******************** POSTING RULES & NOTES ******************** #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. *****************************************************************
NYU-SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week highlights ongoing tragedy in Gaza & collective resistance alongside black struggle <https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/nyu-sjps-israeli-apartheid-week-highlights-ongoing-tragedy-in-gaza-collective-resistance-alongside-black-struggle/> *Event footage will be added soon; full article and original event announcements can be found here <https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/>.* Over one hundred people attended two separate events as part of SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). In addition, forty-one individuals volunteered for NYU-SJP’s burgeoning campaign to support divesting NYU from corporations complicit in Israeli human rights abuses. 119 NYU faculty have thusfar called for divestment <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15Mi6JLAhQnlg4ssnzTlkAtOSAv6W1i9IkIO6YduZ-tk/viewform> from such corporations. More than one hundred individuals signed up to become NYU-SJP members and supporters. The events also raised funds for the Palestinian Children’s Welfare Fund. The events focused on the periodic massacres that Israel has carried out in Gaza, and the parallels between Israeli oppression and American racism against Africans. [image: NYU-SJP members hand out flyers next to a mock Apartheid Wall, calling attention to the massive barrier Israel has built in the Palestinian West Bank to confiscate land and restrict movement. The Israeli Apartheid wall in Palestine is illegal under international law.] <https://nyusjp.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/18512_853946351337710_5258747725565495543_n.jpg>NYU-SJP members hand out flyers next to a mock Apartheid Wall, calling attention to the massive barrier Israel has built in the Palestinian West Bank to confiscate land and restrict movement. The Israeli Apartheid wall in Palestine is illegal under international law <http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?pr=71&code=mwp&p1=3&p2=4&p3=6>. Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is an international series of events <http://apartheidweek.org/events/> that seeks to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians and to build support for the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. *Mowing the Lawn* On 25 March, reporter Joe Catron and NYU Graduate Student Jehad Abusalim presented “Mowing the Lawn: Understanding Israeli Violence in Gaza.” *Read the rest of this article here <https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/nyu-sjps-israeli-apartheid-week-highlights-ongoing-tragedy-in-gaza-collective-resistance-alongside-black-struggle/>.* ---------------------- Why We Held Israeli Apartheid Week (*An alternate version of this article is slated for print publication*). "I have witnessed the systematic humiliation of Palestinian men, women and children by members of the Israeli security forces. Their humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.” - Archbishop Desmond Tutu <http://www.biography.com/people/desmond-tutu-9512516> Over one hundred students and community members participated in a series of NYU Students in Justice In Palestine events <https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/nyu-sjps-israeli-apartheid-week-highlights-ongoing-tragedy-in-gaza-collective-resistance-alongside-black-struggle/>, known as “Israeli Apartheid Week.” In addition, forty-one individuals volunteered for NYU-SJP’s burgeoning campaign to support divesting NYU from corporations complicit in Israeli human rights abuses. 119 NYU faculty have thusfar called for divestment <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15Mi6JLAhQnlg4ssnzTlkAtOSAv6W1i9IkIO6YduZ-tk/viewform> from such corporations. Attacks on NYU-SJP’s event series have become increasingly bizarre <http://observer.com/2015/03/lady-gaga-inspires-students-to-fight-back-against-israeli-apartheid-week/>. But there is an underlying theme: apologists for Israeli aggression are running out of excuses. Putting the Willie Horton scandal <http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-legacy-the-willie-horton-ad-lives> to shame, Israel’s re-elected prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, rode into office using overtly racist fear-mongering about the dangers of “Arab voters” <http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/benjamin-netanyahu-arab-voter-turnout-116142.html> in order to appeal to Israel’s most fascistic <http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.610368> elements. Ironically, the same voter base whom Netanyahu denigrated in order to win the election is often exploited as proof of Israeli “diversity” when Israel is charged with the crime of Apartheid <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/23/israelandthepalestinians.unitednations>. Top: Lehman College Professor Robyn Spencer discusses her solidarity visit to Palestine, where she witnessed, oppression, racism, and resistance, during Israeli Apartheid Week. Spencer and her co-panelists, community organizer Cherrell Brown and NYU graduate student Hazem Jamjoum, drew both symbolic and material parallels between the struggles in Palestine, Ferguson, and apartheid South Africa. While it is true that Israel reluctantly granted citizenship to some Palestinians -- namely, descendants of the minority of Palestinians who remained in present-day Israel after Israel expelled the rest in 1948 <http://imeu.org/article/faq-on-the-nakba-the-nakba-and-palestinian-refugees-today#what%20is%20the%20nakba> -- they are subject <http://www.adalah.org/en/law/index>to at least 40 different discriminatory laws and barred from owning property in significant portions