Stirling votes to boycott Israeli goods

Stirling Council has passed a motion to boycott Israeli goods. The motion was put forward by Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign representative Cllr Colin Finlay. The wording followed the formula used in motions to other councils on boycotting Israel.

Thirteen of the 22 member SNP minority led council voted for the motion, which was approved on Monday. Cllrs Neil Benny and Alistair Berrill opposed the motion and there were seven abstentions.

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Ken Loach for boycott of Israeli company Bezeq

Film director Ken Loach has denounced BT for signing a partnership deal with Israel's major communications company, Bezeq International.

Activists say Bezeq should be boycotted as it provides communications to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

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Top judge: Israel boycotts are 'absurd'

One of Britain's leading judges, Master of the Rolls Lord Neuberger, has dismissed the idea of an academic boycott of Israel as absurd.

Speaking at the annual legal dinner of the British Friends of the Hebrew University in London last week, he recalled his visit to Jerusalem this year to deliver the Lionel Cohen lecture on behalf of the Friends.

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Nobel laureates will oppose Israel boycott

Almost 40 Nobel laureates have signed a statement opposing the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Roger Kornberg, of Stanford University, and Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas at Austin, drafted the document, which specifically criticises academic boycotts.

The statement, organised by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, declared: "We believe that the university should serve as an open, tolerant and respectful, co-operative and collaborative community engaged in practices of resolving complex problems."

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Israel boycotters launch European grouping

Fresh attempts to promote academic and cultural boycotts of Israel will be spearheaded by a newly-established pan-European organisation.

The European Platform for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (EPACBI) includes representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and five other countries with the aim of streamlining action against the Jewish state.

Members of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (Bricup), and its French equivalent AURDIP, joined forces to set up the new group and campaign against European Union funding of Israeli academic research.

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JNF chairman dismisses plea to Miliband

The chairman of the Jewish National Fund has responded to a personal attack on him by the pro-Palestinian Jewish campaigner Tony Greenstein.

Mr Greenstein, a long-time anti-Zionist, implied in a letter to the Guardian newspaper that JNF UK’s chairman Samuel Hayek had been lying for his country.

On October 7 Mr Greenstein was one of the signatories to a letter calling for Ed Miliband to break the tradition, set by former Labour leaders Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, of being a patron of the JNF.

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