Nurses Across US Demand Hospitals Cut Ties With Palantir, Citing ICE and Gaza

National Nurses United is expanding its campaign against Palantir in a global week of action starting on September 28.

By Shireen Akram-Boshar ,

Truthout

September 11, 2026

Health Workers for a Free Palestine picket military intelligence company Palantir on December 21, 2023 in London, England.Guy Smallman / Getty Images

National Nurses United (NNU), the largest union of registered nurses in the U.S., is demanding that hospitals cut ties with Palantir, with nurses citing the firm’s role in developing technology used to surveil immigrants in the U.S. and target civilians in Gaza.

The union – which represents more than 225,000 nurses in all 50 U.S. states — has announced a global week of action against Palantir, set to begin on September 28.

Palantir’s “AI-powered tools for large-scale data collection and mass surveillance… threaten human rights globally,” the union said in a press release announcing the campaign.

The global week of action is aimed at pushing all public institutions — including hospitals and other health care providers — to end contracts and partnerships with Palantir, and to divest from the company, the union said.

The global week of action builds on a national day of action, also led by the union, which saw demonstrations in eight cities across the U.S. on August 27, including in Portland, Maine; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Austin; and Los Angeles.


Palantir Paid No Federal Income Tax. Its Global Tax Rate Is Just 1.4 Percent.
The infamous surveillance company paid $22.7 million in global corporate taxes while raking in $1.6 billion in profits. By Brett Wilkins , CommonDreams August 7, 2026

The global week of action is also coordinated with health care workers in the U.K., where National Health Service (NHS) workers and activists will protest Palantir’s use in health care on October 1. Other organizations, like Amnesty International and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Movement, are also part of the global week of action.

“Palantir has no place in patient care, no place in our communities, and no place in our society,” a NNU nurse said in a video from the August 27 day of action.

The nurses have outlined Palantir’s complicity in human rights violations both nationally and internationally, from detentions of immigrants by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to the genocide in Gaza.

“We think that a company that specializes in mass surveillance, kidnappings and killings, has no place in patient care,” one nurse explained in a video posted by the California Nurses Association.

During the August day of action, nurses placed 50 pairs of baby shoes in the street in each city – to represent the 500 babies and toddlers who have been detained in immigrant jails since President Donald Trump started his second term. The nurses also brought letters written by children in ICE detention.

“Palantir, we know, helps ICE identify people to kidnap off of our streets,” another nurse said during the day of action.

The company also has “their hands in the genocide and murders of civilians in Gaza,” another nurse present at the protests said. “They’ve [helped with the targeting of] hospitals, schools, mission workers taking food and aid….”

In a statement shared with Truthout and read at the August 27 day of action, Chicago-based nurse and NNU member Elizabeth Lalasz said that “nurses, health care workers, our patients, immigrants, and allies from every walk of life stand united here in Chicago and all across the country to demand an immediate end to the violence inflicted by Palantir technologies and the Trump administration.”

“As we speak, Palantir’s AI is enabling atrocities and human rights abuses: ICE killings, mass deportation, and concentration camps with no access to health care – even the imprisonment of more than 500 babies and 6,200 children – and Palantir is providing the technology for Israel’s U.S.-funded genocide in Gaza, the cruel and illegal war in Iran, and mass surveillance at home and abroad,” she went on.

Lalasz also noted that Palantir has partnered with the world’s largest health care corporations “to suck more and more profit from our broken health care system, causing untold suffering in our hospitals.”

“This country could fund health care for 12 million children with the money spent on ICE detention alone,” she said.

João Paulo Connolly, an activist in the Bay Area who has organized protests against Palantir, explained in a webinar that “Palantir’s profit model is data extraction and surveillance,” and then “giving employers new, powerful ways to monitor and spy on their workers at all times and track their behavior,” while also selling the health care industry and the federal government “unprecedented levels of access” to this data.

CUNY Discloses Investments in Israeli Apartheid After Years-Long Campaign

CUNY has direct investments in weapons manufacturers enabling Israel’s genocide, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin

.
By Shireen Akram-Boshar ,

Truthout

September 10, 2026

City University of New York (CUNY) students occupy the central quad of the CUNY campus with a Gaza Solidarity encampment, on April 26, 2024, in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis

On Wednesday, September 9, activists from CUNY4Palestine broadcast their findings regarding the City University of New York’s (CUNY) investment portfolio in a press conference in front of New York City Hall.

“Following years of campus organizing and after a wave of demonstrations that erupted to protest CUNY’s complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the students have won disclosure!” the student group said in a statement shared with Truthout.

CUNY has now disclosed its ties to companies profiting from Israel’s crimes – including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

The fight for disclosure is just a stepping stone in the larger struggle across the U.S. to compel academic institutions to divest from companies complicit in Israel’s crimes.

In mid-August, CUNY agreed to settle and disclose its stock and bond holdings by September 2, following a two-year battle with activists. The legal battle began with CUNY4Palestine and CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine filing a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request in 2024, which was quickly denied by the university. The activist groups then filed a lawsuit demanding that CUNY disclose its investments in companies involved in Israeli apartheid and genocide dating back to January 2020. A judge ruled in 2025 that CUNY could not withhold its records, but the university appealed the ruling. Finally, in August 2026, the university agreed to a settlement that included disclosure.


