Jeff Handmaker [Electronic Intifada] 20 February 2009 - Responding to the many calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, solidarity movements around the world have marked many successes.

It is important for human rights advocates to build on this momentum and seize the opportunity to do what is within their power to try and hold Israel accountable for its abuses of human rights and other international laws.

Jay Dow [CBS] - A food fight is heating up in Brooklyn.

The 15,000 member food co-op in Park Slope is considering a ban on Israeli products because of the conflict in the Mideast. Officials there are now debating making an international statement after a member's proposal to take a symbolic stand against Israel.

So far the co-op staff has identified just four products from Israel, but they say it's possible there are others out of the 10,000 products offered at the co-op.

At approximately 10pm on Feb. 18, students of Take Back NYU! took over the Kimmel Marketplace. They blockaded the doors and declared an occupation!

They presented the following demands to the NYU administration:

DEMANDS

We, the students of NYU, declare an occupation of this space. This occupation is the culmination of a two-year campaign by the Take Back NYU! coalition, and of campaigns from years past, in whose footsteps we follow.

February 17, 2009 - "For the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."--Martin Luther King Jr., Beyond Vietnam, April 4, 1967

We salute the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) in Durban, and Western Australian dock worker members of the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA), for refusing to handle Israeli cargo.