Posts Tagged ‘students for justice in palestine’
 
November 14, 2012 0

Non-Binding Student Divestment Resolution Passes at UC Irvine

The stu­dent sen­ate at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, passed a non-binding res­o­lu­tion last night call­ing for divest­ment from sev­eral com­pa­nies that do busi­ness with Israel. The res­o­lu­tion, titled “Divest­ment from Com­pa­nies that Profit from Apartheid,” requires the approval of the stu­dent government’s exec­u­tive board before it may be sent to the admin­is­tra­tion for their consideration.

The res­o­lu­tion includes com­pa­nies that have long been tar­geted by the anti-Israel divest­ment cam­paign, includ­ing Gen­eral Elec­tric, Hewlett-Packard and Cater­pil­lar. It also includes lesser known com­pa­nies, how­ever, like Cement Road­stones Hold­ing which sells cement to Israel, as well as Raytheon, a defense tech­nol­ogy com­pany. Raytheon recently part­nered with an Israeli com­pany to build the highly suc­cess­ful Iron Dome sys­tem that inter­cepts incom­ing rock­ets from Gaza.

Despite the pas­sage of the res­o­lu­tion, the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem already has a clear pol­icy against divest­ment.  In 2010, when the Stu­dents for Jus­tice in Pales­tine chap­ter at UC Berke­ley put forth a divest­ment res­o­lu­tion, the UC board and Pres­i­dent Mark Yudof issued a state­ment say­ing that the board would only sup­port a divest­ment res­o­lu­tion “when the United States gov­ern­ment declares that a for­eign regime is com­mit­ting acts of geno­cide.” The state­ment added, “The U.S. has not made any dec­la­ra­tion regard­ing the State of Israel and, there­fore, we will not bring a rec­om­men­da­tion before the Board to divest from com­pa­nies doing busi­ness with the State of Israel.” The state­ment also noted that the resolution’s sole focus on Israel “greatly dis­turbs us.”

Last night’s vote took place with what appears to have been delib­er­ate secrecy and lit­tle fan­fare. A Web site and fan pages on Face­book and Twit­ter with the han­dle “Irvine Divest” were all set up less than 72 hours before the vote. It seems not many were aware that the vote was tak­ing place until after it had occurred.

Jew­ish Voice for Peace, the largest Jew­ish anti-Zionist orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S., attended the meet­ing, accord­ing to reports on social media. Sup­port­ing boy­cott and divest­ment ini­tia­tives across the coun­try has become one of JVP’s pri­mary mis­sions. The group has sent rep­re­sen­ta­tives to advo­cate for divest­ment on sev­eral col­lege cam­puses in the past few years. JVP also deliv­ered speeches at two church con­fer­ences over the sum­mer where the orga­ni­za­tions had been con­sid­er­ing divest­ment. A Los Ange­les orga­nizer for JVP, Estee Chan­dler, even blogged about her expe­ri­ence watch­ing the events of last night unfold and described the vote as “historic.”

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October 26, 2012 1

Member Of Islamic Jihad To Address Students At American University

Khader Adnan, a mem­ber of Pales­tin­ian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), is sched­uled to speak at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity via Skype next Tues­day, Octo­ber 30. Adnan was invited by sev­eral stu­dent groups at Amer­i­can, includ­ing Stu­dents for Jus­tice in Pales­tine, Jew­ish Voice for Peace, Amnesty Inter­na­tional, Jus­tice not Jails, and the Com­mu­nity Action & Social Jus­tice Coalition.

Adnan, who has been arrested by the Israeli author­i­ties on sev­eral occa­sions, was most recently arrested in the West Bank in Decem­ber 2011 and imme­di­ately began a hunger strike dur­ing his deten­tion. After 66 days, Israel granted his early release. He is plan­ning to speak about his expe­ri­ence as a hunger striker at next week’s event.