Op-Ed |
NYPD Assault on CUNY Gaza Encampment Shows Why We Need Sanctuary Universities
My lived experience of Chile under Pinochet’s dictatorship drives my opposition to the current US crackdown on dissent. By Ángeles Donoso Macaya , Truthout  May 22, 2025

Corinna Mullin, who was among four adjunct professors fired by CUNY for speaking in solidarity with Palestine in June 2025, spoke at the Wednesday press conference. (Three of those professors have since been reinstated, including Mullin.)

“Let’s be clear – CUNY did not volunteer this information,” Mullin said. “They fought us every step of the way.”

“It took a FOIL lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court, an encampment, speakouts, protests, petitions, demonstrations at board of trustee hearings, and a relentless campaign of pressure” to get the university to disclose, she went on.

“And this campaign, although accelerated by the urgency of the genocide against the Palestinian people started in October 2023, dates back years,” she added.

CUNY4Palestine “has identified numerous investments in CUNY’s portfolio,” the organization explained in the statement, “that confirm CUNY’s direct complicity in colonization, genocide, war crimes, prison labor, border militarization, imperialist military interventions, mass incarceration and fascist attacks on our immigrant communities.”

The university has direct investments in multiple weapons manufacturers involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the activists announced, including over $212,407.10 in unsecured Boeing stocks, $107,488.89 in Boeing common stocks, $141,201.34 in Raytheon stocks, and $65,302.74 in Lockheed Martin stocks.

“Boeing in particular facilitates ongoing massacres in Iran, Lebanon, and Palestine through its manufacturing of F-15 fighter jets, Apache AH-64 attack helicopters, and the notorious bunker-buster bombs,” the activists went on.

The activist group also noted that CUNY has holdings in GEO Group and CoreCivic, private contractors who operate immigration jails including Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey. These corporations “profit from prison labor, ICE detention, deportations, and surveillance,” Mullin said in her speech.

“Even as CUNY management claims to support immigrant students, it has invested the funds of our public university in terrorizing their communities and detaining them and their families,” Mullin added.

She then called for CUNY to respond to the needs of the diverse community it serves.

“We shouldn’t have had to fight for this. This is a public institution. This is the so-called ‘People’s University,’” Mullin said.

Veronica Salama of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented the student activists in the legal fight, noted in a press release in August that investment records disclosure “is a basic responsibility and function of a public institution.”

CUNY is the largest urban public university in the country. It now joins the only other U.S. universities that have disclosed their investments in companies complicit in Israel’s crimes – the University of Minnesota and the University of California, both of which disclosed in 2024 due to the pressure of pro-Palestinian student encampments that spring.

In May 2025, the University of San Francisco announced that it would divest from four companies that contract with the Israeli military by June 2025 – Palantir, L3Harris, GE Aerospace, and RTX Corporation, also after a persistent campaign by student activists.

In 2024, students across the country set up at least 130 encampments at colleges and universities in order to bring attention to the U.S.’s role in Israel’s genocide. One of the primary demands of the encampments was divestment.

In her speech on Wednesday, Mullin referred to the encampment as central to the fight for disclosure and divestment, and for a better university.

“When we organized against all of this – when we built that beautiful encampment at City College in solidarity with Palestinian liberation and against the genocide – we created something extraordinary,” she said. “We showed what a People’s University could actually look like.”

But the university’s response — and the response of universities across the country to the student-led encampment movement — was repression.

“They called in the [New York City Police Department Strategic Response Group], with the full support of the governor and mayor at the time, to repress our peaceful encampment. Over 100 protesters were arrested that evening,” Mullin recalled. “They attacked and punished student organizers.”

Despite the repression, activists intend for the disclosure to become a blueprint for a divestment campaign at CUNY, and a model for other universities.

The State University of New York (SUNY) BDS chapter echoed this sentiment in a statement sent to Truthout, saying, “Our goal is to develop a SUNY-wide Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that reaches across all 64 SUNY campuses.”

Diplomatic row escalates as UK, France and Canada move to sanction Israeli settlements

Issued on: 09/09/2026 - FRANCE24

Britain, France and Canada said Tuesday they will ban imports from Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with a UK minister accusing Israel of turning a blind eye to the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians there. The moves prompted a furious Israel to unveil immediate counter-measures targeting Britain, as Jerusalem-based journalist Jordana Miller reports.

‘Must Be Just the Beginning’: UK, France, Canada Move to Ban Imports From Israeli Settlements

“Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution,” said UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband.

Palestinians inspect severe damage inside a family home following an Israeli military raid and siege in the West Bank on September 8, 2026.
(Photo by Issam Rimawi/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Sep 08, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


The United Kingdom, France, and Canada joined forces on Tuesday to ban imports of goods and some services from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, where settlers and soldiers are assailing, displacing, and killing Palestinians at an unprecedented rate with the backing of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

“Today, we refuse to be bystanders to further suffering and to the destruction of the two-state solution,” Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, said in a speech to the House of Commons. Miliband pointed to the Israeli government’s recent approval of construction projects that would evict Palestinian communities and “place settlements directly between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, cutting through the heart of Palestine.”