of what is now the state of Israel. But Israel treats most Palestinians far worse. The vast majority of Palestinians are not considered Israeli citizens. Instead, they live under Israeli military occupation <http://www.merip.org/primer-palestine-israel-arab-israeli-conflict-new?ip_login_no_cache=6ce1a07a04f756788cdfc1a461af7a5d#The%20Occupied%20Territories>, under the perpetual threat of indiscriminate attack <https://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/MDE15/032/2014/en/613926df-68c4-47bb-b587-00975f014e4b/mde150322014en.pdf>, torture <http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.630823>, land theft <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sib5HbdEV4>, and other crimes; or in exile <http://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees>as refugees, barred from returning, in perpetual instability and danger <https://www.oxfam.org/en/lebanon-occupied-palestinian-territory-and-israel-crisis-syria/palestinian-refugees-syria-story>. That is why NYU Students for Justice in Palestine joined <http://apartheidweek.org/events/> universities, churches, mosques, community centers, and others in commemorating Israeli Apartheid Week. That is why the term "apartheid" has been used to describe Israeli policy by figures including anti-apartheid hero Archbishop Desmond Tutu <http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Desmond-Tutu-Israel-guilty-of-apartheid-in-treatment-of-Palestinians-344874>; former US President Jimmy Carter <http://www.haaretz.com/news/jimmy-carter-israel-s-apartheid-policies-worse-than-south-africa-s-1.206865>, and a slew of other international rights organizations, legal bodies, and authorites. <http://itisapartheid.org/quotes.html> If anything, it is an understatement <http://mg.co.za/article/2007-05-21-israel-2007-worse-than-apartheid>. That is why NYU SJP is following the footsteps of the movement against apartheid in South Africa by supporting campus divestment campaigns <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15Mi6JLAhQnlg4ssnzTlkAtOSAv6W1i9IkIO6YduZ-tk/viewform> against corporations complicit in Israel’s ongoing abuses. It is why hundreds of New Yorkers listened with open minds and hearts as NYU graduate student from Gaza Jehad Abusalim described how the Israeli army murdered three of his friends with indiscriminate bombardment throughout Gaza this summer, as he was forced to check if his entire family had been killed every day for fifty days <http://imeu.org/article/50-days-of-death-destruction-israels-operation-protective-edge>. It is why the community came to hear journalist Joe Catron tell us how he had witnessed Israeli troops targeting hospitals and schools in Gaza as it violated ceasefire agreements <http://imeu.org/article/self-defense-or-provocation-israels-history-of-breaking-ceasefires> . That is why Equal Justice USA’s Cherrell Brown spoke to our community about the parallels she had noted between Ferguson and Palestine, where she visited upon invitation from solidarity activists: “Like in Ferguson, they are afraid of how people will respond to their oppressors...we were being collectively punished [in Ferguson] because the police had shot Mike Brown, just as Hebron [a Palestinian city under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank] is experiencing collective punishment for what their oppressors have done to them <http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2014/02/remembering-ibrahimi-mosque-ma-2014223105915230233.html>.” She continued, “We know St. Louis police are being trained by Israeli soldiers. They are using the same weaponry, as some of the tear gas being used in Ferguson is from Israel. And so we must work together, and share our stories, and our collective resistance.” Over one hundred students and community members listen to Palestinian NYU Graduate Student Jehad Abusalim discuss Israel’s historic policies of concentrating refugees in Gaza, where they are subject to periodic bombardment. He is joined by reporter Joe Catron, who lived and reported from Gaza during Israeli assaults there in 2014 and 2012. Israel’s atrocities in Gaza; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to kickstart <http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/annotated-benjamin-netanyahus#> a US war with Iran; his collaboration with Republican warhawks to undermine the sitting US President; his overt rejection <http://www.firstpost.com/world/president-obama-chides-netanyahu-israeli-pm-rejects-two-state-solution-palestine-2167329.html> of what passes for “peace” in Israel; his race-baiting electoral win; Israel’s role <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents>in NSA spying programs; and its close collaboration with heavy-handed American police <http://www.ebony.com/news-views/the-fergusonpalestine-connection-403#axzz3VT1vbN7b>; have created a public relations nightmare for a state that normally holds shameful levels of support in the United States. It appears that serious changes to the decades of injustice Israel has imposed upon its victims are on the horizon. And change will not happen because of toothless negotiations between those in power and those without; empty “dialog” initiatives; smearing and intimidating activist groups <http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/semitism-accused-targeting>; or other methods of whitewashing the blatant inequality between Israel and its Palestinian subjects. It will happen because of endless international efforts to organize political resistance to the inequality, led by the Palestinian people themselves, which NYU Students for Justice in Palestine is proud, unashamed, and unapologetic in joining. Amith Gupta is an International Institute of Law and Justice scholar at the NYU School of Law. He is an organizer with NYU Students for Justice in Palestine. _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
