Palestine Today 06 24 2010

Friday June 25, 2010 01:49 by IMEMC News - IMEMC Audio Dept

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Welcome to Palestine Today a service of the International Middle East Media Centre, www.imemc.org for Thursday, June 24 2010.

Zionist workshop at Social Forum cancelled, and Swedish dockworkers join in boycotting Israeli goods theses stories and more coming up, stay tuned.

The Second U.S. Social Forum is happening in Detroit, Michigan this week and progressive groups are applauding the organizing committee for canceling a workshop using Zionist information.

The workshop that was cancelled is sponsored by 'Stand With Us' a group associated with the Zionist Organization of America. That group is known to use questionable research from right-wing zealots in attempts to smear the culture of Arabs and Muslims.

The workshop in question was going to attempt to show the occupied Palestinian territories and other Arab nations as homophobic, while painting Israel as a safe place for the GLBT community.

The organizers of the forum in their brief statement canceling the workshop stated that they did not believe that it was attempting to challenge homophobia but instead attempting to justify the racism and apartheid that the state of Israel actively endorses.

In Sweden, 1500 members of the Swedish Dockworkers Union have agreed to boycott Israeli products entering Sweden's ports.

While the actual boycott is mostly symbolic with only 0.2% of Sweden's imports and exports being attributed to Israel, it will have an impact on those companies that do export to Sweden.

The dockworkers have approved of the boycott following the Israeli attack on the Turkish humanitarian aid flotilla at the end of last May. They have also expressed their solidarity with the movement to fully lift the siege on Gaza and aren't satisfied with the recent easing of the blockade approved by the Israeli government.

Elsewhere in Europe, a Belgian-Palestinian national and thirteen other Palestinians have filed a 70-page lawsuit against top-ranking Israeli officials who presided over the Gaza war in late December 2008 to the end of January 2009.

It accuses the officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, of committing crimes against humanity and for committing war crimes. A portion of the lawsuit is based on the controversial Goldstone report which accused both sides in the war, Israel and Hamas, of war crimes. 400 Palestinians were killed in the conflict.

The Free Gaza Movement, the group that organized the fateful Freedom Flotilla, has announced that it is also collecting testimonies and evidence in order to file a suit with the International Court of Justice at The Hague.

Thank you for joining us from occupied Bethlehem, you have been listening to Palestine Today from the International Middle East Center, for constant update, please visit our website at www.imemc.org. This report has been brought to you by Brian Ennis

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