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Brooklyn, NY, March 5, 2009 – About 30 protesters gathered this evening to call upon New Yorkers to boycott the Israeli dance troupe Batsheva Dance Company at their performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)’s Howard Gilman Opera House. Dance performance attendees and passersby stopped to watch as the protesters danced their own dance – a traditional Palestinian dance called dabke.

New York Human Rights Advocates Reach Out to Hollywood PR Firms and Oscars Staff

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February 19, New York, NY – Adalah-NY and Jews Against the Occupation-NYC (JATO-NYC) have called on 16 Hollywood PR firms and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to ensure that no stars wear Leviev diamonds at this Sunday’s Academy Awards. In a two week campaign involving letters and dozens of phone discussions with PR firms, the groups drew attention to Leviev’s violations of human rights and international law in the occupied West Bank where his companies build Israeli settlements, and in the diamond industry in Angola and Namibia. Leviev reportedly controls one third of the world’s diamond mines.

Adalah NY & Jews Against the Occupation-NYC
Media Contact: info@adalahny.org

Town Hall Meeting Under Threat of Violence

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January 13, New York, NY - Adam Shapiro, a human rights activist and documentary filmmaker, who is scheduled to speak tonight at a public Town Hall Meeting hosted by Revolution Books, has had death threats issued against him by the Jewish Defense Organization. In the threats, which were pasted to the Revolution Books window, Shapiro is named specifically as an enemy who should be eliminated. Tonight’s Town Hall Meeting focusing on Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip will be held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan at 7 PM.

Musical Holiday Protest Highlights Boycott Campaign Achievements in Last Year

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New York, NY – Thirty human rights carolers braved the cold and ice today to serenade Manhattan’s holiday shoppers with a call, for the second year, to boycott the jewelry store and companies of Israeli settlement-builder and diamond mogul Lev Leviev. Leviev’s Madison Avenue store has been the site of 12 protests since it opened in mid-November, 2007, and protests against his businesses have spread to London, Dubai and the West Bank villages where he is building settlements. Additionally, during the past year UNICEF and Oxfam have renounced Leviev, major Hollywood stars have distanced themselves from him, and the governments of United Kingdom and Dubai are under pressure to boycott Leviev’s businesses.

The carolers, from the New York-based human rights coalition Adalah-NY and other groups, were accompanied in singing and chanting by a percussion section from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra. Hundreds of copies of the comic “Who is Lev Leviev?” were given to passersby, many of whom stopped to hear the parody holiday songs while carrying shopping bags from Madison Avenue’s most exclusive shops.