BDS Attack From Portland, Oregon on Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Portland, Oregon, city of my birth, now with 609,456 people as of 2013.  I go to events pertaining to Israel now and I'm usually the only home-grown person there.  

Portland's Willamette Week's headlines were:

Portland’s Human Rights Commission Sparks Anger With Vote to Divest of Companies in Israel

Oh, they are so smart, the HRC Human Rights group in City Hall..

 Human Rights Commissioners are appointed by the Portland City Council.   The Human Rights Commissioners are volunteers who work without pay.   They had 2 people on their committee who voted for BDS against Israel and chatter is they didn't even know what they were voting for.  Since then they have renounced their votes but are not allowed to do so by the Human Righters.  Once you've voted, you've had it!

Portland is going wild.  This Portland government council dumped all their Walmart bonds.  Not appropriate for them.  Politically incorrect company. 

 "The idea, championed by City Commissioner Steve Novick, led to Portland City Hall last December expanding its "do not buy" list of corporations in which it refuses to invest its $940 million portfolio. That list currently includes Wal-Mart and fossil-fuel companies such as Chevron and Exxon Mobil.

A step further to controlling Israel came their way.  "Earlier this month, the Portland Human Rights Commission, an independent offshoot of the city's Office of Equity and Human Rights, endorsed a proposal that would ask the city to grow its "do not buy" list—to include companies that activists say play a role in the state of Israel's occupation of Palestine."

As a teacher and  student of history and a publisher of 3 blogs defending Israel and her rights to exist, I am appalled!!  Their history of Israel and their knowledge is worse than a 1st grader.  Israel is a legitimate state and there NEVER WAS A STATE OF PALESTINE!  And these people are making blind votes pertaining to the existence of Israel!  Evidently we have several left wing anti-Israel groups in town today.  "Bob Horenstein of the Jewish Federation   says the true goal of groups such as Occupation-Free Portland", one of them, " is to undermine Israel.  "This has nothing to do with human rights," says Horenstein. "It is yet another attempt by the boycott/divestment/sanction movement to de-legitimize the state of Israel and demonize the supporters of the state of Israel."  So all the Jews assembled yesterday afternoon at 4pm were demons, to them, including a few rabbis.  

I was born and raised in Portland, and this is the first time such anti-Semitism has shown itself, to come down on Israel in such a way. 

The BDS Movement stands for Boycotting, Divesting and Sanctioning somebody you are tying to control and change.  It's an 
unsuccessful effort to isolate Israel and create new Boycotts against the only democratic state in the Middle East.

The first reference I've noticed is to BDS G4S, a British security company that provides equipment and services to Israel's 5 prisons.  Political prisoners are held there.  The BDSers claim they are held without trial and are tortured.  By being the supplier of goods and service, the demonstrators against this company claim they are participating in Israel's use of torture and holding them in prisons.  More than 6,000 Palestinians are held this way to discourage them from resisting Israel's apartheid policies.

None of these claims are true.  This is what happens in Israel:

1. Proper custody and internment resources - improvement in the living conditions with the goal of reaching international standards, through optimal utilization of resources and development of alternatives to imprisonment.

2. Corrections - maximum utilization of the period of imprisonment to efficiently treat the offenders in order to enable them to successfully reintegrate into society.

Security Prisoners

There are some 4,500 security prisoners and detainees incarcerated in the Israel Prison Service, about 50% of whom are considered prisoners “with blood on their hands.” These prisoners include men, women and minors.

Among the security prisoners one finds senior members of Palestinian terrorist organizations, terrorists who were on their way to a suicide mission and were apprehended by the defense forces; dispatchers; attack planners; those responsible for preparing the explosives, etc. As the primary incarceration authority, the Israel Prison Service is responsible for the incarceration of these prisoners, while accommodating their basic needs in accordance with the law.

