title: The Power of Now

text: In Chapter Two, Tolle tells the reader that they must recognize their personal ego "without the ego creating an antagonistic response to its own denial or destruction" and explains the purposelessness of the "mental pain and anguish" that people hold on to. According to the book: "The pain-body consists of trapped life-energy that has split off from your total energy field and has temporarily become autonomous through the unnatural process of mind identification." In this chapter the author writes: "pain can only feed on pain. Pain cannot feed on joy. It finds it quite indigestible". The author goes on to write that "many people live with a tormentor in their head that continuously attacks and punishes them and drains them of vital energy. It is the cause of untold misery and unhappiness."


title: The Power of Now

text: In Chapter Three, the author writes: "In the normal, mind-identified or unenlightened state of consciousness, the power and creative potential that lie concealed in the Now are completely obscured by psychological time. You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You can find yourself by coming into the present. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be."


title: The Power of Now

text: In Chapter Four, Tolle says that "tomorrow's bills are not the problem" and can be a "core delusion" that changes a "mere situation, event or emotion" into a reason for suffering and unhappiness. The book also calls "waiting" a "state of mind" that we should snap ourselves out of.


title: The Power of Now

text: The book was originally published in 1997 by Namaste Publishing in Vancouver. It was republished in 1999 by New World Library, and this edition reached and remained on the "New York Times" bestseller list for years afterwards. The book has been translated into 33 languages, including Arabic.


title: The Power of Now

text: In 2000, the book was listed as recommended reading in Oprah Winfrey's "O" magazine and, according to Winfrey, the actress Meg Ryan also recommended it. A Christian author, Andrew Ryder, wrote a dissertation saying that "Tolle moves the traditional [Christian] teaching forward by illustrating how our obsession with the past and the future ... [prevents] us from giving our full attention to the present moment." William Bloom, a spokesperson for the holistic, mind-body-spirit movement in the UK, wrote that "Tolle's approach is very body aware. He's done it in a nice accessible way for people."


title: The Power of Now

text: Some reviewers were more critical of the book. According to a review in the "Telegraph Herald", the book is not very well-written but contains some good teachings. Andrea Sachs wrote in "Time" magazine that the book is "awash in spiritual mumbo jumbo" and "unhelpful for those looking for practical advice". An article in "The Independent" said that "there is not very much new about "The Power of Now"" and described it as "a sort of New Age re-working of Zen."


title: The Power of Now

text: When Paris Hilton was incarcerated at the Century Regional Detention Facility in California in June 2007 she brought with her a copy of "The Power of Now". Singer Annie Lennox chose "The Power of Now" as one of her "desert island books", as did the professional skater Tony Hawk. Singer Katy Perry stated that she was inspired to write "This Moment", a song from her 2013 album "Prism", after she heard the audiobook of "The Power of Now". Kendrick Lamar references this book throughout his 2022 album, Mr Morale & The Big Steppers.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: Naga Shaurya (born 22 January 1989) is an Indian actor, producer, and writer who works in Telugu cinema. He made his debut with the 2011 film "Cricket, Girls And Beer". He then starred in the National Film Award winning anthology film, "Chandamama Kathalu" (2014).


title: Naga Shaurya

text: Shaurya went onto star in successful films such as "Oohalu Gusagusalade" (2014), "Dikkulu Choodaku Ramayya" (2014), "Kalyana Vaibhogame" (2016), "Jyo Achyutananda" (2016), "Chalo" (2018), "Oh! Baby" (2019), and "Ashwathama" (2020) and "Varudu Kaavalenu" (2021) and "Lakshya" (2021).


title: Naga Shaurya

text: Naga Shaurya was born on 22 January 1989 in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh. He lived for several years in Vijayawada, before moving to Hyderabad to pursue his dream of acting in films. Prior to entering the film industry, he played tennis.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: Naga Shourya gets married with his long-time girlfriend Anusha Shetty in Bangalore on Sunday 20 November 2022.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: Before he got his first role, he struggled for almost five years. He stated, "Every time I was on the verge of signing a film, something or the other would happen and I was back to square one", and added that he was "disappointed and wanted to go back to my parents". He then saw an advertisement by Vaaraahi Chalana Chitram, who were casting for Srinivas Avasarala's romantic comedy "Oohalu Gusagusalade" and sent in his portfolio. Although he had no hopes, he was selected for the lead role. While working on "Oohalu Gusagualade", he was selected for a role in "Chandamama Kathalu" which became his first release. An anthology film, it featured Shaurya as part of an ensemble cast, with him having about 20 minute screen time in the film.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: "Oohalu Gusagusalaade" released two months later and became a critical and commercial success. Critics noted that Shaurya "deliver(s) (a) commendable performance" and was "perfect as the boy next door". His third release that year, "Dikkulu Choodaku Ramayya", was again a romantic comedy. A triangular love story directed by Trikoti, it was about a son and father falling for the same girl. The Hindu wrote about his performance, "Naga Shaurya proves yet again that he's one of the best among the newer lot of actors. He brings in the required innocence of a teenager and shows his anguish and helplessness in the later portions effectively". Shaurya final release of the year was "Lakshmi Raave Maa Intiki" alongside Avika Gor. His next release was the 2015 film "Jadoogadu" under the direction of Yogie opposite Sonarika Bhadoria.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: In 2016, he appeared in five films, They are "Abbayitho Ammayi," B. V. Nandini Reddy's "Kalyana Vaibhogame," G. V. Rama Raju's Oka Manasu, Srinivas Avasarala's "Jyo Achyutananda" and "Nee Jathaleka". Out of which "Kalyana Vaibhogame" and "Jyo Achyutananda" were successful. In 2017, Shaurya played an cameo in the film "Kathalo Rajakumari".


title: Naga Shaurya

text: In 2018, Shaurya appeared in four films. The first release, "Chalo" was a box office success. His other films that year, namely, Tamil-Telugu bilingual "Diya," family entertainer "Ammammagarillu" and "Nartanasala" failed at the box office. "The Hindu" criticized the latter for its approach on gay people.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: In 2019, Shaurya's only release was "Oh! Baby" alongside Samantha Akkineni. The film, which received positive reviews, grossed more than $1 million at the United States box office. His 2020 thriller film, "Aswathama", produced by his home banner Ira Creations was a profitable venture.


title: Naga Shaurya

text: In 2021 he had two releases, "Varudu Kaavalenu" and "Lakshya". Varudu Kaavalenu had an average run where as Lakshya failed to get the cash registers ringing at the box office. Both the films started streaming on January 7, 2022 via ZEE5 and aha respectively and got immense response and set OTT records in terms of the highest viewing hours.


title: Surveying

text: Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is called a land surveyor. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as the designed positions of structural components for construction or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors work with elements of geodesy, geometry, trigonometry, regression analysis, physics, engineering, metrology, programming languages, and the law. They use equipment, such as total stations, robotic total stations, theodolites, GNSS receivers, retroreflectors, 3D scanners, LiDAR sensors, radios, inclinometer, handheld tablets, optical and digital levels, subsurface locators, drones, GIS, and surveying software.


title: Surveying

text: Surveying has been an element in the development of the human environment since the beginning of recorded history. The planning and execution of most forms of construction require it. It is also used in transport, communications, mapping, and the definition of legal boundaries for land ownership, and is an important tool for research in many other scientific disciplines.


title: Surveying

text: A surveyor is a professional person with the academic qualifications and technical expertise to conduct one, or more, of the following activities;


title: Surveying

text: Surveying has occurred since humans built the first large structures. In ancient Egypt, a rope stretcher would use simple geometry to re-establish boundaries after the annual floods of the Nile River. The almost perfect squareness and north–south orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza, built c. 2700 BC, affirm the Egyptians' command of surveying. The "groma" instrument originated in Mesopotamia (early 1st millennium BC). The prehistoric monument at Stonehenge (c. 2500 BC) was set out by prehistoric surveyors using peg and rope geometry.


title: Surveying

text: The mathematician Liu Hui described ways of measuring distant objects in his work "Haidao Suanjing" or "The Sea Island Mathematical Manual", published in 263 AD.


title: Surveying

text: The Romans recognized land surveying as a profession. They established the basic measurements under which the Roman Empire was divided, such as a tax register of conquered lands (300 AD). Roman surveyors were known as "Gromatici".


title: Surveying

text: In medieval Europe, beating the bounds maintained the boundaries of a village or parish. This was the practice of gathering a group of residents and walking around the parish or village to establish a communal memory of the boundaries. Young boys were included to ensure the memory lasted as long as possible.


title: Surveying

text: In England, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book in 1086. It recorded the names of all the land owners, the area of land they owned, the quality of the land, and specific information of the area's content and inhabitants. It did not include maps showing exact locations.


title: Surveying

text: Abel Foullon described a plane table in 1551, but it is thought that the instrument was in use earlier as his description is of a developed instrument.


title: Surveying

text: Gunter's chain was introduced in 1620 by English mathematician Edmund Gunter. It enabled plots of land to be accurately surveyed and plotted for legal and commercial purposes.


