For Immediate Release

Washington, D.C. – Representatives from four US human rights groups met with State Department officials on Friday, October 22nd, and delivered a letter addressed to Secretary of State Clinton signed by more than 5,000 individuals calling for the US government to demand that Israel free Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a leading Palestinian nonviolent protest organizer. Abu Rahmah, from the West Bank village of Bil’in, was sentenced on October 11th in Israeli military court to one year in prison for his part in organizing Bil’in’s five-year campaign of civil disobedience to Israel’s construction of a fence and settlements on village land in violation of international law. Abu Rahmah’s conviction has been denounced by the UK Foreign Office, the EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem and South African anti-apartheid leader Desmond Tutu.

Rob Mosrie, Executive Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation said, “Israel’s arrest of non-violent activists like Abdallah Abu Rahmah mocks President Obama’s call in his Cairo speech for Palestinians to use only nonviolent means to gain their freedom. What kind of message does it send to a community when their nonviolent leadership is jailed?”

The letter delivered to the State Department and addressed to Hillary Clinton was signed by 35 organizations and 5,270 individuals and written before Abdallah Abu Rahmah’s October 11th sentencing. The letter noted that in July 2010 in Krakow at a meeting of the intergovernmental group Community of Democracies, Secretary of State Clinton saluted “civil society activists around the world who have recently been harassed, censored, cut off from funding, arrested, prosecuted, even killed,” and called for coordinated international efforts to defend them. The letter to Clinton continued, “Abdallah Abu Rahmah is one of these activists who, in pursuit of human rights, has been unjustly imprisoned.”

For Immediate Release

New York, NY - More than a dozen human rights activists surprised an end of New York Fashion Week shindig hosted at the Madison Avenue diamond boutique of the notorious Israeli settlement builder Lev Leviev. Acting on an anonymous tip, activists from Adalah-NY gathered outside Leviev's store shortly after highly-coutured guests began arriving. Oscar de la Renta was rumored to be among fashion bigs attending. Well-coiffed fashionistas clutching champagne flutes nervously drew away from the second-floor window of the boutique upon noting the full-throated chanting of the activists. Two glitterati who arrived in a limo returned to their vehicle, joining others, and left after seeing the protesters, who bore signs decrying Leviev's construction of Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. One limo driver, after discharging his passengers who were escorted inside by Leviev's security men, gave the protestors an enthusiastic thumbs up before driving away.

Heard among the protesters' chants: "Fashionistas and socialites, Leviev denies human rights."

"It's a shame that high-profile designers would want to associate with a known human-rights abuser," said Adalah-NY's Alexis Stern. "Don't their PR people know how to search his name on the web?"

For Immediate Release

New York, NY – A member of the board of directors of the leading international humanitarian aid organization CARE USA has taken a voluntary leave of absence from CARE’s board due to the involvement of his employer, Africa Israel, in Israeli settlement activities. The move last week came after a July 12 letter to the Atlanta-based non-profit by the rights group Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel that outlined Africa Israel’s settlement ties, followed by letters from Jews Say No, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and CODEPINK, and meetings and discussions between representatives from CARE and Adalah-NY and JVP.

Riham Barghouti from Adalah-NY explained, “We thank CARE USA for acting swiftly to appropriately address this issue once it was brought to their attention. Representatives from CARE USA told us that they have approved the Board member's request for an indefinite leave of absence while he remains in any way affiliated with Africa Israel. While on leave, we have been assured that the member in question will not attend or vote at Board meetings, receive Board information, or play any other role on the CARE USA Board.”

For Immediate Release

New York, NY – In a joyful celebration of the Palestinian peaceful and creative grassroots resistance, 40 New York human rights activists conducted a musical walking tour of businesses complicit in Israeli Apartheid in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The “Off-Off-Broadway BDS Tour” was part of the international commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the Palestinian United Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

“This year we mark five years of hard and fruitful work to achieve peace and equality for all in Palestine-Israel. We are inspired by the growing global boycott movement and with the recent campaigns that range from dockworkers in San Francisco, campaigns in Norway, Sweden, Turkey and India refusing to unload ships to cultural figures like Elvis Costello refusing to perform in Israel,” said Ryvka Zohar of Adalah-NY.