The antisemitic BDS movement suffered a major defeat this week when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) authorized pension fund giant TIAA-CREF to exclude a resolution calling for divestments from Israeli companies from the ballot at the fund’s upcoming shareholders meeting. The resolution, put forward by a small band of extremist shareholders, would have allowed TIAA-CREF‘s full membership to vote on the resolution at the meeting in North Carolina in July. In the wake of the SEC ruling, however, the resolution will now not be presented to the shareholders and will not be voted upon at all.

Following the submission of the divestment resolution, TIAA-CREF officials had written to the SEC requesting that it be permitted, due to its biased and anti-Israel political content, to “take no action” on the resolution. Essentially, it was asked that they be allowed to leave it off the ballot completely and ignored.

Shurat HaDin sent a warning letter to TIAA-CREF last month informing its leadership that the boycott resolution was a violation of both federal and New York State law and that any effort by the pension fund to implement it would be illegal.  The letter noted that New York law defines boycotts as “unlawful discriminatory practice” and that any decision to “refuse to buy from, sell to or trade with, or otherwise discriminate against any person, because of the…creed…[or ]national origin” is unlawful and even places secondary actors, aiding the policy, under liability.

Moreover, we warned the fund that should it pass and actually undertake to boycott Israeli companies, we would file suit on the companies’ behalf against TIAA-CREF, and ask both federal and state law enforcement agencies to take action against the fund’s leadership. We stressed that if the anti-Israel resolution passes, and TIAA-CREF does not expressly disavow it and refuse to comply with it, Shurat HaDin will be ready to immediately bring TIAA-CREF to court to ensure the enforcement of state and federal anti-discrimination and anti-boycott laws, and to ensure that Israeli companies and businesses are not harmed as a result of TIAA-CREF’s newly-adopted policy of discrimination. We also demanded that the extremist boycott resolution not be presented at all.

Last week, American counsel for Shurat HaDin contacted the SEC and discussed our concerns over the divestment resolution noting its anti-Semitic nature, the fact that it only targeted Israel and that it was a violation of the anti-boycott laws. We pointed out to the SEC that the TIAA-CREF’s corporate charter limits its proper function to conducting business ‘to aid and strengthen nonprofit colleges, universities’. As such, we could not understand how a biased and malicious resolution like this can properly be presented to their membership. The resolution violates standing laws, is contrary to public policy and must be abandoned.

We are very grateful that the SEC has now authorized TIAA-CREF to exclude the divestment resolution and not allow it to be voted upon.

The BDS movement is reeling from the SEC decision.  They were really hoping that the TIAA-CREF shareholder meeting in July was going to provide them a big public forum for a discussion of their anti-Semitic opinions and their efforts to scapegoat the Jewish State.  They believed they had the momentum this time to get a boycott resolution passed by a prestigious fund like the TIAA-CREF but the SEC ruling has put an end to all that.

So chalk up another victory for Israel’s supporters and another colossal failure for the BDS movement.  May all their extremist efforts meet the same fate.

The U.S. State Dept. has filed a motion to dismiss the claims of a group of Americans who allege American aid money to the Palestinian Authority funds terrorism.

The Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act requires the State Department to certify that none of the money is used for terror.

“It is estimated that since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, the State Department, via USAID, has given over $4 billion to Palestinians, according to the Israel Law Center (Shurat HaDin). The sum includes U.S. funding to UNRWA, the United Nations body that operates in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

The lawsuit, filed by 24 Americans living in Israel last November in the U.S. District Court for Washington, contends that the State Department has ignored Congressional safeguards and transparency requirements which govern financial assistance to the PA.

The Jewish Press and other media have frequently reported that the Palestinian Authority pays fat salaries to its suicide bomb masterminds serving time in Israeli jails, spends money to build monuments to glorify suicide bombers and funds its media to disseminate incitement to terror against Jews. Millions of dollars also are transferred to Hamas, which the State Dept. itself classifies as an illegal terrorist organization.

The attorneys for the U.S. government, who have asked the court not to allow the case to continue, claim that the plaintiffs lack standing to bring this civil action and that the case raises “political questions.”

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs and director of the Israel Law Center explained in a statement Tuesday that the issue is the lack of transparency on the part the officials at Foggy Bottom in Washington.