“Let’s be clear what this means: the creation of a set of facts on the ground to make the two-state solution unviable,” said Miliband, in what was described as the UK government’s most forceful condemnation of Israeli conduct in the West Bank to date. “The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists. And all too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse, members of it have made statements and taken actions to support the forced displacement of Palestinians.”

Miliband said the UK government would “take action against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing, or real estate for settlement expansion” and penalize “those who finance or facilitate illegal settlements.” He said the sanctions would be in place within six to nine months.



Miliband emphasized that in banning imports from Israel’s West Bank settlements, the UK was not acting alone. The British foreign secretary noted that France and Canada will also “ban the import of goods from illegal settlements,” joining “the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway—which have either banned goods or are in the process of doing so.”

Jean-Noël Barrot, France’s foreign affairs minister, wrote on social media that France is cutting off imports from illegal Israeli settlements “because the West Bank is on the brink of explosion: unchecked expansion of colonization in violation of international law, surge in violence perpetrated by extremist settlers against Palestinians, acts of terror denounced by the Israeli authorities themselves.”

“France cannot, through its trade, support a situation that threatens the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike, as well as peace and stability in the region,” Barrot wrote. “Europe must uphold the same imperative.”

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the foreign ministers of 12 nations—the UK, France, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden—said that the situation in the West Bank is “rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for the E1 settlement project.”

The foreign ministers confirmed their “intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions on trade in goods with settlements which are illegal under international law, or that they are actively considering these and other measures, in accordance with their national procedures.”

“In this regard, the UK, France, and Canada welcome the important action already taken by Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, and Belgium, and will bring forward national measures to ban trade in settlement goods,” the statement continued. “The government of Israel must immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence, and investigate allegations against Israeli forces.”

Advocates largely welcomed the governments’ announcements while stressing that they should be the starting point for more sweeping action to confront the Israeli government’s illegal annexation efforts in the West Bank and crimes against humanity across the Palestinian territories, including the decimated Gaza Strip.

“Today’s announcement is the result of many years of work by campaigners and Palestinians themselves fighting to end severe injustice,” said Nick Dearden, director of the UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. “We know this move will be very popular in Britain. But it must be just the beginning. How can we cooperate with a military guilty of the most serious abuses of international law? How can we trade with a country that stands accused of genocide at the world’s highest court?”

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, dismissed the UK government’s sanctions announcement as “largely performative,” but said they also “reflect the impact of relentless public pressure on the current government.”

“The UK is legally obliged to take serious measures to end its complicity with the State of Israel, not merely with the settlements, per the [International Court of Justice],” said Barghouti. “While Miliband says, ‘We will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two-state solution,’ he has not said how the UK will stop its active contribution to the Israeli-US led destruction of the international legal system and the drive towards a might-makes-right order.”

US and Israeli officials responded furiously to the UK’s sanctions announcement. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s extremist national security minister, called for the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem, while Israel’s finance minister demanded the expulsion of the British ambassador.

Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, characterized the UK’s trade ban as “discrimination against the Jewish people” and suggested that individual American states such as Florida could retaliate against the British government.

US Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), a rabidly pro-Israel lawmaker and anti-Muslim bigot, wrote on social media that “Florida is one of Britain’s largest trading partners” and signaled that the state could move to boycott UK goods.

Far-Right Israeli Finance Minister Demands Expulsion of UK Ambassador Over Settlement Trade Ban

The United Kingdom’s Labour government is set to announce a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich takes part in the Jerusalem Day parade at the Damascus Gate in the old city of Jerusalem on May 14, 2026.
(Photo by Erik Marmor/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Sep 08, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The United Kingdom on Tuesday is expected to announce a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, a plan that prompted a furious response from far-right Israeli and American officials even as British diplomats privately acknowledged that the new sanctions package would be mostly symbolic.

“Expel the British ambassador tonight!” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich wrote in a social media post ahead of the official announcement. “We will not be a doormat trampled by an antisemitic government, in a country conquered by radical Islam, trying to save itself from economic and social decline by attacking Jews and the State of Israel.”

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, who is Jewish, is set to unveil the trade ban as the Israeli government aggressively accelerates its unlawful land grabs and expulsion of Palestinians in the West Bank, where violent rampages by Israeli settlers have reached unprecedented levels. The trade ban was developed after the Israeli government advanced a plan to build more than 1,200 new settlement homes in the West Bank.

The Guardian reported Monday that “in his statement to MPs, Miliband is expected to use firmer language than his recent predecessors in calling out the humanitarian injustices suffered by Palestinians in Gaza.”

“The steps he lays out are likely to fall short of the full set of demands made by Palestinian advocacy groups,” the outlet added, “but they will still be seen as a sign that the UK is moving beyond traditional rhetorical support for a two-state solution towards active steps to forestall the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank—widely seen as intended to destroy the prospect of a Palestinian state.”

New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham reportedly spoke with US President Donald Trump on Monday about the impending trade ban, which drew condemnation from the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee.

