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For Immediate Release
May, 02 2019, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Email:,info@jewishvoiceforpeace.org
Victory--Judge Rules in Support of Panel Discussion on Palestinian Human Rights at UMass
“To shut down the event would be to violate the First Amendment.”
WASHINGTON
A Massachusetts district court ruled in favor of allowing a panel discussion at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst to go head earlier today. The May 4 panel discussion "Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights" will be held as planned, despite the legal request for an injunction to halt the panel, premised on a false accusation of antisemitism by the panelists, event sponsors and attendees.
Jewish Voice for Peace member Attorney Rachel Weber explained that, "The judge ruled that to shut down this event would be to violate the First Amendment. But we also challenged the false premise that criticism of Israel is somehow inherently antisemitic. We have every right to criticize Israel's violations of Palestinian human rights. As members of JVP, and as Jews, we stand in solidarity with the event and with the panelists."
This lawsuit is part of a national trend attempting to silence the free speech rights of students and faculty who advocate for justice and human rights in Israel and Palestine. Responding to the attempt to shut down the May 4 event, UMass Amherst Professor of Philosophy Joseph Levine stated, "The attempt to tar everyone associated with the movement for Palestinian rights with the brush of antisemitism is part of a systematic campaign to build a wall of denial behind which Israel can continue to call on the US to aid and abet its brutal oppression of millions of Palestinians living under occupation and in exile."
UMass student Anna Ben-Hur added that, "As a Jewish student member of Students for Justice in Palestine, I'm deeply uncomfortable with the claims that this event is antisemitic. The struggle for Palestinian and Jewish freedom is the same struggle - it's a movement against white nationalism."
Joining Jewish Voice for Peace Western MA in asking the court to reject the injunction were event panelists Linda Sarsour, Marc Lamont Hill, Roger Waters, Dave Zirin, moderator Vijay Prashad, event organizer Sut Jhally and the Media Education Foundation, and co-sponsor Students for Justice in Palestine at UMass-Amherst. The University of Massachusetts Amherst was represented separately and also opposed the lawsuit and request for injunction.
The panel discussion "Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech, and the Battle for Palestinian Human Rights" will address recent attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar and other progressives who have spoken out against Israel's 50-year military occupation of Palestinian land. Admission is free to the event which will begin at 6:30PM on Saturday May 4 at the Fine Arts Center, University of Massachusetts Amherst. Free tickets will be available at the door the night of the event. For more information visit www.notbackingdownumass.org
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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A consumer watchdog group is calling on the federal agency that regulates prediction markets to investigate what it says are a series of "highly suspicious bets" placed on President Donald Trump's war with Iran.
In a letter sent on Thursday to Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a representative for the group Public Citizen pointed out that users have been able to make off with six-figure winnings from betting on political outcomes using platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket, which "advertise that you can bet on almost anything, anywhere."
"While bets on the future of the Iranian regime had been sporadic and imprecise for months before the invasion, several very substantial bets were placed in the last-minute moments prior to the February 28 attack," wrote Public Citizen's government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman.
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The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported findings from the crypto analytics firm Bubblemaps, which identified “six suspected insiders” who had won a $1.2 million profit on a US strike through Polymarket. As the Journal wrote:
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Holman asked Selig to identify the users who placed the highly lucrative bets and who, within the Trump and Netanyahu administrations, may have been privy to insider knowledge about the strikes.
The Trump family is deeply intertwined with the world of prediction markets. The president's media company, earlier this year, partnered with Crypto.com to launch its own prediction platform called "Truth Predict." Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both Polymarket and Kalshi.
The president's CFTC chair, Selig—who has appointed the CEOs of prediction market platforms as advisers—has sought to shield betting markets from regulatory scrutiny, describing his goal as ushering in "the Golden Age of American financial markets."
Last month, facing what he called “an onslaught of state-led litigation,” Selig made the legally questionable assertion that Congress had given his agency the exclusive authority to regulate these platforms, not as tightly controlled gambling hubs but as commodities markets, which have much looser rules.
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Democratic lawmakers quickly seized on the president's comment as further evidence of his callous lack of regard for the potentially catastrophic consequences of the war he launched.
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Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a retired US Navy officer, wrote on social media that the president "has terrible judgment, and Americans have already died because of it."
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The Trump administration has refused to provide a clear objective, justification, or timeline for the war, which is costing US taxpayers roughly $1 billion per day. Politico reported earlier this week that US Central Command is "asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days but likely through September."
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The United Nations human rights office warned Friday that Israel's "blanket displacement orders" and bombardment of Beirut and its outlying suburbs was delivering "more misery to civilians" in those areas, including children and their families.
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UN human rights chief Volker Türk on Friday denounced Israel's large -scale evacuation orders, saying, “These blanket, massive displacement orders we are talking here about hundreds and thousands of people. This raises serious concern under international humanitarian law, and in particular when it comes to issues around forced transfer."
In a Thursday statement, Save the Children called for the warring parties, as well as the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) nations—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—to deploy every diplomatic tool at their disposal to bring "an end to hostilities" and guarantee "adherence to international humanitarian law to protect the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of children across the region."
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