title: Surveying

text: Leonard Digges described a theodolite that measured horizontal angles in his book "A geometric practice named Pantometria" (1571). Joshua Habermel (Erasmus Habermehl) created a theodolite with a compass and tripod in 1576. Johnathon Sission was the first to incorporate a telescope on a theodolite in 1725.


title: Surveying

text: In the 18th century, modern techniques and instruments for surveying began to be used. Jesse Ramsden introduced the first precision theodolite in 1787. It was an instrument for measuring angles in the horizontal and vertical planes. He created his great theodolite using an accurate dividing engine of his own design. Ramsden's theodolite represented a great step forward in the instrument's accuracy. William Gascoigne invented an instrument that used a telescope with an installed crosshair as a target device, in 1640. James Watt developed an optical meter for the measuring of distance in 1771; it measured the parallactic angle from which the distance to a point could be deduced.


title: Surveying

text: Dutch mathematician Willebrord Snellius (a.k.a. Snel van Royen) introduced the modern systematic use of triangulation. In 1615 he surveyed the distance from Alkmaar to Breda, approximately . He underestimated this distance by 3.5%. The survey was a chain of quadrangles containing 33 triangles in all. Snell showed how planar formulae could be corrected to allow for the curvature of the earth. He also showed how to resect, or calculate, the position of a point inside a triangle using the angles cast between the vertices at the unknown point. These could be measured more accurately than bearings of the vertices, which depended on a compass. His work established the idea of surveying a primary network of control points, and locating subsidiary points inside the primary network later. Between 1733 and 1740, Jacques Cassini and his son César undertook the first triangulation of France. They included a re-surveying of the meridian arc, leading to the publication in 1745 of the first map of France constructed on rigorous principles. By this time triangulation methods were well established for local map-making.


title: Surveying

text: It was only towards the end of the 18th century that detailed triangulation network surveys mapped whole countries. In 1784, a team from General William Roy's Ordnance Survey of Great Britain began the Principal Triangulation of Britain. The first Ramsden theodolite was built for this survey. The survey was finally completed in 1853. The Great Trigonometric Survey of India began in 1801. The Indian survey had an enormous scientific impact. It was responsible for one of the first accurate measurements of a section of an arc of longitude, and for measurements of the geodesic anomaly. It named and mapped Mount Everest and the other Himalayan peaks. Surveying became a professional occupation in high demand at the turn of the 19th century with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. The profession developed more accurate instruments to aid its work. Industrial infrastructure projects used surveyors to lay out canals, roads and rail.


title: Surveying

text: In the US, the Land Ordinance of 1785 created the Public Land Survey System. It formed the basis for dividing the western territories into sections to allow the sale of land. The PLSS divided states into township grids which were further divided into sections and fractions of sections.


title: Surveying

text: Napoleon Bonaparte founded continental Europe's first cadastre in 1808. This gathered data on the number of parcels of land, their value, land usage, and names. This system soon spread around Europe.


title: Surveying

text: Robert Torrens introduced the Torrens system in South Australia in 1858. Torrens intended to simplify land transactions and provide reliable titles via a centralized register of land. The Torrens system was adopted in several other nations of the English-speaking world.


title: Surveying

text: Surveying became increasingly important with the arrival of railroads in the 1800s. Surveying was necessary so that railroads could plan technologically and financially viable routes.


title: Surveying

text: At the beginning of the century surveyors had improved the older chains and ropes, but still faced the problem of accurate measurement of long distances. Dr Trevor Lloyd Wadley developed the Tellurometer during the 1950s. It measures long distances using two microwave transmitter/receivers.


title: Surveying

text: During the late 1950s Geodimeter introduced electronic distance measurement (EDM) equipment. EDM units use a multi frequency phase shift of light waves to find a distance. These instruments saved the need for days or weeks of chain measurement by measuring between points kilometers apart in one go.


title: Surveying

text: Advances in electronics allowed miniaturization of EDM. In the 1970s the first instruments combining angle and distance measurement appeared, becoming known as total stations. Manufacturers added more equipment by degrees, bringing improvements in accuracy and speed of measurement. Major advances include tilt compensators, data recorders, and on-board calculation programs.


title: Surveying

text: The first satellite positioning system was the US Navy TRANSIT system. The first successful launch took place in 1960. The system's main purpose was to provide position information to Polaris missile submarines. Surveyors found they could use field receivers to determine the location of a point. Sparse satellite cover and large equipment made observations laborious, and inaccurate. The main use was establishing benchmarks in remote locations.


title: Surveying

text: The US Air Force launched the first prototype satellites of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in 1978. GPS used a larger constellation of satellites and improved signal transmission to provide more accuracy. Early GPS observations required several hours of observations by a static receiver to reach survey accuracy requirements. Recent improvements to both satellites and receivers allow Real Time Kinematic (RTK) surveying. RTK surveys get high-accuracy measurements by using a fixed base station and a second roving antenna. The position of the roving antenna can be tracked.


title: Surveying

text: Remote sensing and satellite imagery continue to improve and become cheaper, allowing more commonplace use. Prominent new technologies include three-dimensional (3D) scanning and use of lidar for topographical surveys. UAV technology along with photogrammetric image processing is also appearing.


title: Surveying

text: The main surveying instruments in use around the world are the theodolite, measuring tape, total station, 3D scanners, GPS/GNSS, level and rod. Most instruments screw onto a tripod when in use. Tape measures are often used for measurement of smaller distances. 3D scanners and various forms of aerial imagery are also used.


title: Surveying

text: The theodolite is an instrument for the measurement of angles. It uses two separate "circles", "protractors" or "alidades" to measure angles in the horizontal and the vertical plane. A telescope mounted on trunnions is aligned vertically with the target object. The whole upper section rotates for horizontal alignment. The vertical circle measures the angle that the telescope makes against the vertical, known as the zenith angle. The horizontal circle uses an upper and lower plate. When beginning the survey, the surveyor points the instrument in a known direction (bearing), and clamps the lower plate in place. The instrument can then rotate to measure the bearing to other objects. If no bearing is known or direct angle measurement is wanted, the instrument can be set to zero during the initial sight. It will then read the angle between the initial object, the theodolite itself, and the item that the telescope aligns with.


title: Surveying

text: The gyrotheodolite is a form of theodolite that uses a gyroscope to orient itself in the absence of reference marks. It is used in underground applications.


title: Surveying

text: The total station is a development of the theodolite with an electronic distance measurement device (EDM). A total station can be used for leveling when set to the horizontal plane. Since their introduction, total stations have shifted from optical-mechanical to fully electronic devices.


title: Surveying

text: Modern top-of-the-line total stations no longer need a reflector or prism to return the light pulses used for distance measurements. They are fully robotic, and can even e-mail point data to a remote computer and connect to satellite positioning systems, such as Global Positioning System. Real Time Kinematic GPS systems have significantly increased the speed of surveying, and they are now horizontally accurate to within 1 cm ± 1 ppm in real-time, while vertically it is currently about half of that to within 2 cm ± 2 ppm.


title: Surveying

text: GPS surveying differs from other GPS uses in the equipment and methods used. Static GPS uses two receivers placed in position for a considerable length of time. The long span of time lets the receiver compare measurements as the satellites orbit. The changes as the satellites orbit also provide the measurement network with well conditioned geometry. This produces an accurate baseline that can be over 20 km long. RTK surveying uses one static antenna and one roving antenna. The static antenna tracks changes in the satellite positions and atmospheric conditions. The surveyor uses the roving antenna to measure the points needed for the survey. The two antennas use a radio link that allows the static antenna to send corrections to the roving antenna. The roving antenna then applies those corrections to the GPS signals it is receiving to calculate its own position. RTK surveying covers smaller distances than static methods. This is because divergent conditions further away from the base reduce accuracy.


title: Surveying

text: Surveying instruments have characteristics that make them suitable for certain uses. Theodolites and levels are often used by constructors rather than surveyors in first world countries. The constructor can perform simple survey tasks using a relatively cheap instrument. Total stations are workhorses for many professional surveyors because they are versatile and reliable in all conditions. The productivity improvements from a GPS on large scale surveys makes them popular for major infrastructure or data gathering projects. One-person robotic-guided total stations allow surveyors to measure without extra workers to aim the telescope or record data. A fast but expensive way to measure large areas is with a helicopter, using a GPS to record the location of the helicopter and a laser scanner to measure the ground. To increase precision, surveyors place beacons on the ground (about apart). This method reaches precisions between 5–40 cm (depending on flight height).


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors use ancillary equipment such as tripods and instrument stands; staves and beacons used for sighting purposes; PPE; vegetation clearing equipment; digging implements for finding survey markers buried over time; hammers for placements of markers in various surfaces and structures; and portable radios for communication over long lines of sight.


title: Surveying

text: Land surveyors, construction professionals, and civil engineers using total station, GPS, 3D scanners, and other collector data use Land Surveying Software to increase efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. Land Surveying Software is a staple of contemporary land surveying.


title: Surveying

text: Typically, much if not all of the drafting and some of the designing for plans and plats of the surveyed property is done by the surveyor, and nearly everyone working in the area of drafting today (2021) utilizes CAD software and hardware both on PC, and more and more in newer generation data collectors in the field as well. Other computer platforms and tools commonly used today by surveyors are offered online by the U.S. Federal Government and other governments' survey agencies, such as the National Geodetic Survey and the CORS network, to get automated corrections and conversions for collected GPS data, and the data coordinate systems themselves.