Behind the scenes, according to Bloomberg, UK diplomats “privately told the US that the sanctions are largely symbolic and will have no material impact on the UK’s wider relationship with Israel on trade or security, in a bid to soothe the Trump administration’s response.”

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, told The Guardian that a ban on trade with Israeli settlements would be an “absolutely important” change in UK government policy.

Nick Dearden, director of the UK-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, wrote on social media that “a settlement ban is welcome but we must go further.”

“Hope the government will include services and will announce new bans of weapons sales and military coordination tomorrow,” Dearden added. “The comms is an improvement but we need action.”

Reuters reported that the impact of the policy move on bilateral trade with Israel is “likely to be ⁠minimal, with details unclear of how the UK will differentiate between goods originating in West Bank settlements [and] products made in Israel.”

‘I’ll Wear It as a Badge of Honor,’ Says MP Sultana After Israel Bars Entry to 11 UK Lawmakers

“I will not be intimidated into silence,” said MP Zarah Sultana. “If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out.”

Your Party MP Zarah Sultana speaks during a national march for Palestine on January 31, 2026, in London, England. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London to protest Israel’s military actions in Gaza and to call on the UK government to end its political and military support for Israel.
(Photo by Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 08, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Zarah Sultana, a member of the UK Parliament, said she won’t stop speaking about the rights of Palestinians after Israel banned her from entering the country on Tuesday.

“Given that this is a fascist government presiding over genocide, apartheid and an illegal occupation, I’ll wear it as a badge of honor,” she said in a post to X. “I will not be intimidated into silence. I will continue to speak out against Israel’s genocide and against the UK’s complicity. If anything, this ban only strengthens my resolve to keep speaking out.”

Sultana, who represents Coventry South and is a co-founder of the left-wing Your Party, was one of 11 members of Parliament whom Israel announced it was blocking from entry in retaliation after the UK joined Canada, France, and other nations to announce an import ban on goods from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law.

Following a year of record violence against Palestinians in the territory, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the import ban was in response to the “ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank—perpetrated by settler terrorists.”

Israel has reacted with fury at the move, closing the British consulate in East Jerusalem, which handles relations with Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza.

Also banned from the country are UK Labour MPs Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, and Naz Shah; Green MPs Siân Berry, Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, and Hannah Spencer; as well as Jeremy Corbyn, who led the Labour Party from 2015-20 before co-founding Your Party with Sultana in 2025.

Remarking on his and his colleagues’ ban from the country, Corbyn said Israel’s treatment of Palestinians was “the real scandal.”



“I have visited all parts of Palestine on several occasions, where I have witnessed the horrors of occupation, as well as the resilience and humanity of the Palestinian people,” Corbyn wrote on X. “They are the ones who suffer from Israel’s apartheid. It is their freedom which is egregiously curtailed, alongside thousands of Palestinian refugees who are denied the right of return.”

He added: “As the world wakes up to the genocide in Gaza, it is shocking that Israel continues to deny entry to UN investigators and international journalists. Israel doesn’t want the world to see what it is doing—but we can never give up in our attempts to expose the truth.”

Israel also banned Fahad Ansari, a lawyer who has represented Hamas’ political wing in court in the UK and—like Sultana—said on X, “I am neither British nor an MP but do take this as a badge of honor (although pretty sure I’m already a persona non grata in the apartheid state).”

Corbyn Urges UK Government to Condemn Gaza Genocide After Israeli Settlement Trade Ban

“This is not merely a matter of semantics. This is a matter of international law.”

UK Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn holds a copy of the Gaza Tribunal Report at Conway Hall in London on March 16, 2026.
(Photo by Jeremy Corbyn/X)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 08, 2026
CONMMON DREAMS


Amid Israeli settlers and soldiers’ unprecedented violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn was among those arguing on Tuesday that the United Kingdom’s new “sanctions on illegal settlements are welcome, but not enough,” and calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to condemn Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip as genocide.

On behalf of the UK’s ruling Labour Party, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced a ban on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He was joined by leaders from Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden, who confirmed “their intention to introduce national and/or support European restrictions” on trading with Israeli West Bank settlements.

Corbyn, a former Labour leader from Islington North who has since co-founded Your Party, declared that “Britain must end all arms sales, all military cooperation, and all forms of support that sustain Israel’s system of apartheid, occupation, and genocide.”



In addition to speaking in Parliament on Tuesday, Corbyn wrote to Burnham that “for three years, we have witnessed the abominable destruction of human life in Gaza,” where “Israel has killed at least 73,000 people, excluding an untold number of people lost under the rubble.”

While welcoming Burnham’s recent admission that Labour “got it wrong” and its “initial response to the treatment of Gaza caused huge hurt,” Corbyn said that “it is extremely disappointing that these words have not translated into meaningful action.”

“It has not gone unnoticed that, 50 days into your premiership, you have declined to call ‘the treatment of Gaza’ what it really is: a genocide,” the MP stressed, noting that the term has long been used by scholars and human rights advocates globally. “This is not merely a matter of semantics. This is a matter of international law.”