“Rather than defend the government’s foreign aid policy on its merits and provide proof that it truly knows where taxpayer money to the PA is going, the government’s lawyers are trying to dismiss the lawsuit on legal technicalities,” she said. ”They are saying that it is pure speculation that Americans can be injured by terrorism in Israel and that the issue of funding is a foreign policy power reserved to the U.S. President and cannot be reviewed by the courts.”

Darshan-Leitner added emphasized that the lawsuit does not challenge the Executive Branch’s right to conduct foreign policy but simply want transparency.

“U.S. funds are being utilized by the Palestinians for terrorism which threatens Americans, and the plaintiffs will be responding to this motion and asking that the case be allowed to go forward,” Darshan-Leitner stressed.

The Department of Justice has declined to comment on the case when asked to do buy the Washington Free Beacon.

President Shimon Peres  and the Israeli lawfare group Shurat HaDin have launched two separate but simultaneous campaigns to pressure the European Union to agree Hizbullah equals terror.

President Peres is to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg next week and will urge it to place the Iranian-backed Hizbullah Shi’ite Muslim group on the list of terror organizations, as the United States has done.

A major obstacle to the classification is the failure of all 27 EU countries to agree.

“The President will tell the EU leaders that every country needs to treat Hezbollah as a terror organization,” a spokesperson to the President told the European Jewish Press (EJP).

“The President’s EU meetings “will take place in the context of the inquiry into the terror attack in Bulgaria which found that Hizbullah was responsible for the bombing and the subsequent discussions within Europe on the consequences.”

His speech to the European Parliament will be the first by an Israeli leader in the legislature’s current format, which includes 754 members from the 27 EU member states.

Shurat HaDin, known in English as the Israel Law Center, is headed by attorney Nitsana Darshn-Leitner. She has staged a quiet revolution in fighting terrorism by winning lawsuits against Hamas and the Palestinian Authority as well as banks that handle money of terrorist groups. Shurat HaDin has won  judgments running into the billions.

It also was instrumental in convincing companies they could be subject to criminal charges if they did not stop equipping Iranian oil tankers and terrorists’ Gaza-bound ships with communications equipment.

Darshn-Leitner now has written to the un to demand that it designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization.

“In our letter to the EU officials, we accused the EU of cowardice and hiding its head in the sand in the face of overwhelming proof of the Islamic extremist groups’ long term involvement in global terrorism,” she said.

“We accused the EU of ignoring Hizbullah’s assassination of Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri, for which several of its officials were indicted by The Hague, and Hizbullah’s on-going role in perpetrating crimes against humanity in the Syrian civil war.”

Despite pressure from the United States and Israel, the EU has claimed that it will not outlaw the group until there is “tangible evidence of Hezbollah engaging in acts of terrorism,” she said.

Shurat HaDin this week issued a partial list of dozens of attacks that have killed more than 400 people, not including targeted civilians in the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Bulgaria recently announced that Hizbullah was behind the July 2012 terrorist attack that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

Following is the partial list that is more than enough of the  “tangible evidence” the EU is looking for.

-  The 1982 and 1983 suicide bombings against the IDF headquarters building in Tyre, Lebanon, which killed 103 Israelis and 46–59 Lebanese, wounding 95 people.

-   The April 1983 U.S. Embassy bombing Lebanon, that killed 241 US marines, 58 French paratroopers and 6 civilians at the US and French barracks in Beirut.

-   The Hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985.

-   The kidnapping and murder of numerous individuals during the Lebanon Hostage Crisis from 1982 to 1992, including the kidnapping and torture-murder of CIA Beirut station Chief William Buckley.

-   The 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing in Buenos Aires, killing 29, in Argentina.

-   The 1994 AMIA bombing of a Jewish cultural centre, killing 85, in Argentina.

-   The 1996 KhobarTowers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 20.

-   The 2000 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldiers Adi Avitan, Benyamin Avraham, and Omar Sawaidwere.

-   In 2002, Singapore accused Hezbollah of recruiting Singaporeans in a failed 1990s plot to attack US and Israeli ships in the Singapore Straits.

-   The 2006 kidnapping and murder of IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, which precipitated the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.

-   Intentionally targeting Israeli civilians and cities with rocket fire during the Second Lebanon War.

-   The January 15, 2008 bombing of a U.S. Embassy vehicle in Beirut.

-   In 2009, a Hezbollah plot in Egypt was uncovered, where Egyptian authorities arrested 49 men for planning attacks against Israeli and Egyptian targets in the Sinai Peninsula.

-   A failed 2011 bombing in Istanbul targeting the Israeli consul, which left eight dead.