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors determine the position of objects by measuring angles and distances. The factors that can affect the accuracy of their observations are also measured. They then use this data to create vectors, bearings, coordinates, elevations, areas, volumes, plans and maps. Measurements are often split into horizontal and vertical components to simplify calculation.


title: Surveying

text: Before EDM (Electronic Distance Measurement) laser devices, distances were measured using a variety of means. These included chains with links of a known length such as a Gunter's chain, or measuring tapes made of steel or invar. To measure horizontal distances, these chains or tapes were pulled taut to reduce sagging and slack. The distance had to be adjusted for heat expansion. Attempts to hold the measuring instrument level would also be made. When measuring up a slope, the surveyor might have to "break" (break chain) the measurement- use an increment less than the total length of the chain. Perambulators, or measuring wheels, were used to measure longer distances but not to a high level of accuracy. Tacheometry is the science of measuring distances by measuring the angle between two ends of an object with a known size. It was sometimes used before to the invention of EDM where rough ground made chain measurement impractical.


title: Surveying

text: Historically, horizontal angles were measured by using a compass to provide a magnetic bearing or azimuth. Later, more precise scribed discs improved angular resolution. Mounting telescopes with reticles atop the disc allowed more precise sighting (see theodolite). Levels and calibrated circles allowed the measurement of vertical angles. Verniers allowed measurement to a fraction of a degree, such as with a turn-of-the-century transit.


title: Surveying

text: The plane table provided a graphical method of recording and measuring angles, which reduced the amount of mathematics required. In 1829 Francis Ronalds invented a reflecting instrument for recording angles graphically by modifying the octant.


title: Surveying

text: By observing the bearing from every vertex in a figure, a surveyor can measure around the figure. The final observation will be between the two points first observed, except with a 180° difference. This is called a "close". If the first and last bearings are different, this shows the error in the survey, called the "angular misclose". The surveyor can use this information to prove that the work meets the expected standards.


title: Surveying

text: The simplest method for measuring height is with an altimeter using air pressure to find the height. When more precise measurements are needed, means like precise levels (also known as differential leveling) are used. When precise leveling, a series of measurements between two points are taken using an instrument and a measuring rod. Differences in height between the measurements are added and subtracted in a series to get the net difference in elevation between the two endpoints. With the Global Positioning System (GPS), elevation can be measured with satellite receivers. Usually, GPS is somewhat less accurate than traditional precise leveling, but may be similar over long distances.


title: Surveying

text: When using an optical level, the endpoint may be out of the effective range of the instrument. There may be obstructions or large changes of elevation between the endpoints. In these situations, extra setups are needed. "Turning" is a term used when referring to moving the level to take an elevation shot from a different location. To "turn" the level, one must first take a reading and record the elevation of the point the rod is located on. While the rod is being kept in exactly the same location, the level is moved to a new location where the rod is still visible. A reading is taken from the new location of the level and the height difference is used to find the new elevation of the level gun, which is why this method is referred to as "differential levelling". This is repeated until the series of measurements is completed. The level must be horizontal to get a valid measurement. Because of this, if the horizontal crosshair of the instrument is lower than the base of the rod, the surveyor will not be able to sight the rod and get a reading. The rod can usually be raised up to high, allowing the level to be set much higher than the base of the rod.


title: Surveying

text: The primary way of determining one's position on the earth's surface when no known positions are nearby is by astronomic observations. Observations to the sun, moon and stars could all be made using navigational techniques. Once the instrument's position and bearing to a star is determined, the bearing can be transferred to a reference point on the earth. The point can then be used as a base for further observations. Survey-accurate astronomic positions were difficult to observe and calculate and so tended to be a base off which many other measurements were made. Since the advent of the GPS system, astronomic observations are rare as GPS allows adequate positions to be determined over most of the surface of the earth.


title: Surveying

text: Few survey positions are derived from the first principles. Instead, most surveys points are measured relative to previously measured points. This forms a reference or "control" network where each point can be used by a surveyor to determine their own position when beginning a new survey.


title: Surveying

text: Survey points are usually marked on the earth's surface by objects ranging from small nails driven into the ground to large beacons that can be seen from long distances. The surveyors can set up their instruments in this position and measure to nearby objects. Sometimes a tall, distinctive feature such as a steeple or radio aerial has its position calculated as a reference point that angles can be measured against.


title: Surveying

text: "Triangulation" is a method of horizontal location favoured in the days before EDM and GPS measurement. It can determine distances, elevations and directions between distant objects. Since the early days of surveying, this was the primary method of determining accurate positions of objects for topographic maps of large areas. A surveyor first needs to know the horizontal distance between two of the objects, known as the baseline. Then the heights, distances and angular position of other objects can be derived, as long as they are visible from one of the original objects. High-accuracy transits or theodolites were used, and angle measurements were repeated for increased accuracy. See also Triangulation in three dimensions.


title: Surveying

text: "Offsetting" is an alternate method of determining the position of objects, and was often used to measure imprecise features such as riverbanks. The surveyor would mark and measure two known positions on the ground roughly parallel to the feature, and mark out a baseline between them. At regular intervals, a distance was measured at right angles from the first line to the feature. The measurements could then be plotted on a plan or map, and the points at the ends of the offset lines could be joined to show the feature.


title: Surveying

text: "Traversing" is a common method of surveying smaller areas. The surveyor starts from an old reference mark or known position and places a network of reference marks covering the survey area. They then measure bearings and distances between the reference marks, and to the target features. Most traverses form a loop pattern or link between two prior reference marks so the surveyor can check their measurements.


title: Surveying

text: Many surveys do not calculate positions on the surface of the earth, but instead, measure the relative positions of objects. However, often the surveyed items need to be compared to outside data, such as boundary lines or previous survey's objects. The oldest way of describing a position is via latitude and longitude, and often a height above sea level. As the surveying profession grew it created Cartesian coordinate systems to simplify the mathematics for surveys over small parts of the earth. The simplest coordinate systems assume that the earth is flat and measure from an arbitrary point, known as a 'datum' (singular form of data). The coordinate system allows easy calculation of the distances and direction between objects over small areas. Large areas distort due to the earth's curvature. North is often defined as true north at the datum.


title: Surveying

text: For larger regions, it is necessary to model the shape of the earth using an ellipsoid or a geoid. Many countries have created coordinate-grids customized to lessen error in their area of the earth.


title: Surveying

text: A basic tenet of surveying is that no measurement is perfect, and that there will always be a small amount of error. There are three classes of survey errors:


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors avoid these errors by calibrating their equipment, using consistent methods, and by good design of their reference network. Repeated measurements can be averaged and any outlier measurements discarded. Independent checks like measuring a point from two or more locations or using two different methods are used, and errors can be detected by comparing the results of two or more measurements, thus utilizing redundancy.


title: Surveying

text: Once the surveyor has calculated the level of the errors in his or her work, it is adjusted. This is the process of distributing the error between all measurements. Each observation is weighted according to how much of the total error it is likely to have caused and part of that error is allocated to it in a proportional way. The most common methods of adjustment are the Bowditch method, also known as the compass rule, and the principle of least squares method.


title: Surveying

text: The surveyor must be able to distinguish between accuracy and precision. In the United States, surveyors and civil engineers use units of feet wherein a survey foot breaks down into 10ths and 100ths. Many deed descriptions containing distances are often expressed using these units (125.25 ft). On the subject of accuracy, surveyors are often held to a standard of one one-hundredth of a foot; about 1/8 inch. Calculation and mapping tolerances are much smaller wherein achieving near-perfect closures are desired. Though tolerances will vary from project to project, in the field and day to day usage beyond a 100th of a foot is often impractical.


title: Surveying

text: Local organisations or regulatory bodies class specializations of surveying in different ways. Broad groups are:


title: Surveying

text: Based on the considerations and true shape of the earth, surveying is broadly classified into two types.


title: Surveying

text: "Plane surveying" assumes the earth is flat. Curvature and spheroidal shape of the earth is neglected. In this type of surveying all triangles formed by joining survey lines are considered as plane triangles. It is employed for small survey works where errors due to the earth's shape are too small to matter.


title: Surveying

text: In "geodetic surveying" the curvature of the earth is taken into account while calculating reduced levels, angles, bearings and distances. This type of surveying is usually employed for large survey works. Survey works up to 100 square miles (260 square kilometers ) are treated as plane and beyond that are treated as geodetic. In geodetic surveying necessary corrections are applied to reduced levels, bearings and other observations.


title: Surveying

text: The basic principles of surveying have changed little over the ages, but the tools used by surveyors have evolved. Engineering, especially civil engineering, often needs surveyors.