“Far from preventing genocide, the British government has facilitated genocide through ongoing military, economic, and political cooperation,” Corbyn charged, pointing to his call for an independent public inquiry into the UK’s complicity. “The question is not whether Labour got it wrong. The question is what your government will do now.”

Corbyn asked Burnham to confirm if he will establish an inquiry, end all military cooperation with Israel, impose widespread sanctions, overturn the ban on the advocacy group Palestine Action, and support the work of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice—the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, and the ICJ has taken up South Africa’s genocide case on the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) conduct in Gaza.



As Corbyn pushed UK leaders to go further than the new trade ban—which is largely symbolic—the Israeli government responded to the sanctions by taking aim at a dozen people, including Corbyn and his Your Party co-founder, MP Zarah Sultana, barring them from entering Israel.

Israel also banned four Labour MPs—Diane Abbot, Richard Burgon, John McDonnell, and Naz Shah, as well as five members of the Green Party: Siân Berry, Ellie Chowns, Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, and Hannah Spencer. The final person barred from Israel is Fahad Ansari, a lawyer who has represented Hamas’ political wing in court in the UK, according to The Times of Israel.

Ansari replied on social media Tuesday that “I am neither British nor an MP but do take this as a badge of honor (although pretty sure I’m already a persona non grata in the apartheid state).”

Meanwhile, others in the United Kingdom and around the world joined Corbyn in framing the Labour government’s sanctions as progress, while also emphasizing that, as the Corbyn-founded Peace & Justice Project put it, “they should only mark the start of the process in bringing about real peace and social justice for the Palestinian people, who have been subjected to decades of unimaginable subjugation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.”

“The UK government must commit to a full arms embargo on Israel, ending all forms of military cooperation with the IDF, and supporting the ICC arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his Cabinet,” the project declared, calling for the full implementation of recommendations from the Gaza Tribunal report from last year.



Describing the UK’s “concrete action” and recognition of “Israel’s unlawful occupation and ethnic cleansing” as “hugely welcome,” Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty International UK’s chief executive, noted that Miliband “promised a ‘comprehensive reset’ and today could be the sea change that is needed.”

“Amid ethnic cleansing, genocide, and apartheid against Palestinians, today’s measures are a genuine step towards accountability for Israel’s repeated and flagrant violations of international law,” she said. “The commitment to ban trade in settlement goods and some services, prohibit financing of settlements, refuse arms that contribute to the occupation, and support the genocide case before the International Court of Justice represents a significant change of course.”

“For years, Amnesty has worked with members, partners and parliamentarians from across the political spectrum to press for meaningful change, and today shows that campaigning for human rights works,” she added. “But today is not the end of the road. The test now is whether these commitments are properly implemented and enforced, and followed by the wider action needed to hold Israel accountable for its crimes and meet the UK’s obligations under international law.”

MAGA lawmaker's threat to punish Britain could wipe out 70,000 jobs in his own state

Alexander Willis
September 8, 2026 
RAW STORY


U.S. Representative Randy Fine (R-FL) leaves after the House of Representatives passed a war powers resolution on the ongoing conflict with Iran on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 23, 2026. REUTERS/Eric Lee

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) issued a fierce threat to the British government as it considered imposing boycotts on goods from illegal Israeli settlements, a threat that could end up wiping out around 70,000 American jobs.

On Monday, reports revealed that the United Kingdom was preparing to impose new restrictions on goods produced in Israeli settlements. There are more than 700,000 Israeli settlers illegally living in the West Bank, with instances of Israeli settler violence rising in recent months. Also on Monday, Fine issued the United Kingdom a warning.

“As the British government considers forcing British companies to boycott portions of Israel, it should be aware that a Florida law that I passed as a member of the Legislature would ban any British company forced to comply from doing business with any state or local government in Florida,” Fine wrote in a statement published on social media.

“It would also end any British business participating in that boycott from doing any business in Florida if it needed any official interaction with state or local government to operate (permits, tax collection). Florida is one of Britain’s largest trading partners. They should understand that their vanity project in support of Muslim terror could cost them billions of dollars.”

The United Kingdom is a top investor in Florida, and British companies account for around 70,000 jobs in the Sunshine State. In a follow-up post, Fine asked X's chatbot Grok to explain how Florida's anti-boycott law might affect British companies — and critics said its response backfired on him spectacularly.

“LOL. You are going to wreck your own state,” wrote Leilani Dowding, a British model and reality television personality, in a social media post on X Tuesday.

“Haha, you asked Grok, and it told you how much your plan would f--- over Florida, not the UK,” wrote Jack Duncan, a British LGBTQ+ rights activist, in a social media post on X Tuesday.

“About a dozen” American citizens have died from incidents involving Israeli settlers or soldiers, including the death of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. An American was killed by Israeli settlers as recently as July of last year: 20-year-old Sayfollah Musallet, who was “beaten to death” by settlers while on his family’s farm near Ramallah in the West Bank.

33 Dems Help Pass House Bill That Would Strip Funds From Colleges That Boycott Israel

“The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” said one analyst.


