Sponsors of a US speaking tour featuring boycott, divestment and sanctions movement leader Omar Barghouti call on supporters to contact the US Consulate in Jerusalem and the Department of State to fulfill US promise of "Promoting the Global Marketplace of Ideas" and grant Barghouti's visa.

Queer organizations around the globe are mobilizing to let filmmakers and other cultural workers know that the Israeli government is trying to "pinkwash" its war crimes by giving money to queer cultural events, including the upcoming San Francisco LGBT Film Festival.

Act now by emailing executives at Combined Systems Inc., and at the companies that invest in CSI -- the Carlyle Group and Point Lookout Capital -- and tell them to stop providing their tear gas to the Israeli military, before more protesters are killed and maimed.

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), on behalf of its constituent organizations and unions representing the majority of Palestinian civil society, strongly condemns the decision taken by French authorities to prosecute people of conscience for calling for a boycott of Israeli produce.

Today, a month after the massacre of nine human rights activists in international waters aboard a flotilla carrying aid and supplies sailing to break the four-year closure of the Gaza Strip, we call once again upon the International Geographical Union to take a courageous and principled stand and cancel its Tel Aviv conference.

Under darkness of night, Israeli commandos from at least 14 warships and military helicopters boarded the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, and began shooting. According to live video from the ship, at least two civilians have been murdered, and dozens injured. Israeli television is reporting 16 civilians killed.

In a hearing at Petach Tikva Magistrates' Court on Thursday, 20 May 2010, a judge extended Ameer Makhoul's detention for a third time until Tuesday, 25 May 2010. Mr. Makhoul, a human rights defender and the director of Arab nongovernmental organization network Ittijah, has been in Israeli detention since he was arrested from his family home in Haifa in the early morning hours of 6 May.

Effectively canceling a planned speaking tour, the US consulate in the Netherlands has put an extended hold on the visa application of award-winning Palestinian journalist and photographer Mohammed Omer, scheduled to speak on conditions in Palestine, on 5 April in Chicago.

The BDS National Committee (BNC) is calling on you to unite in your different capacities and struggles for a Global BDS Day of Action on 30 March 2010 in solidarity with the Palestinian people and for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The BNC calls on people of conscience and their organizations around the globe to mobilize in creative, concrete and visible BDS actions to make this day a historic step in the movement against Israel's apartheid, colonialism and occupation, for accountability of the oppressor and for the fulfillment of the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people.

The US Palestinian Community Network is appalled that the government of the United States not only continues its unconditional support for Israel, but has engaged in establishing Palestinian contra forces in the West Bank, aimed at deepening Palestinian internal division and engaging in arbitrary arrests and assassinations of political activists. We demand an immediate end to all such programs and the immediate withdrawal of US Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton and his mercenaries from Palestine!

The following action alert was issued on 5 August 2009 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and groups around the world, urging Amnesty International to discontinue its involvement with a Leonard Cohen concert in Israel that effectively normalizes Israel's violations of international law and undermines the worldwide movement to boycott Israel.

Hamdi al-Ta'mari was arrested for the first time from the family home in Bethlehem at 4:00am, on 25 July 2008. He was woken by the sound of Israeli soldiers banging on the front door. Hamdi's hands and feet were immediately tied and he was ordered to lie on the floor, as soldiers pointed their assault rifles and flashlights at him. While on the ground, a number of soldiers slapped, kicked and beat him with their assault rifles. His hands were tied so tightly that they began to swell. After 15 minutes, Hamdi was blindfolded and placed on the floor of a military vehicle.

We call on all to unite our different capacities and struggles in a Global Day of Action in Solidarity with the Palestinian people and for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel on 30 March 2009. The mobilization coincides with the Palestinian Land Day, the annual commemoration of the 1976 Israeli massacre of Palestinians in the Galilee in struggle against massive land expropriation, and forms part of the Global Week of Action against the Crises and War from 28 March 28 to 4 April.

Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), a San Francisco Bay Area solidarity group, is calling on international Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans and Queer filmmakers not to participate in the Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival this June. QUIT!'s call for filmmakers to respect the cultural boycott of Israel initiated by more than 100 organizations of Palestinian civil society. The call has been joined by members of South West Asian and North African Bay Area Queers and a founder of Trikone, the largest South Asian LGBT organization in the world.

As educators and scholars of conscience in the United States, we fully support the call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. We urge our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel's ongoing scholasticide and to support the nonviolent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions. The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USCACBI) outline their mission statement.

With the death toll in Gaza growing hourly, silence is complicity. It is imperative for concerned citizens to demand that their governments take immediate action in order to stop Israeli genocide in Gaza. Write your representative today and demand that Israeli war criminals be brought before the International Criminal Court or a Special Tribunal for war crimes committed in Gaza. (Remind your representative that the investigation, prosecution or extradition of those responsible for war crimes is an obligation of all high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions.)

In this holiday season, the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee calls upon people of conscience all over the world to boycott all the products of the French cosmetics giant, L'Oreal, due to its deep and extensive involvement in business relations with Israel, despite the latter's continued occupation and apartheid policies against the indigenous Palestinian people.

The Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv is touring the US and Canada in January, February, and March, 2009. A recipient of public financing since the 1990s, the dance troupe is clearly an Israeli apartheid cultural institution. Writing October 26, 2008, in The Independent of London, Jenny Gilbert reports that the dance company is "funded by Israel's government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is 'proud to be considered Israel's leading ambassador.'"

Leeds University Union agreed last week, by a vote of 12 to 11, to send a motion to referendum which will label anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism and silence pro-Palestinian groups on campus. The motion, shrouded in the language of combating anti-Semitism, is a reversal of a motion passed two years ago which gave Palestinian activists at Leeds University the rights enjoyed by their counterparts throughout the country. If passed, organizations which have an anti-Zionist platform, such as the Socialist Workers Party and the Palestine Solidarity Group, will be prevented from receiving funding from the union and prevented from holding many of their events.

Canada's Museum of Civilization is part of Canadians' acknowledgement and atonement for the colonial ethnic cleansing of First Peoples. By providing space for the Jewish National Funds's Negev Dinner, however, the museum is aiding and abetting ethnic cleansing in Palestine and facilitating the celebration of these actions next to the exhibit of aboriginal culture in the Museum's Great Hall. This discredits our nation's understanding of its own egregious colonial past and raises questions about the sincerity of our apologies to aboriginal peoples in Canada.