"Fair employment champion urges lower protection for Palestinian workers than Israeli law", 27 March 2015

A new set of “ethical” guidelines for US corporations investing in Israel would not offer stronger protections for Palestinian workers, according to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Shareholders of three firms — GE, Corning and Intel — are scheduled to vote during April and May on whether or not they should approve the so-called Holy Land Principles. The stated aim of this code of conduct is to ensure that US dollars do not aid human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, Gaza and present-day Israel. Yet an analysis by the AFSC, a Quaker group, finds that the recommendations fall short of measures advocated by the Palestine solidarity movement. In particular, they do not call for corporations to withdraw any investments that abet Israel’s violations of international law. A number of US firms were identified by Richard Falk, then the UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Palestine, as helping Israeli abuses, in 2012. They included Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Caterpillar. Unlike the new guidelines, Falk urged a boycott of these firms...