A George Washington University student wearing a graduation cap with the message “Our Tuition Killed Gaza’s Class of ‘25” shouts slogans during a walkout at the National Mall as President Ellen Granberg delivers her commencement address on May 18, 2025.
(Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Stephen Prager
Sep 03, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

The US House of Representatives on Thursday passed what critics say could be one of the most severe infringements on free expression in recent memory—a bill that could effectively require colleges and universities to do business with Israel or risk losing federal funds.

As Israel’s genocide in Gaza and accelerating ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the West Bank continue to fuel protests, the bill is the latest piece of legislation aimed at punishing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which uses nonviolent economic tactics to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and human rights abuses.

HR 4795, introduced in July 2025 by Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), is known as the Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act. But Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, described it as an “Orwellian” turn of phrase for what the legislation actually does.

“The goal here is to basically say every university not only cannot refuse cooperation with Israel but must actively seek every opportunity to cooperate with Israel,” she told Responsible Statecraft. “And if they’re not doing that, they’re pro-BDS and anti-Israel.”

As the outlet described:
[The bill] would bar colleges that receive federal funds from engaging in what it defines as a “nonexpressive commercial boycott” of Israel, including “refusals to deal” or terminating business relationships in order to limit commercial ties without a “valid business reason.” The law would require these institutions to submit annual certification that they were giving students and faculty access to academic programs in Israel on the same terms as programs in other countries.

In a brief opposing the bill, Friedman argued that it was not just forcing universities to do business with Israel, but with its settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law. With backing from the Israeli state, violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has exploded to never-before-seen highs this year, according to the United Nations.



“This legislation,” Friedman wrote, “sets up a situation in which the alleged absence of engagement with any Israeli partner/party, including in settlements, will become the basis for an accusation of boycott, putting universities in the position where, if they universities want to avoid being accused of boycotting Israel/settlements, they will need to adopt an affirmative policy of prioritizing maximal engagement/partnership with Israeli entities (including in settlements).”

The bill passed by a 237-169 vote, with support from all but two Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). And although the vast majority of Democratic voters now hold negative views of Israel, 33 Democrats also voted in favor of the bill.

The legislation now heads to the narrowly Republican-controlled US Senate, where it would need 60 votes to advance.



Introducing the bill last year, Gottheimer said it was necessary because BDS was an “antisemitic, hate-fueled... movement” that “seeks to destroy Israel—and has no place on our college campuses.”

But even critics of the BDS movement, like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chafed at its potential chilling effect on protected speech.

“No matter how strongly I oppose the BDS movement, I also believe that those who engage in BDS have a First Amendment right to do so,” Nadler said before voting against the bill. “The First Amendment right to free speech does not apply only to agreeable speech.”

He cited a letter sent to Congress by the ACLU opposing the bill’s contention that schools should need a “valid business reason” to cut ties with Israel.

“Many of those engaged in boycotts of Israel do so not for commercial reasons, but because they wish to express their political opposition to the policies of the Israeli government—matters of overwhelming public concern and debate in the present moment. HR 4795’s labeling such boycotts as ‘non-expressive’ does nothing to change this reality,” the letter said.

The bill comes as members of Congress, especially Democrats, are under increasing scrutiny for their support from pro-Israel lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), whose political spending arm has poured more than $104 million into supporting its preferred candidates this election cycle.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has spent more than six months embroiled in a costly war with Iran that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu played a key role in persuading him to launch.



“We just got dragged into a war by Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s bragging about it,” Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) told Julian Andreone of Drop Site News. “That’s about as embarrassing as you can get... So let’s leave universities alone.”

Aaron Regunberg, a contributing editor at The New Republic, described it as outrageous that Democrats who supported the bill were “actively joining the far-right’s war on higher education in order to shield a genocidal ethnostate that most Americans increasingly want nothing to do with.”

Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at the Center for International Policy, said the bill was “another effort to single out Israel for special treatment and erode Americans’ rights on its behalf.”

“Will it be your child who can’t afford to go to college after 33 Democrats voted with Republicans to help Trump defund US universities? Because it certainly won’t be any of theirs,” he said. “Shame on them for joining the attack on our schools and constitutional rights on behalf of Israel.”

The People’s Arms Embargo

Palestine Action, the direct-action network founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, is built on a simple theory of change: If governments won’t stop arming Israel, activists will go after the companies that do it for them.


Activist Greta Thunberg joins the protest outside the offices of Aspen Insurance and holds a sign saying, “I support Palestine Action Prisoners I oppose Genocide” on December 23, 2025 in London, England; the activists targeted the company due to its alleged business relationship with the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems.
(Photo by Martin Pope/Getty Images)

Macela Carmo Dos Santos
Sep 02, 2026

Foreign Policy In Focus

For nearly three years, foreign ministries in Washington, London, and Brussels have debated arms embargoes on Israel in committee rooms, largely without result. Meanwhile, a much less formal network of ordinary people has been trying to accomplish the same goal from the ground up—one factory gate, one shareholder register, and one pension fund at a time.

Palestine Action, the direct-action network founded in the UK in 2020 by Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard, is built on a simple theory of change: If governments won’t stop arming Israel, activists will go after the companies that do it for them. Its central target has been Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, which supplies the bulk of the drones, munitions, and surveillance equipment used in Gaza and the West Bank.