Adnan is widely described in the media as a “spokesper­son,” “leader” or “mem­ber” of PIJ. A Decem­ber 17, 2011 news arti­cle on Al-Arabiya, a pan-Arab tele­vi­sion chan­nel, about Adnan’s then recent arrest described him as “one of the main lead­ers of the Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tant move­ment Islamic Jihad” and as “a for­mer spokesman” for PIJ.  The New York Times, Al Jazeera and CNN fur­ther char­ac­ter­ize him as a “mem­ber” or “spokesper­son” of PIJ in the West Bank, where Adnan resides.

Andan has also pre­vi­ously expressed sup­port for ter­ror­ism. In a video that has been widely cir­cu­lated on YouTube and other video-sharing web­sites, Adnan can be seen shout­ing, “O Quds Brigades, Strike a blow! O Quds Brigades, Shake the earth! Who among you is Hasan Abu Zeid? Who among you is the next sui­cide bomber? Who among you will carry the next explo­sive belt? Who among you will fire the next bul­lets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?” The raw footage of Adnan was report­edly taken at a 2007 funeral of a fel­low PIJ member.

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April 27, 2012 1

BDS Movement Gains Support of Activist Chicano Student Group

Lead­ers of the National Movimiento Estu­di­antil Chi­cano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Chi­cano stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion, recently voted to endorse the Pales­tin­ian call for Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions (BDS). The endorse­ment was approved at the group’s 18th annual con­fer­ence in Phoenix, Ari­zona, on March 30. A press release issued after the con­fer­ence noted that BDS is nec­es­sary in light of Israel’s “mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion and set­tle­ment of Palestine.”

The Stu­dents for Jus­tice in Pales­tine (SJP) chap­ters at Ari­zona State Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona helped MeChA arrive at its endorse­ment and, accord­ing to the state­ment, led sev­eral work­shops on the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict at the conference.

One of the ses­sions was called “Con­crete Con­nec­tions,” which com­pared the U.S.-Mexico bor­der fence to the Israeli secu­rity fence in the West Bank, and explored the poten­tial for “cross-movement build­ing” for Pales­tini­ans and Latin-Americans. The state­ment about the con­fer­ence con­cluded with, “Together, these civil soci­eties – from Ari­zona to Pales­tine – are work­ing towards one goal of fight­ing oppres­sion and resist­ing every­day injustice.”

Ear­lier this week, the Pacific North­west chap­ter of MeChA held a regional con­fer­ence at The Ever­green State Col­lege (TESC) in which it endorsed BDS as well. Dur­ing the con­fer­ence, MeChA-Evergreen invited other activists involved in the divest­ment cam­paign (known as TESC Divest!) to par­tic­i­pate in a teach-in con­nect­ing the BDS move­ment to the “indige­nous strug­gles in the Americas.”

A state­ment issued by the group read, “We rec­og­nize that our peo­ples’ his­tor­i­cal and present strug­gles — against depor­ta­tion, occu­pa­tion, exploita­tion, and dehu­man­iza­tion — in Ari­zona, in the bor­der, and in the United States — not only coin­cide, but are also con­nected to Pales­tini­ans’ strug­gle against Israeli mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion and set­tle­ment of Palestine.”

TESC Divest! has been spear­headed by SJP at Ever­green, as well as the newly formed Olympia, Wash­ing­ton, chap­ter of Jew­ish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In recent years, there has been grow­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion between MeChA, which has approx­i­mately 400 chap­ters around the United States, and Pales­tin­ian sol­i­dar­ity groups. Cam­pus chap­ters of MeChA and SJP (largely on West Coast cam­puses and espe­cially at Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia schools) have co-sponsored a vari­ety of events seek­ing to high­light con­nec­tions between Pales­tini­ans and the Latino-American community.

MeChA chap­ters have even co-sponsored anti-Israel events on cam­pus that have fea­tured extreme speak­ers and anti-Semites, includ­ing an appear­ance by Amir Abdul Malik Ali at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, River­side in May 2009. At the appear­ance, Malik Ali claimed that U.S. politi­cians are con­trolled by Israel, warned that although “many are afraid of Zionists…Muslims are not afraid” and described Israelis as “the new Nazis.”

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