 2,050 Palestinians including at least 350 children and over 210 Palestinians including 4 minors who were placed under administrative detention without charge or trial. Many of those who were arrested remain detained by Israel.”

“These political prisoners are held in prisons and interrogation centres that G4S helps Israel to run, making G4S complicit in Israel’s torture, ill-treatment and administrative detention without charge or trial of Palestinians.

“Addameer welcomes this news from UNHCR in Jordan and hopes the UN will now terminate all its contracts with G4S and to distance itself from complicity in human rights violations.”

In June 2014, the Gates Foundation divested the whole of its $170m holding in the company as a result of an international campaign.

The US Methodist Church, the largest protestant church in the US, divested from G4S after coalition campaigning brought the issue to a vote.

Universities in Oslo and Bergen refused to give G4S contracts over its role in Israel’s prison system following student campaigns. In the UK, at least 5 student unions have voted to cancel contracts with G4S, and students successfully pressured 2 other universities not to renew contracts with the company. Major charities in South Africa, the Netherlands and elsewhere terminated contracts with G4S

Facing mounting international pressure, G4S announced in 2014 that G4S “did not expect to renew” its contract with the Israeli Prison Service when it expires in 2017, and it has also said it will end some aspects of its involvement in illegal Israeli settlements. BDS activists have said they will continue their campaign until G4S ends all aspects of its support for Israeli violations of international law.

The Association of University Heads in Israel (VERA) penned a letter to the President of the American Anthropological Association Prof. Alisse Waterston on Monday calling on the organization to reconsider a motion to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

“We ask that before bringing this motion to a formal vote by all members of the association to consider revisiting the motion, which presents a distorted and false depiction of reality in Israel,” Prof. Peretz Lavie, chairman of VERA and president of the Technion- Israel Institute of Technology wrote.

The letter, signed by the presidents of all seven Israeli universities, was a response to a vote taken last month by members of the AAA in favor of adopting a motion to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

The resolution, in favor of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), was approved by an overwhelming majority (1040 in favor to 136 against) of some 1,400 members of the association participating in its annual conference in Denver, Colorado.