But the network’s real innovation is how it maps the entire supply chain—not just Elbit’s factories, but the banks that hold its shares, the recruiters that staff it, the cleanroom contractors that service its subsidiaries, and the local landlords who rent it space. Every link has become a pressure point.

How the Network Actually Works

Palestine Action isn’t a single organization so much as a constellation. Its hub-and-spoke structure includes a UK core, plus franchises, affiliates, and offshoots that have adopted its name, its tactics, or both. These affiliates include Unity of Fields, formerly Palestine Action US, and sympathetic cells in Canada, France, and Germany.

A war sustained by a transnational arms and finance network, in other words, is being contested by an equally transnational, but far more improvised, citizen network.

Tactics range widely. Some are the kinds of action that make headlines: blockading factory entrances, occupying rooftops, spray-painting military aircraft. Others are quieter and far more replicable by an average person—researching a company’s supply relationships, showing up to a shareholder meeting, filing a public-records request on a pension fund’s holdings, or simply refusing to bank with an institution that finances the war.

This second track has produced some of the most durable wins. In 2026, for instance, Urbana, Illinois became the first Illinois city to bar its pension investments from the top 100 global arms producers; Burbank, California divested from Caterpillar and Honeywell after a local coalition campaign; and the state of Maryland’s pension fund sold off 85% of its Israeli bond holdings—about $62 million—after more than a year of sustained pressure. None of those campaigns required anyone to climb a fence.

Palestine Action’s campaign against Elbit’s UK operations has been credited with forcing the closure of the company’s London headquarters, the cancellation of Ministry of Defence contracts, and the loss of its UK recruitment partner. Barclays bank—long a target of Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s parallel boycott—stopped holding shares in Elbit in 2024, something campaigners point to as evidence that sustained pressure, even short of full divestment, moves institutional money.

None of this has stopped the war. But it has made doing business with Israel’s arms industry measurably more expensive and more reputationally toxic, which is precisely the mechanism that sanctions and embargoes are supposed to achieve when foreign ministries won’t act.

The Safety Question

In July 2025, the UK government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act 2000, making membership or expressed support punishable by up to 14 years in prison. A High Court panel ruled in February 2026 that the ban was disproportionate and unlawful, noting that only a small fraction of the group’s actions met the legal definition of terrorism, and that ordinary criminal law was already available to prosecute any violence. The government appealed, and in June 2026 the Court of Appeal reversed that ruling and upheld the ban. More than 1,600 people have been arrested in the UK simply for expressing support for the group since the proscription took effect, and four activists convicted only of criminal damage at an Elbit factory were sentenced on the basis of a “terrorist connection.”

That is a genuinely severe legal environment, and it is specific to the UK. Direct action involving property damage or blockades carries real prosecutorial risk anywhere, including the United States, where Unity of Fields and similar groups are not proscribed but individual activists can and do face criminal charges for actions like the 2023 blockade of Elbit’s Cambridge, Massachusetts office.

The boycott, divestment, and shareholder-pressure (BDS) track—writing to a pension board, organizing a bank boycott, supporting BDS-endorsed campaigns—carries none of that risk and remains fully legal free speech and civic organizing in the United States and most of Europe. The two tracks get conflated constantly, including by the UK government itself, but they are not the same thing. This kind of conflation is exactly what makes proscription such a blunt instrument: it criminalizes a banner alongside a blockade.

One Person Still Matters

Much of this network’s actual leverage comes from single, unglamorous decisions. Huda Ammori didn’t wait for a government to act; she and a handful of others started a campaign against one company in 2020 that has since reshaped how a much larger movement thinks about supply chains. The Boycat app, the closest thing the BDS movement has to an official target list, exists because someone decided that consumer choice needed better information, not more slogans. A single city council member willing to bring a divestment resolution to a vote in Urbana did something no protest outside a factory could: moved actual pension dollars.

None of that required anyone to risk a UK terrorism charge. It required deciding that a supply chain is not too complicated, or too far away, to trace and interrupt.

A war sustained by a transnational arms and finance network, in other words, is being contested by an equally transnational, but far more improvised, citizen network. The citizen network’s most effective tool so far hasn’t been confrontation, it’s been documentation. Knowing exactly which bank, which pension fund, which subcontractor is implicated—and saying so publicly and persistently—has moved more money than any single blockade. This tactic is the most likely one to still be legal, and successful, in the near future.


© 2023 Foreign Policy In Focus


Macela Carmo Dos Santos
Macela Carmo dos Santos is a multilingual humanitarian advocate and patient care coordinator based in New York. She holds a degree in foreign trade from Brazil and a BA in psychology from Queens College, CUNY, and previously served as vice president of development at IMPACTability, a youth empowerment NGO. She writes on humanitarian issues at macelasantos.com.
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WEST BANK

Siege in Qusra: A Toledo Man Returns to Defend His Home Against Israeli Terror

Michael Leonardi

August 21, 2026

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Photograph by Loai Ridi

I had already been following the siege of Qusra before Loai Ridi’s name entered the story. Two days ago I woke up to it again in my phone’s newsfeed — La Repubblica, one of several Italian outlets that have covered the village closely. Toledo, my hometown, was already on my mind. Lucas County — where Toledo is the largest city — after more than a year of pressure from the local Palestinian solidarity movement, had just recently decided not to renew its five-million-dollar Israeli bond, another victory for the BDS, Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.

