USCPR Executive Director Comments on Inauguration of Bloomberg’s Mayoral Training Program in Israel

The Bloomberg-Sagol Center for City Leadership, funded by former New York City Mayor Bloomberg and the Sagol family in Israel, was inaugurated on Sunday, April 3, 2022, at Tel Aviv University. It’s yet another example of exchanges of worst practices between the U.S. and Israel. From the U.S. to Palestine to everywhere, we must actively reject state-sanctioned structures of oppression that enable violence.

USCPR Executive Director Ahmad Abuznaid spoke to Umar A Farooq from the Middle East Eye following the inauguration of the Bloomberg-Sagol Center:

“Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, told MEE that by allowing the mayors of West Bank settlements to participate, the programme only continues to make the case that Israel “is an apartheid system with no division between the lines for Israelis, but clearly divisions in the lines for Palestinians”.

…

With Bloomberg’s record, not only through support of surveillance technology but also stop and frisk and heavy-handed policing – broken windows policing – it’s clear that Michael Bloomberg himself has nothing to offer that is productive,” Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, told MEE.

“That’s based on the perspective of a Palestinian who is thinking through the challenges that the Palestinian minority already faces within Israel and what may lie ahead in the near future.”

To read the above quoted article in full, visit the Middle East Eye’s website.