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors help determine the placement of roads, railways, reservoirs, dams, pipelines, retaining walls, bridges, and buildings. They establish the boundaries of legal descriptions and political divisions. They also provide advice and data for "geographical information systems" (GIS) that record land features and boundaries.


title: Surveying

text: Surveyors must have a thorough knowledge of algebra, basic calculus, geometry, and trigonometry. They must also know the laws that deal with surveys, real property, and contracts.


title: Surveying

text: Related professions include cartographers, hydrographers, geodesists, photogrammetrists, and topographers, as well as civil engineers and geomatics engineers.


title: Surveying

text: Licensing requirements vary with jurisdiction, and are commonly consistent within national borders. Prospective surveyors usually have to receive a degree in surveying, followed by a detailed examination of their knowledge of surveying law and principles specific to the region they wish to practice in, and undergo a period of on-the-job training or portfolio building before they are awarded a license to practise. Licensed surveyors usually receive a post nominal, which varies depending on where they qualified. The system has replaced older apprenticeship systems.


title: Surveying

text: A licensed land surveyor is generally required to sign and seal all plans. The state dictates the format, showing their name and registration number.


title: Surveying

text: In many jurisdictions, surveyors must mark their registration number on survey monuments when setting boundary corners. Monuments take the form of capped iron rods, concrete monuments, or nails with washers.


title: Surveying

text: Most countries' governments regulate at least some forms of surveying. Their survey agencies establish regulations and standards. Standards control accuracy, surveying credentials, monumentation of boundaries and maintenance of geodetic networks. Many nations devolve this authority to regional entities or states/provinces. Cadastral surveys tend to be the most regulated because of the permanence of the work. Lot boundaries established by cadastral surveys may stand for hundreds of years without modification.


title: Surveying

text: Most jurisdictions also have a form of professional institution representing local surveyors. These institutes often endorse or license potential surveyors, as well as set and enforce ethical standards. The largest institution is the International Federation of Surveyors (Abbreviated FIG, for ). They represent the survey industry worldwide.


title: Surveying

text: Most English-speaking countries consider building surveying a distinct profession. They have their own professional associations and licensing requirements. A building surveyor can provide technical building advice on existing buildings, new buildings, design, compliance with regulations such as planning and building control. A building surveyor normally acts on behalf of his or her client ensuring that their vested interests remain protected. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) is a world-recognised governing body for those working within the built environment.


title: Surveying

text: One of the primary roles of the land surveyor is to determine the boundary of real property on the ground. The surveyor must determine where the adjoining landowners wish to put the boundary. The boundary is established in legal documents and plans prepared by attorneys, engineers, and land surveyors. The surveyor then puts monuments on the corners of the new boundary. They might also find or resurvey the corners of the property monumented by prior surveys.


title: Surveying

text: The cadastral survey branch of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) conducts most cadastral surveys in the United States. They consult with Forest Service, National Park Service, Army Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and others. The BLM used to be known as the General Land Office (GLO).


title: Surveying

text: In states organized per the Public Land Survey System (PLSS), surveyors must carry out BLM cadastral surveys under that system.


title: Surveying

text: Cadastral surveyors often have to work around changes to the earth that obliterate or damage boundary monuments. When this happens, they must consider evidence that is not recorded on the title deed. This is known as extrinsic evidence.


title: Surveying

text: Some U.S. Presidents were land surveyors. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln surveyed colonial or frontier territories early in their career, prior to serving in office.


title: Surveying

text: David T. Abercrombie practiced land surveying before starting an outfitter store of excursion goods. The business would later turn into Abercrombie & Fitch lifestyle clothing store.


title: Surveying

text: Percy Harrison Fawcett was a British surveyor that explored the jungles of South America attempting to find the Lost City of Z. His biography and expeditions were recounted in the book "The Lost City of Z" and were later adapted on film screen.


title: Surveying

text: Inō Tadataka produced the first map of Japan using modern surveying techniques starting in 1800, at the age of 55.


title: Panja Vaisshnav Tej

text: Panja Vaisshnav Tej (born 13 January 1995), is an Indian actor who works in Telugu films. He made his debut as a lead in the film "Uppena" (2021) and also has a main role in "Konda Polam" (2021) and "Ranga Ranga Vaibhavanga" (2022).


title: Panja Vaisshnav Tej

text: Panja Vaisshnav Tej is the younger brother of Sai Dharam Tej. A member of the Allu–Konidela family, he is nephew of actor Chiranjeevi. Tej did his schooling at Nalanda School, Hyderabad and completed his graduation from St. Mary's College, Hyderabad.


title: Panja Vaisshnav Tej

text: Tej first appeared as a child actor in "Johnny" (2003), directed by and starring his maternal uncle Pawan Kalyan. He later played a wheelchair-ridden child in "Shankar Dada M.B.B.S." (2004), starring his maternal uncle Chiranjeevi. In 2021, he made his debut as a lead with the film "Uppena".


title: Panja Vaisshnav Tej

text: His then appeared in the rural drama Konda Polam, co-starring Rakul Preet Singh, under the direction of Krish, followed by Ranga Ranga Vaibhavanga. He has signed a film under the production of Nagarjuna's Annapurna Studios.


title: Flightplan

text: Flightplan is a 2005 mystery psychological thriller film directed by Robert Schwentke from a screenplay written by Peter A. Dowling and Billy Ray. It stars Jodie Foster as Kyle Pratt, a recently-widowed American aircraft engineer living in Berlin, who flies back to the U.S. with her daughter and her husband's body. She loses her daughter during the flight and must struggle to find her while proving her sanity at the same time. It also features Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen, Kate Beahan, Greta Scacchi, Sean Bean, and Matt Bomer.


title: Flightplan

text: "Flightplan" was distributed by Touchstone Pictures and was released worldwide theatrically on September 23, 2005. The film received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the direction, performances of the cast (particularly Foster's), and the thriller elements of the film but criticized the screenplay. It was a major box office success, grossing over $223 million worldwide against a $55 million budget, and received two nominations at the 32nd Saturn Awards; Best Action or Adventure Film, and Best Actress (for Foster).


title: Flightplan

text: Recently-widowed Berlin-based American aviation engineer Kyle Pratt takes her husband David's body back to the U.S. with her 6-year-old daughter Julia, aboard an aircraft she helped design, a brand new Elgin E-474 (loosely based on the Airbus A380) operated by Aalto Airlines. Awakening from a nap, Kyle finds Julia missing, and none of the passengers or crew recall seeing her. Flight attendant Stephanie tells Kyle there is no record of her daughter boarding the flight, and Kyle is unable to find Julia's boarding pass and backpack. At Kyle's insistence, Captain Marcus Rich conducts a search of the aircraft, while the panicked Kyle is monitored by sky marshal Gene Carson.


title: Flightplan

text: Kyle reveals that her husband died falling from their roof, which she refuses to believe was suicide. Captain Rich receives a message from a Berlin hospital that Julia died with her father, and is convinced that Kyle, unhinged by her husband's and daughter's deaths, imagined bringing Julia on board. The increasingly erratic Kyle is confined to her seat, where a therapist, Lisa, consoles her. Kyle doubts her own sanity until she notices the heart Julia drew in the condensation on the window next to her seat.


title: Flightplan

text: Kyle asks to use the bathroom, where she climbs into the overhead crawl space and sabotages the aircraft's electronics. In the ensuing chaos, she rides a dumbwaiter to the lower freight deck and unlocks David's casket, suspecting Julia is inside, but finds only her husband's body. Carson escorts her to her seat in handcuffs, and explains that the flight is making an emergency stopover at Goose Bay Airport, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador, where she will be taken into custody.


title: Flightplan

text: She pleads with Carson to search the aircraft's hold, and he sneaks down to the freight deck. Removing two explosives and a detonator concealed in David's casket, he plants the explosives in the avionics section. It is revealed that Carson and Stephanie have conspired to hijack the aircraft for a $50 million ransom and frame Kyle, due to her knowledge of the aircraft; they abducted Julia to induce Kyle to unlock the casket. Carson lies to Rich that Kyle is threatening to bomb the aircraft unless the ransom is wired to a bank account and a G3 aircraft is readied upon landing. He then plans to detonate the explosives, killing Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator.


title: Flightplan

text: Landing in Newfoundland, the airliner is surrounded by FBI agents. Kyle confronts Rich, who angrily declares that the ransom has been paid. Kyle realizes that Carson is the perpetrator and, assuming the role of hijacker, commands Carson to remain aboard and the crew to leave. She strikes Carson with a fire extinguisher, handcuffs him to a rail, and takes the detonator. Carson frees himself and pursues Kyle, who locks herself in the cockpit, but manages to draw Carson away with a ruse so she can escape. After an altercation with Kyle, Stephanie flees the airliner.


title: Flightplan

text: Kyle finds the unconscious Julia but then is found by Carson, who reveals that he murdered David in order to smuggle the explosives inside his casket. Kyle escapes with Julia into the aircraft's non-combustible hold as Carson shoots at her. She detonates the explosives, killing Carson and damaging the aircraft's landing gear, but she and Julia emerge unscathed as the crew realize she had been telling the truth all along. The next morning, Captain Rich apologizes to Kyle as Stephanie is led away by FBI agents, while another agent informs them that the Berlin mortuary director has also been arrested. Kyle carries Julia through the crowd of passengers who realize the truth. As a passenger assists Kyle in loading her luggage onto a waiting van, Julia awakens and asks if they have arrived.