I called a close Palestinian friend in Toledo, Afaf Adwan, originally from Gaza. Toledo is a close-knit community. Of course she knew Loai. She put me in contact with him. Afaf has lost many friends and family members during the genocide in Gaza. She is on the front lines of building solidarity at home.

On the morning of August 20th I spoke with Loai from the house he is still not allowed to leave.

Qusra is a village south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank. On or around August 9, colonizers from nearby outposts blocked the roads, tore stones from walls, cut the electricity and the water, and surrounded three homes belonging to the Abu Ridi and Hassan families. They wanted the people inside to flee so they could take the properties. Among those trapped were women and children — nieces, nephews, relatives. Loai’s brother Qusay and his nephew were in Loai’s house. His 83-year-old mother lives less than ten minutes away, in another house that is also under siege. Other family members are trapped in theirs. The entire area has been declared an off-limits military zone by the Israeli occupation forces.

Photograph by Loai Ridi

Loai Ridi has lived in Toledo for twenty-three years. He is a well-known community member. He built a business of gas stations and car washes across Northwest Ohio and Indiana. He was born and raised in Qusra. He has two daughters. He began building a house on ancestral land in 2023 so they would have a place in the village, a connection to their family story. For the last eight months construction has been halted. Workers were afraid to come. Water lines are repeatedly sabotaged. Electricity is often cut.

He watched the siege on security cameras from Toledo. After seven sleepless nights he flew from Detroit. “I can’t let the settlers steal my house while I was watching,” he said when he landed. He saw his mother for five minutes when he arrived. They have not been allowed to see each other since. No one is permitted in or out of his property.

The United Nations was allowed to deliver some food five or six days ago. Those supplies are running out. Despite public statements from U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, the embassy in Jerusalem tells Ridi only that it is “monitoring” the situation and trying to resolve it. There have been no other updates. Occupation forces are parked outside the gate. Settlers roam freely and are often seen fraternizing with the soldiers. Those soldiers are defending the colonizers, not the families under siege.

When Loai reached the house he climbed to the roof and raised an American flag. It did not stop a settler from walking onto his land the next morning. He told the soldiers the man should be arrested. They told him to go back inside.

Photograph by Loai Ridi

From Toledo, the Jewish Community of Toledo sent him a message of solidarity. They called the colonizers’ violence disgusting and abominable.

Huckabee, an evangelical Zionist who has long championed the colonizing of the West Bank, called the men surrounding the houses “Israeli terrorists.” He said their actions met the U.S. definition of terrorism: acts meant to put people in fear for their lives and force them to change their behavior. He distinguished them from “real settlers,” calling them “unsettlers.”

Craig Mokhiber, former director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, rejects the language altogether:

“Palestine has already been settled for millennia, so these racist criminal interlopers cannot rightly be called ‘settlers.’ They are not ‘settlers,’ they are violent Zionist mobs and Israel regime paramilitaries. They do not live in ‘settlements,’ but in armed (and unlawful) colonial outposts. They are not engaged in ‘settler clashes,’ but in lynchings and pogroms. Calling them by their true name is important, and ending their impunity is the urgent duty of all of humanity.”

The distinction Huckabee draws is convenient. It lets an ambassador who supports the colonial project condemn its most visible thugs without questioning the project itself. The outposts are illegal even under Israeli law. The settlements they serve are illegal under international law. The army that stands by, arrives late, prays with the attackers, and then locks the village down is the same army that maintains the occupation and genocide. This is not a deviation. It is a method. It is how land is taken and how a people is made to understand that their presence is meant to be provisional.

The tactic used in Qusra — surround a home, cut it off, wait for the occupants to break — was used last month against a family in neighboring Jalud. Rights groups describe a coordinated strategy of displacement. The United Nations recorded more than 2,200 Palestinians displaced by settler violence and access restrictions in the first half of 2026 alone.

Loai Ridi’s return does not change the balance of power. It makes the theft harder to hide. A man from Toledo flies across the world to stand on his own roof because the alternative is to watch his family’s house disappear on a screen. His mother is under siege a few minutes away. His brother and nephew have already lived days without water or power. Women and children remain in the house. The food the UN brought is running out. The embassy is “monitoring”.

The siege of Qusra is one village in one week. It is also the logic of the occupation, made visible because a security camera, an American passport, and a hometown that refused to look away forced a few officials to notice. Huckabee’s words will not end it. Neither will a flag on a roof. What remains is that people like Loai Ridi keep returning — to a house, to a village, to land others have decided they should not inhabit. They keep returning because the alternative is disappearance while their continued existence becomes the essence of resistance

This is the story from Qusra. This is the story from Toledo. It is the story of our same common resistance.

Michael Leonardi lives in Italy and can be reached at michaeleleonardi@gmail.com