 B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, tells a more accurate report than the Portland council.  Their report is on Gaza of which holds Palestinian terrorists who have been shelling Southern Israel for years, through the past 2 Intifada at least since 2001.  Far from being tortured, the criminals; terrorists and all, are paid by the PA for being in prison. 

Hamas from Gaza, terrorist

According to the PA  more than 4,500 Palestinian prisoners (as of December 2012) serving time for terror-related offenses are recipients of PA salaries. This means that Palestinians convicted of crimes such as theft do not receive a salary, but Hamas and Fatah terrorist murderers do. 

 The Israeli Police noted that since 13 April 2008 the police is no longer responsible for any prison facilities(thereafter, the responsibility of the Prisons Service). The police no longer hold Palestinian detainees, other than for interrogation purposes." They are questioned.  That's it.  The police are not like those in Syria or any other Middle East country.  
                                                                 

"Updated: 

 14 Oct 2015

At the end of August 2015, 5,373 Palestinian security detainees and prisoners were held in Israeli prisons, 341 of them from the Gaza Strip.* An additional 977 Palestinians were held in Israel Prison Service facilities for being in Israel illegally, 13 of them from the Gaza Strip. The IPS considers these Palestinians – both detainees and prisoners – criminal offenders. A few dozen other Palestinians (we do not have precise figures) are held in IDF facilities for short periods of time. The following data were provided by the military and by the IPS."

" In January 2015, the PA Ministry of Finance announced that the PA budget includes ‎transfer of salaries to prisoners in Israeli jails who were from Gaza. [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, ‎Jan. 6, 2015] This openly contradicts the PA claim that the PA no longer pays salaries ‎to prisoners.‎"  When they are released, the PA pays them anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000.  

Students who protested and were for BDS in London were made up of many Arabs, I noticed.  All the women pictured were wearing scarves.  Politics against Israel are showing.  

There have been a lot of terrorists trying to kill Jews, and many of these have been a slaughter, horrible murders against Israelis.  

Portland invests with the farming company of Caterpillar. That's one company out of 4 they are divesting from.   "The city isn't currently invested in Motorola, Hewlett-Packard or G4S. It is invested in Caterpillar, and does buy products from the companies, including fire equipment from Motorola paid for with money from Portland's $72.4 million fire bond issue, which voters approved in 2010.  

"The Human Rights Commission didn't do their homework," says the federation's Horenstein. "The fact that they could consider a controversial issue like this without reaching out to the mainstream Jewish community is mystifying."  Evidently the meeting yesterday went pretty badly.  All the board wanted was reasons WHY they should not invest and they felt they didn't hear them.  It didn't make any difference, since it seems they already had made up their vote before the meeting had started. 

 The meeting was called for one building, and then changed a couple of hours before they were to start in another building about 8 blocks away.  It's amazing at least about 50 people made it there and wanted to have a chance to speak. 

 Human Rights?  Where are the rights of Israelis against a mob of uneducated and highly biased people?  

" The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland has accused the volunteer group of legitimizing a campaign that could foster anti-Semitism, and Mayor Charlie Hales has said he would block the effort to divest from the four companies."  I certainly hope he succeeds.  

This is also posted on my Jewish Facts From Portland blog.  

Reference:  http://www.bdsmovement.net/activecamps/g4s
https://www.portlandoregon.gov/oehr/62221?
http://www.btselem.org/statistics/detainees_and_prisoners
http://mops.gov.il/ENGLISH/CORRECTIONSENG/Pages/IPS.aspx
http://ips.gov.il/Web/En/Default.aspx
http://www.wweek.com/2015/10/28/portlands-obscure-human-rights-commission-sparks-anger-with-israel-palestine-vote/
http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.611971
https://t.e2ma.net/message/gepgq/kxahhk HRC's endorcement of BDS
http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=1005 Palestinian prisoners being paid by PA
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4454760,00.html PA pays upon release huge sum
http://www.haaretz.com/world-news/1.634334 how other countries keep terrorists
http://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2015/06/palestinian-backed-bds-movement-abetted.html