title: Flightplan

text: Peter A. Dowling had the idea for "Flightplan" in 1999 on a phone conversation with a friend. His original pitch for producer Brian Grazer involved a man who worked on airport security doing a business trip from the United States to Hong Kong, and during the flight his son went missing. A few years later, Billy Ray took over the script, taking out the terrorists from the story and putting more emphasis on the protagonist, who became a female as Grazer thought it would be a good role for Jodie Foster. The story then focused on the main character regaining her psyche, and added the post-September 11 attacks tension and paranoia. There was also an attempt to hide the identity of the villain by showcasing the different characters on the plane. Both Dowling and Ray were allowed to visit the insides of a Boeing 747 at the Los Angeles International Airport to develop the limited space on which the story takes place. The film also draws on Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes", in which an older woman goes missing on board a train and only one passenger remembers her, especially in the scene where Kyle discovers the heart drawn by her daughter on the plane window.


title: Flightplan

text: Schwentke said that to make "Flightplan" as realistic as possible, he wanted naturalistic, subdued performances. One example was Peter Sarsgaard, whom he described as an actor "who can all of a sudden become a snake uncoiling". First-time actress Marlene Lawston was cast as Foster's character's daughter Julia. Sean Bean was cast to subvert his typecasting as a villain and mislead audiences into thinking he was part of the villainous plot. The director also picked each of the 300 passengers through auditions.


title: Flightplan

text: Schwentke described "Flightplan" as a "slow boiling" thriller, where the opening is different from the faster ending parts. The director added that sound was used to put audiences "off-kilter".


title: Flightplan

text: The art direction team had to build all the interiors and the cockpit of the fictional E-474 from scratch, basing both the interior design and layout on the Airbus A380. The amount of dead space within the cabin, cargo and avionic areas of the E-474 did not reflect the actual amount of dead space within any aircraft. BE Aerospace provided various objects to "stage the scene"; "many of the interior sets used real aircraft components such as seats, gallies, etc."


title: Flightplan

text: To allow for varied camera angles, the set had many tracks for the camera dolly to move, and both the walls and the ceiling were built on hinges so they could easily be swung open for shooting. The design and colors tried to invoke the mood for each scene. For instance, a white room for "eerie, clinical, cold" moments, lower ceilings for claustrophobia, and wide open spaces to give no clues to the audience. Most exterior scenes of the E-474 involve a model one-tenth of the aircraft's actual size, with the images being subsequently enhanced through computer-generated imagery. The explosion in the nose involved both life sized and scaled pieces of scenery. A one-half scale set of the avionics area was constructed to make the explosion and fireball look bigger.


title: Flightplan

text: The score for "Flightplan" was released September 20, 2005, on Hollywood Records. The music was composed and conducted by James Horner, and the disc contains eight tracks. Horner stated that film's score tried to mix the sound effects with "the emotion and drive of the music", and the instruments were picked to match the "feelings of panic" Kyle goes through. These included Gamelan instruments, prepared piano, and string arrangements. No brass instruments are used in the soundtrack.


title: Flightplan

text: "Flightplan" opened at #1 in US and Canada, grossing over $24 million in its opening weekend. It grossed $89,707,299 at the domestic box office and $133,680,000 overseas for a worldwide total of $223,387,299. It also grossed $79,270,000 on DVD rentals.


title: Flightplan

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 37% based on 179 reviews, with an average rating of 5.3/10. The site's critics consensus states: "The actors are all on key here, but as the movie progresses, tension deflates as the far-fetched plot kicks in." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100 rating, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade B+ on an A+ to F scale.


title: Flightplan

text: Film historian Leonard Maltin in "Leonard Maltin's 2012 Movie Guide" (2011) described "Flightplan" as "suspenseful at first, this thriller becomes remote and un-involving; by the climax, it's just plain ridiculous."


title: Flightplan

text: Roger Ebert gave it 3 and a half out of 4 stars, praising its "airtight plot" and the acting performances. Other reviewers including the Christian Science Monitor criticised "plotholes the size of an Airbus in the script".


title: Flightplan

text: Aviation film historian Simon D. Beck in "The Aircraft-Spotter's Film and Television Companion" (2016) noted that "Flightplan" was careful in setting the scene. "The aircraft is a fictional mammoth airliner called the 'E-474', a double-deck jumbo modeled strongly after the Airbus A-380, the large size being suitable for the missing-person plot of the film."


title: Flightplan

text: The Association of Professional Flight Attendants called for an official boycott of "Flightplan", which they said depicts flight attendants as rude and unhelpful.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. Its objective is to pressure Israel to meet what the BDS movement describes as Israel's obligations under international law, defined as withdrawal from the occupied territories, removal of the separation barrier in the West Bank, full equality for Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel, and "respecting, protecting, and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties". The movement is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS is modeled after the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Its proponents compare the Palestinians' plight to that of apartheid-era black South Africans. Protests and conferences in support of the movement have been held in several countries. Its mascot, which features on its logotype, is Handala, a symbol of Palestinian identity and "right of return".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Since 2015, the Israeli government has spent millions of dollars to promote the view that BDS is antisemitic and have it legally banned in foreign countries. According to some of its critics, BDS is inherently antisemitic, has antisemitic aspects, or resembles historical discrimination against Jews. Countering BDS is a top priority for the Israel lobby in the United States, where 30 states have banned the implementation of boycott and disinvestment measures proposed by BDS. Supporters of BDS see it as a human rights movement.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Many authors trace BDS's origins to the NGO Forum at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in South Africa (Durban I). At the forum, Palestinian activists met with anti-apartheid veterans who identified parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa and recommended campaigns like those they had used to defeat apartheid. The forum adopted a document that contained many ideas that would later reappear in the 2005 BDS Call; Israel was proclaimed an apartheid state that engaged in human rights violations through the denial of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, the occupation of the Palestinian territories, and discrimination against Arab citizens of Israel. The declaration recommended comprehensive sanctions and embargoes against Israel as the remedy.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In March 2002, while the Israeli army reoccupied all major Palestinian cities and towns and imposed curfews, a group of prominent Palestinian scholars published a letter calling for help from the "global civil society." The letter asked activists to demand that their governments suspend economic relations with Israel in order to stop its campaign of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing. In April 2002, Steven and Hilary Rose, professors at the Open University and the University of Bradford, initiated a call for a moratorium on academic collaboration with Israeli institutions. It quickly racked up over 700 signatories, among them Colin Blakemore and Richard Dawkins, who said they could no longer "in good conscience continue to cooperate with official Israeli institutions, including universities." Similar initiatives followed in the summer.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In August, Palestinian organizations in the occupied territories issued a call for a comprehensive boycott of Israel. The majority of the statements recalled the declarations made at the NGO Forum the year before. In October 2003, a group of Palestinian intellectuals called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Attempts to coordinate the boycotts in a more structured way led to the formation of the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) in April 2004.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Colin Shindler argues that the Oslo peace process's failure created a political void that allowed what had been a marginal rejectionist attitude to Israel to enter the European far-left mainstream in the form of proposals for a boycott. Rafeef Ziadah also attributes BDS to the peace process's failure. She argues that BDS represents a rejection of the peace process paradigm of equalizing both sides in favor of seeing the situation as a colonial conflict between a native population and a settler-colonial state supported by Western powers.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Others argue that BDS should be understood in terms of its purported roots in the Arab League's boycott of Zionist goods from Mandatory Palestine. According to the archaeologist and ancient historian Alex Joffe, BDS is merely the spearhead of a larger anti-Western juggernaut in which the dialectic between communism and Islam remains unresolved, and has antecedents in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the General Union of Palestinian Students and the Muslim Brotherhood. Andrew Pessin and Doron Ben-Atar believe that BDS should be viewed in a historical context of other boycotts of Israel.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS demands that Israel end its "three forms of injustices that infringe international law and Palestinian rights" by:


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: These demands, enshrined in a declaration named the BDS Call, are non-negotiable to BDS. Co-founder of the movement Omar Barghouti, citing South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, has written: "I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights." Barghouti has also written:


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS sees itself as a movement for all Palestinians, whether they live in the diaspora or in historical Palestine. BDS believes that negotiations with Israel should focus on "how Palestinian rights can be restored" and that they can only take place after Israel has recognized these rights. It frames the Israel-Palestinian conflict as between colonizer and colonized, between oppressor and oppressed, and rejects the notion that both parties are equally responsible for the conflict. For those reasons, BDS opposes some forms of dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, which it argues are counterproductive.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: According to BDS, "all forms of international intervention and peace-making until now have failed" and so the international community should impose punitive measures, such as broad boycotts and divestment initiatives, against Israel, like those against South Africa during apartheid.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS uses the framework of "freedom, justice, and equality," arguing that Palestinians are entitled to those rights like everyone else. It is therefore an antiracist movement and rejects all forms of racism, including antisemitism and Islamophobia. More generally, BDS frames itself as part of a global social movement that challenges neoliberal Western hegemony and struggles against racism, sexism, poverty and similar causes. Its struggle for Palestinian rights should be seen as a small but critical part of that struggle, BDS argues.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS believes that Israel is an apartheid state as defined by two international treaties, the 1973 The International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It says that while there are differences between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa, such as Israel's lack of explicit racial segregation laws, the systems are fundamentally similar.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: One of the main differences between South African and Israeli apartheid, BDS argues, is that in the former a white minority dominated a black minority, but in Israel, a Jewish majority discriminates against a Palestinian minority in Israel and also keeps Palestinians under military occupation. It further contends that South African apartheid depended on black labor while Israeli apartheid is grounded in efforts to expel Palestinians from "Greater Israel".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS sees the Israeli legal definition of itself as a "Jewish and democratic state" as contradictory. According to BDS, Israel upholds a facade of democracy but is not and cannot be a democracy because it is, in Omar Barghouti's words, "a settler-colonial state."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Opponents have argued that comparing Israel to South Africa's apartheid regime "demonizes" Israel and is antisemitic. Supporters argue that there is nothing antisemitic in calling Israel an apartheid state. To support that view, they cite prominent anti-apartheid activists such as Desmond Tutu and South African politician Ronnie Kasrils, who both have said that the situation in Gaza and the West Bank is "worse" than apartheid. Eric Goldstein, acting executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division of Human Rights Watch, which neither supports nor condemns a boycott, argues that the Biden administration will probably not counter the Trump administration's attempt to label BDS antisemitic. He considers the movement maligned. In his view, "To campaign or boycott solely on behalf of Palestinians under Israeli rule no more constitutes anti-Semitism than doing so on behalf of Tibetans in China is in itself anti-Chinese racism."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS demands that Israel allow the Palestinian refugees displaced in the 1948 war to return to what is now Israel. According to BDS's critics, calling for their right to return is an attempt to destroy Israel. If the refugees returned, Israel would become a Palestinian-majority state and Jewish dominance of Israel would be in jeopardy. They argue that this would undermine the Jewish people's right to self-determination and thus calling for it is a form of antisemitism. Former Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman has called it "the destruction of the Jewish state through demography."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Nadia Abu el-Haj has written that, indeed, BDS supporters believe that "the Israeli state has no right to continue exist as a racial state that builds the distinction between Jew and non-Jew into its citizenship laws, its legal regimes, its education system, its economy, and its military and policing tactics." BDS supporters further note that the Palestinian liberation movement has always rejected the idea that Israel has a right to exist as a racial state. While BDS deliberately refrains from advocating any particular political outcome, such as a one-state or two-state solution, Barghouti argues that a Jewish state in historical Palestine contravenes the Palestinians' rights:


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Norman Finkelstein, a vocal supporter of the two-state solution, has criticized BDS on this issue. Like Foxman, Finkelstein believes that BDS seeks to end Israel through demography, something he believes Israel will never acquiesce to. He therefore considers BDS a "silly, childish, and dishonest cult" because it does not explicitly state that its goal is to end Israel and because, according to him, that goal is unrealistic and broad public support cannot be found for the return of the refugees. Still, he believes that BDS's tactics, boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, are correct. Ali Abunimah, in response to Finkelstein, insists that the two-state solution is compatible with BDS's demands and that the Good Friday Agreement that settled the conflict in Northern Ireland could serve as model for the Israel-Palestinian conflict.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS criticizes liberal Zionists who oppose the occupation but also the right of return for the Palestinian refugees. According to liberal Zionists, both right-wing Zionists and BDS risk "destroying Israel," defined as turning Israel into a Palestinian-majority state, BDS by demanding equal citizenship for Arab-Palestinians and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, and right-wing Zionists by insisting on building more settlements, eventually making a two-state solution impossible. With the two-state solution off the table, Israel would either have to grant citizenship to the Palestinians living under occupation, thus destroying Israel, or become an apartheid state. Liberal Zionists find apartheid repugnant and oppose apartheid in Israel, so they propose a boycott limited to Israeli West Bank settlements to pressure the Israeli government to stop building settlements. Peter Beinart in 2012 proposed a "Zionist BDS" that would advocate divestment from Israeli West Bank settlements but oppose divestment from Israeli companies. This, Beinart argued, would legitimize Israel and delegitimize the occupation, thus challenging both the vision of BDS and that of the Israeli government.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS supporters contend that liberal Zionists are more concerned with preserving Israel as a "Jewish state" than with human rights. Barghouti states that by denying the Palestinian refugees right of return simply because they are not Jewish, liberal Zionists adhere to the same Zionist racist principles that treat the Palestinians as a "demographic threat" to be dealt with in order to maintain Israel's character as a colonial, ethnocentric, apartheid state. Sriram Ananth writes that the BDS Call asks people to uncompromisingly stand against oppression. In his view, liberal Zionists have failed to do so by not endorsing the BDS Call.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS describes "normalization" as a process by which Palestinians are compelled to stop resisting and to accept their subjugation. BDS analogizes it to a "colonization of the mind," whereby the oppressed comes to believe that the oppressor's reality is the only reality and that the oppression is a fact of life. BDS opposes normalization as a means to resist oppression.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Normalization, BDS says, can arise when Israelis and Palestinians in the occupied territories meet without the Israeli side acknowledging the fundamental injustices Israel inflicts on the Palestinians, corresponding to the BDS's three demands. BDS calls it "co-existence" and argues that it feeds complacency and privileges the oppressor at the expense of the oppressed. Instead, BDS encourages "co-resistance," where "anti-colonial Jewish Israelis" and Palestinians come together to fight against the injustices afflicting the Palestinians. BDS denounces dialogue projects bringing Palestinians and Israelis together without addressing the struggle for Palestinian rights. Such projects, it asserts, "serve to privilege oppressive co-existence at the cost of co-resistance" regardless of their intentions. It also denounces projects that portray the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians as symmetrical.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: One example of a project BDS denounces is OneVoice, a joint Palestinian-Israeli youth-oriented organization that brings Israelis and Palestinians together under the slogan of ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state. Since OneVoice concerns itself with neither Israeli apartheid nor Palestinian refugees' rights, BDS concludes that it serves to normalize oppression and injustice.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Critics of "anti-normalization" rhetorically ask how BDS is supposed to win over the hearts and minds of unconvinced Jewish Israelis if a precondition for dialogue is that they first commit to BDS's principles. They believe that dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians can convince Jewish Israelis that BDS's demands are just. Barghouti contends that the "peace industry," the many dialogue initiatives launched in the 1990s in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords, has not helped the Palestinians at all because they are based on the idea that the conflict is between two equals, rather than about one group oppressing another. He believes that dialogue needs to be based on freedom, equality, democracy, and ending injustice, or else it is at best a form of negotiation between a stronger and weaker party.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS was founded on 9 July 2005, on the first anniversary of the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in which the West Bank barrier was declared a violation of international law. 171 Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) representing every aspect of Palestinian civil society adopted the BDS Call.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) was established at the first Palestinian BDS conference in Ramallah in November 2007 and in 2008 it became BDS's coordinating body. All BNC members are Palestinian organizations. As of 2020, it has 29 members. The BNC includes a general assembly with representatives from every BNC member, and an 11-seat secretariat elected every two years that governs the BNC. The general assembly meets about every third month while the secretariat handles day-to-day decision making. Mahmoud Nawajaa serves as the BNC's General Coordinator and Alys Samson Estapé as the Europe Coordinator.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: A precursor to BDS is the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), which was founded in April 2004 in Ramallah with Barghouti as a founding committee member. PACBI led the campaign for the academic and cultural boycotts of Israel. It has since been integrated into the larger BDS movement. The U.S. arm of PACBI, the United States Association for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), was founded in 2009.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The global BDS movement is by design highly decentralized and independent. This has allowed thousands of organizations and groups to become part of it, some of which are the BNC's main partners.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In Israel, BDS is supported by a number of left-wing groups, such as Women in Black, ICAHD, ACRI, and New Profile. Boycott from Within often uses creative performances to display its support for the boycott and the research group Who Profits supplies BDS with information about companies complicit in the Israeli occupation. On campuses in the U.S., Canada and New Zealand, the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine supports BDS. According to the American coordinating body National Students for Justice in Palestine, it had about 200 chapters in the U.S. as of 2018. The left-wing activist organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) advocates for BDS among American Jewry.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS organizes campaigns for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Boycotts are facilitated by urging the public to avoid purchasing goods made by Israeli companies, divestment by urging banks, pension funds, international companies, etc. to stop doing business in Israel, and sanctions by pressuring governments to end military trade and free-trade agreements with Israel and to suspend Israel's membership in international forums.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Global targets for boycott are selected by the BNC, but supporters are free to choose targets that suit them. The BNC encourages supporters to select targets based on their complicity in Israel's human rights violations, potential for cross-movement solidarity, media appeal, and likelihood of success. It also emphasizes the importance of creating campaigns and events that connect with issues of concern in their own communities.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: According to Ali Abunimah of "The Electronic Intifada" website (EI), the BDS campaign at the grassroots level uses social media, petitions, articles, on-campus events and organizes public demonstrations to apply pressure on individuals and corporations to cut ties with Israeli institutions.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In addition to the campaigns listed in this section, a number of local campaigns have been created by BDS-affiliated groups and endorsed by the movement, including Code Pink's "Stolen Beauty" campaign launched in 2009 against Israeli cosmetics manufacturer Ahava, an Australian campaign against Max Brenner, whose parent company, the Strauss Group, sent care packages to Israeli soldiers, and a campaign by the group Vermonters for Justice in Palestine (VTJP, previously known as Vermonters for a Just Peace in Israel/Palestine) against ice-cream maker Ben & Jerry over its sales of ice cream in Israeli settlements. In June 2021, VTJP called on Ben & Jerry's to "end complicity in Israel's occupation and abuses of Palestinian human rights." VTJP describes itself as "a strong supporter of the...[BDS] campaign". On 19 July 2021, Ben & Jerry's CEO announced the end of sales of ice cream in the Israeli settlements in the West Bank: "Although Ben & Jerry's will no longer be sold in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian territories], we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement". Ben & Jerry's Independent Board of Directors complained that the decision had been made by the CEO and Unilever without their approval. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said, "Over 30 states in the United States have passed anti-BDS legislation in recent years. I plan on asking each of them to enforce these laws against Ben & Jerry's", and called the decision "a shameful capitulation to antisemitism, BDS and everything bad in the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Since November 2008, BDS has campaigned against the multinational French conglomerates Veolia and Alstom for their involvement in the Jerusalem Light Rail because it runs through the Israeli-occupied parts of East Jerusalem. According to BDS, the boycott had cost Veolia an estimated $20 billion as of 2015. In 2015 Veolia sold off its final investment in Israel, a 5% stake in CityPass owned by its subsidiary Transdev. BDS attributed the sell-off to its campaign, but Richard Dujardin, a member of Transdev's executive committee, said: "I will not say that it is pleasant to be chased by people saying we are not good guys all the time but really it was a business decision."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Since 2012 BDS has campaigned against G4S, the world's biggest security company, to get it to divest from Israel. As a result, G4S has been targeted by many BDS supporting groups, including Who Profits?, Addameer, Jews for Justice in Palestine, and Tadamon!. The campaign's first victory came in October 2011, when the student council of the Edinburgh University Students' Association adopted a motion to ban G4S from campus. In April 2012 the European Parliament declined to renew its contract with G4S, citing G4S's involvement in violations of international law. In 2014 the Gates Foundation sold its $170 million stake in G4S, a move BDS activists attributed to their campaign. The same year activists thanked officials in Durham County, North Carolina, for terminating its contract with G4S, though it wasn't clear that BDS's campaign was the cause. In February 2016, the international restaurant chain Crepes & Waffles terminated its security transport contracts with G4S.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: G4S sold off its Israeli subsidiary G4S Israel in 2016, but BDS continues to campaign against G4S because it maintains a 50% stake in Policity, an Israeli police training center with presence inside Israeli prisons where thousands of Palestinians are detained.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS South Africa undertook a boycott campaign against the South African retail chain Woolworths in 2014 over its trade relations with Israel. It was the first comprehensive consumer boycott of a South African retailer since 1994. The campaign used the Twitter hashtag #BoycottWoolworths which rapidly became one of the top trending hashtags on South African Twitter. The campaign attracted international media attention and was covered by "The New York Times", "Rolling Stone", and "Al-Jazeera". The activists organized flash mobs, die-ins, and placed "Boycott Israeli Apartheid"-stickers on Woolworths' Israeli merchandise, all of which they published on social media. Consumers were encouraged to write to the company's store managers questioning the stocking of Israeli goods.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The campaign ended in mid-2016 when Woolworth informed its annual general meeting that it would no longer purchase Israeli products from the occupied territories.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS runs a boycott campaign against the multinational information technology company Hewlett-Packard's two successors, HP Inc. and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, which it says are complicit in "Israel's occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid regime". According to the campaign, HP supplies Israel with a biometric ID card system used to restrict Palestinians' freedom of movement and provides servers for the Israel Prison Service.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In April 2019, Federatie Nederlandse Vakbeweging, the Netherlands' largest trade union, dropped HP in its offer to its members. According to a spokesperson for the boycott HP campaign, the union used to offer a 15% discount on HP products and this would no longer be the case. In June 2019, Unite, the UK's second-largest trade union, joined the boycott against HP.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In January 2016, French telecom operator Orange dropped its licensing deal with its Israeli mobile operator, Partner Communications. According to BDS, the deal was the result of its six-year campaign by unions and activists in France, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. While BDS hailed the move as a significant victory, Orange said it was ending its relationship with Partner for purely commercial reasons.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The French multinational insurance agent AXA has since 2016 been the target of a campaign urging it to divest from Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems and five major Israeli banks. AXA has, according to BDS, a responsible investment policy that forbids it from investing in, among other things, manufacturers of cluster bombs, and Elbit Systems makes cluster bombs. According to a report by corporate responsibility watchdog SumOfUs, AXA's involvement in Israel's occupation could expose it to criminal prosecution.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Red Card Israel is BDS's campaign to get Israel expelled from FIFA due to alleged violations against Palestinian football and because several Israeli teams from the Israeli-occupied West Bank are allowed to play in its national league, the Israel Football Association. In 2018, it scored a victory as Argentina's national football team canceled an upcoming friendly game in Jerusalem.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In July 2018, sportswear manufacturer Puma signed a for-year sponsorship deal with the Israel Football Association (IFA). The IFA includes six football clubs based in Israeli settlements. BDS wrote an open letter signed by over 200 Palestinian sports clubs urging the brand to end its sponsorship of teams in the settlements. The sportswear manufacturer didn't, and BDS therefore launched a boycott campaign under the slogan "Give Puma the Boot".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In October 2019, activists placed unauthorized posters in the London underground urging people to boycott Puma. Transport for London said that it was flyposting and that it would immediately take action against the posters. In February 2020, Malaysia's largest university, Universiti Teknologi MARA, announced that it would end its sponsorship deal with Puma due to its involvement in Israel.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS attempted to get artists to boycott Eurovision Song Contest 2019 because it was held in Israel. BDS accused Israel of using Eurovision to whitewash and distract attention from alleged war crimes against Palestinians. It also accused Israel of pinkwashing, due to Eurovision's popularity among LGBTQ fans. Although none of the acts scheduled to appear pulled out, activists considered the efforts successful due to the media coverage generated.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: American pop star Madonna was one of the artists BDS urged to cancel her appearance at Eurovision. Roger Waters of Pink Floyd also tried to get her to cancel, saying that it "normalizes the occupation, the apartheid, the ethnic cleansing, the incarceration of children, the slaughter of unarmed protesters." Madonna refused, saying that she would neither "stop playing music to suit someone's political agenda" nor "stop speaking out against violations of human rights wherever in the world they may be."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In September 2018, 140 artists (including six Israelis) signed an open letter in support of a boycott of Eurovision. In response to the calls for boycott, over 100 celebrities, including English actor Stephen Fry, signed a statement against boycotting Eurovision in Israel: "We believe the cultural boycott movement is an affront to both Palestinians and Israelis who are working to advance peace through compromise, exchange, and mutual recognition".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Hatari, the band representing Iceland in the contest, held up Palestinian banners in front of the cameras at the event's finals, defying the EBU's rules against political gestures. BDS was not mollified: "Artists who insist on crossing the Palestinian boycott picket line, playing in Tel Aviv in defiance of our calls, cannot offset the harm they do to our human rights struggle by 'balancing' their complicit act with some project with Palestinians. Palestinian civil society overwhelmingly rejects this fig-leafing," it said.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In North America, many public and private universities have large financial holdings. Campus BDS activists have therefore organized campaigns asking universities to divest from companies complicit in the occupation. These campaigns often revolve around attempts to pass divestment resolutions in the school's student government. While few universities have heeded the call to divest, activists believe the resolutions are symbolically important. The discussions of divestment spur campuswide interest in BDS, which movement organizers use to their advantage by advocating for an unfamiliar cause.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2009, Hampshire College became the first U.S. college to divest from companies profiting from Israel's occupation as its board of trustees voted to sell its shares in Caterpillar Inc., Terex, Motorola, ITT, General Electric, and United Technologies. Hampshire's president said that SJP's campaigning brought about the decision, but members of the board of trustees denied that.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2010, the UC Berkeley Student Senate passed a resolution calling for the university to divest from companies that conduct business with Israel. The resolution was vetoed by the Student Body president, who said it was "a symbolic attack on a specific community." In 2013, another divestment bill passed but the university stated that it would not divest.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Many divestment campaigns began in the early 2000s, years before BDS was founded. In some cases, it has taken them over a decade to get resolutions passed. For example, at the University of Michigan, a student group called Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) began campaigning for a divestment resolution in 2002. It was brought up for the eleventh time in 2017 and passed 23–17 with five abstentions. Reportedly, the hearing on the resolution was the longest in student government history. In December, the Board of Regents at the university rejected the resolution, stating that "we strongly oppose any action involving the boycott, divestment or sanction of Israel."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2002, students at Columbia University began promoting a divestment resolution; a non-binding student resolution passed in 2020. The resolution called for the university "to boycott and divest from companies that "profit from or engage in the State of Israel's acts towards Palestinians". Columbia rejected the resolution ; explaining this decision , President Lee Bollinger wrote that Columbia "should not change its investment policies on the basis of particular views about a complex policy issue, especially when there is no consensus across the University community about that issue" and that divestment questions would be resolved by the university's Advisory Committee.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2019, Brown University became the first Ivy league university whose student government passed a non-binding divestment resolution, with 69% of the students (representing 27.5% of the student body) voting in favor and 31% against. Brown rejected the resolution; explaining this decision, President Christina Paxson wrote: "Brown's mission is to advance knowledge and understanding through research, analysis and debate. Its role is not to take sides on contested geopolitical issues." Nevertheless, on March 9, 2020, the university Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies confirmed an official recommendation to Paxson and the corporation, the university's highest governing body, to divest from "any company that profits from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land" and referred to the United Nations Human Rights Council's list of possible criteria for divestment contained in a report on the List of companies operating in West Bank settlements.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS opponents often focus on the supposed divisiveness debates about divestment resolutions cause. According to Nelson, the primary effect divestment resolutions have is the promotion of anti-Israel (and sometimes antisemitic) sentiment within student bodies, faculty, and academic departments.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Some opponents argue that activists promoting divestment resolutions often cheat or operate clandestinely. They claim that resolutions are often sprung with minimal notice, giving the opposition no time to react, that activists bring outsiders to influence opinion or to vote on university resolutions even when this is unauthorized, and that activists change the text of resolutions once passed.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Judea Pearl believes that to BDS supporters it is irrelevant whether a particular resolution passes or not because the real goal is to keep the debate alive and influence future policymakers to find fault with Israel.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Groups affiliated with BDS hold events known as Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) in February or March each year. IAW began at the University of Toronto in 2006, but has since spread and in 2014 was held on 250 campuses worldwide. IAW aims to increase public awareness of the Palestinians' history and the racial discrimination they experience and to build support for BDS. IAW allows activists to frame the issue as one of racial oppression and discrimination rather than a "conflict" between two equal sides. According to BDS's opponents, IAW intends to link Israel to evils such as apartheid and racism.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Universities have been primary targets of the BDS movement, according to English professor Cary Nelson, "because faculty and students can become passionate about justice, sometimes without adequate knowledge about the facts and consequences. ... [U]niversities also offer the potential for small numbers of BDS activists to leverage institutional status and reputation for a more significant cultural and political impact."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS argues that there is a close connection between Israeli academic institutions and the Israeli state, including its military, and that an academic boycott is warranted. Modern weapon systems and military doctrines used by the Israeli military are developed at Israeli universities that also use a system of economic merit and scholarship to students who serve in the army. Like the BDS-led cultural boycott, the academic boycott targets Israeli institutions and not individual academics.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The events and activities BDS encourages academics to avoid include academic events convened or co-sponsored by Israel, research and development activities that involve institutional cooperation agreements with Israeli universities, projects that receive funding from Israel or its lobby groups, addresses and talks by officials from Israeli academic institutions at international venues, study-abroad programmes in Israel for international students, and publishing in Israeli academic journals or serving on such journals' review boards.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: Thousands of scholars, including the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, and a large number of academic and student associations have endorsed the academic boycott against Israel. Some of the U.S. endorsers are the American Studies Association (ASA), the American Anthropological Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Association for Humanist Sociology, the National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, the Middle East Studies Association, the National Women's Studies Association along with dozens of other student associations.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2007, the American Jewish Committee ran an ad in "The Times" titled "Boycott Israeli universities? Boycott ours, too!" It was initially signed by 300 university presidents and denounced the academic boycott against Israel. It argued that an academic boycott would be "utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy, where we will not hold intellectual exchange hostage to the political disagreements of the moment." Phil Gasper, writing for the "International Socialist Review", argued that the ad grossly misrepresented the argument proponents of the boycott make and that its characterization of it as "political disagreements of the moment" was trivializing.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In December 2013, ASA joined the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Israel is the only nation the ASA has boycotted in the 52 years since its founding. Judea Pearl lambasted the ASA's endorsement of the boycott and wrote that it had a "non-academic character."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: On 23 March 2022, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) voted 768 to 167 to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli institutions for their "complicity in Israel's violations of human rights and international law through their provision of direct assistance to the military and intelligence establishments." MESA has 2,700 members and over 60 institutional members. In 2014, it voted 265 to 79 to allow its members to support BDS. After the vote, Brandeis University severed ties with MESA, citing "academic freedom".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2018, after previously agreeing to write a letter of recommendation for a student, associate professor John Cheney-Lippold at the University of Michigan declined to write it after discovering the student was planning to study in Israel. After critics called a letter to the student antisemitic, Cheney-Lippold said he supported BDS for human rights reasons and rejected antisemitism. Guidelines from PACBI say faculty "should not accept to write recommendations for students hoping to pursue studies in Israel". 58 civil rights, religious, and education advocacy organizations called on the university to sanction Cheney-Lippold. University officials ended the controversy by disciplining him and issuing a public statement that read in part, "Withholding letters of recommendation based on personal views does not meet our university's expectations for supporting the academic aspirations of our students. Conduct that violates this expectation and harms students will not be tolerated and will be addressed with serious consequences. Such actions interfere with our students' opportunities, violate their academic freedom and betray our university's educational mission."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: According to PACBI, "Cultural institutions are part and parcel of the ideological and institutional scaffolding of Israel's regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian people." Therefore, they argue, Israel should be subjected to a cultural boycott like the one against apartheid-era South Africa. According to BDS, most but not all Israeli cultural institutions support "the hegemonic Zionist establishment" and are thus implicated in Israel's crimes and should be boycotted.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS distinguishes between individuals and institutions. Unlike the cultural boycott against South Africa, BDS's cultural boycott does not target individuals. BDS supports the right to freedom of expression and rejects boycotts based on identity or opinion. Thus, Israeli cultural products are not per se subject to boycott. But if a person represents Israel, aids its efforts to "rebrand" itself, or is commissioned by an official Israeli body, then their activities are subject to the institutional boycott BDS calls for.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The only Israeli-Palestinian projects BDS favors are those in which the Israeli party recognizes the three rights enumerated in the "BDS Call" and that also emphasize resistance to oppression over coexistence. BDS strongly discourages "fig-leafing" by international culture workers—attempts to "compensate" for participating in Israeli events using "balancing gestures" that promote Palestinian rights. BDS argues that fig-leafing contributes to the false perception of symmetry between the colonial oppressor and the colonized.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The cultural boycott has been supported by thousands of artists around the world, such as musician Roger Waters and American author Alice Walker. In 2015, more than 1,000 British artists pledged their support for the boycott, drawing parallels to the one against South African apartheid:


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: The organizers of the weeklong Rototom Sunsplash music festival held in Spain in 2015 cancelled the scheduled appearance of Jewish American rapper Matisyahu after he refused to sign a statement supporting a Palestinian state. Matisyahu said that it was "appalling and offensive" that he was singled out as the "one publicly Jewish-American artist". After criticism from Spain's daily paper "El País" and the Spanish government as well as Jewish organisations, the organisers apologised to Matisyahu and reinvited him to perform, saying they "made a mistake, due to the boycott and the campaign of pressure, coercion and threats employed by the BDS País Valencià."


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: BDS País Valencià denied that Matisyahu was targeted because he is Jewish, writing that they tried to get him cancelled because of his views on Israel. In particular, they noted that he had played at a fundraiser for the IDF and at a conference for AIPAC and had defended Israel's boarding of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters. Mark LeVine commented that it would hardly have been surprising if a festival had canceled a Palestinian-American rapper who professed support for Hamas. In 2017, a pro-Israel organisation brought charges against eight members of the BDS movement over their role in the 2015 action against Matisyahu. On January 11, 2021, the Valencia Appeals Court acquitted the BDS members of the charges. The court said that the action of the BDS members was "protected by freedom of expression and that their intention was not to discriminate against Matisyahu because he is Jewish but to protest Israel's policies".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In July 2019, after the Open Source Festival in Düsseldorf disinvited the American rapper Talib Kweli for refusing to denounce the BDS movement, 103 artists, including Peter Gabriel, Naomi Klein and Boots Riley, signed an open letter condemning Germany's attempts to impose restrictions on artists who support Palestinian rights.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2019, the parliament of Germany issued a resolution that advocated against financing any project that called for a boycott of Israel on the grounds that the BDS movement was antisemitic. Twenty-five institutions, including the Goethe Institute, the Federal Cultural Foundation, the Berlin Deutsches Theater, the German Academic Exchange Service Artists Exchange, the Berliner Festspiele, and the issued a joint statement in 2019, after intensive internal debates, that "accusations of antisemitism are being misused to push aside important voices and to distort critical positions".


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In 2022, more than 30 acts withdrew from the Sydney Festival to protest a $20,000 sponsorship agreement with the Israeli Embassy in Australia. Israel's Deputy Ambassador to Australia Ron Gerstenfeld condemned the BDS movement's "antisemitic" and "aggressive campaign" against performers.


title: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

text: In June 2015, a RAND Corporation study estimated that a successful BDS campaign against Israel, could cost the Israeli economy a cumulative $47 billion over ten years. The figure was based on a model that examined previous international boycotts; the report noted that making an assessment of BDS's economic effects is difficult because evidence of the effectiveness of sanctions is mixed. A leaked Israeli government report estimated a more modest $1.4 billion per year.