Now that it’s over, check out Dafna Fine’s terrific piece of news analysis on this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week:
While reactions came in different forms from different pro-Israel groups, they were almost unanimous in their embrace of a new strategy this year: Avoid a direct attack on pro-Palestinian groups in response to Israeli Apartheid Week. As Brandeis University marked its first ever Israeli Apartheid Week, fighting was absent on campus as pro-Israel groups celebrated Israeli life and culture in place of the usual conflict between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups.
Too often, Israeli Apartheid Week degenerates into an argument over its own name.
It’s all rhetoric. If you believe that the situation in Israel and the Occupied Territories today is analogous to apartheid, so be it. And if you believe that it’s a poor analogy, that’s fine too. Either way, it’s all rhetoric. And either way, choosing your place within the intense campus debate (by which we mean shouting match) about Israel-Palestine based solely upon your beliefs about the use of a single word is irresponsible, simplistic and narrow-minded. No real debate can come from wordplay.
Then take a deep breath and be glad it’s all over. Or re-live all the fun you had during this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week, by checking out our complete week-long coverage of it.
I can’t figure out how to embed the podcast, though that would have been ideal:
In this week’s podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis [a former editor of New Voices] talks with Forward Washington correspondent Nathan Guttman about the odd collection of groups that make up the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Then, with Israel Apartheid Week in full swing, Forward fellow Naomi Zeveloff and David A.M. Wilensky, editor of New Voices, stop by to discuss the new tenor of on-campus debates about Israel and Palestine. Finally, editor Jane Eisner drops in to give a little historical perspective to Republican claims that there is a ‘war on religion’ in the United States.
I was out pretty late the night before we recorded this, but I think I come across as quite coherent in it. Check it out here or download it through iTunes.
One-part comedy routine, one-part slam poetry and all Palestinian advocacy. This is the recipe for Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian activist and poet who spoke at American University Students for Justice in Palestine’s final event for Israel Apartheid Week on March 2.
“I think I’m funny but I’m not, so bear with me,” Kanazi said. “The poetry I promise will passionate or angry or something.”
Kanazi started writing poetry in college. After 9/11, he faced a lot of hatred from “white kids” since he is Palestinian.
“I knew they were wrong, but I couldn’t explain why,” Kanazi said.
Kanazi split his poems between being “funny” and being “angry,” but most of the “funny” ones were “written so angrily they had to be funny.”
For example, one poem called “The Dos and Don’ts of Palestine,” dripping with sarcasm, listed all of the ways Palestinians are expected to restrict their speech, such as not talking about the Holocaust or a one-state solution.
Most of Kanazi’s poems are unabashed, like “Before the Machetes are Raised,” where he starts by saying, “I’m disgusted by terrorism, backwards animals who have no value for human life.” But in a twist, Kanazi starts talking about the Israeli Defense Force’s treatment of Palestinians.
After his formal presentation, Kanazi answered questions about Palestinian activism, signed copies of his book and chatted with attendees, who had applauded energetically after every poem.
“Especially for Palestinains,” he said. “I think it’s important that our stories are told and they’re told from Palestinians.”
To mark Brandeis University’s first ever Israeli Apartheid Week, Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace brought Ali Abunimah to campus on Wednesday as the keynote speaker for the week of protest.
A Palestinian American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, Abunimah presented his vision for a one-state solution to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“I think it is important that these questions are being asked at Brandeis,” Abunimah said in the opening of his speech. “On the question of Palestine there is so much fear in questioning and discussing, in challenging accepted narratives and claims, and this often makes people very uncomfortable.”
Calling the state of the Middle East an “untenable situation,” Abunimah described a military dictatorship for Palestinians, run by an Israeli government.
“We’re in this situation today where Abe Foxman and Jeffrey Goldberg and Alan Dershowitz are whining that we’re having these discussions about the single state. This is recognition of the reality that there is already a single state,” Abunimah said. Abunimah described a single entity with 12 million people, half Israeli Jews and half Palestinians, but all ruled by a sectarian Jewish government.
“There is a single state with one government that decides whether the lights go on or off in Gaza,
Abunimah said. “Nothing happens without the consent of this sectarian government.” The challenge he said, is whether this single state will continue as an apartheid state or become a democratic state.
Across the Israeli political spectrum, Abunimah argued, there is a widespread rejection of the notion of a single democratic state. “The vast majority [of Israelis] still insist on maintaining a separate Jewish majority state, even though they blind themselves to the reality that they can only do so by violently suppressing the rights of millions of Palestinians,” Abunimah said.
Abunimah critiqued pro-Israel organizations such as the David Project for setting a tone where the issue cannot be discussed. “It’s no surprise, in my opinion, that the David Project does not want people to talk about this,” he said.
Abunimah’s speech was followed by a Q&A discussion, with questions from both his longtime followers and pro-Israel supporters, including students from the Brandeis Zionist Alliance and members of the right wing pro-Israel Hasbara Fellowship who disagreed with many of Abunimah’s points.
“[Israel] is dependent on activities which define the most fundamental human rights of Palestinians, which is fine if you don’t view Palestinians as human. But it’s not fine if you do,” Abunimah said.
A regular fixture in the student union stairwells until recently.
The level of anti-Israel discourse at Portland State University is a “5.” What I mean to say is that pro-Israel students needn’t avoid the random keffiyah, but at the same time, a campus-wide Am Yisroel Chai party isn’t in the works either.
The stairways of the student union are usually peppered with the latest BDS effort but the posters haven’t made their way unto the “official” student billboards, yet. That’s why I was surprised to see absolutely nothing around campus for Israel Apartheid Week.
Just like any West Coast state school, Portland State has a healthy mix of Arab and Muslim student clubs (MSA included) as well as a sometimes-boisterous but mostly civil pro-Palestinian student group, Students for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER).
And yet, a quick run through campus last week produced not one of the famous posters comparing Israeli with the South African apartheid state. Even more mysterious was the series of emails unreturned to this reporter querying Israel Apartheid Week, sent to SUPER last week.
In fact, SUPER is having an event next week, but it’s not about Israel Apartheid Week – or even the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Next week SUPER is hosting a panel titled “Arab Spring: A Year that Changed the World.” Not exactly a reason to rally the counter-protestors, unlike at many universities that feature disruptions, mock checkpoints and assaults.
Contrast this back-and-forth (between IAW and its counterpart, Israel Peace Week) with the atmosphere at Portland State and it’s clear the there is something “different” going on at the university.
It seems the answer to the question of IAW’s absence at PSU is couched in the nature of discourse between Palestinian, Arab and Muslim groups and the Jewish student groups on campus. Last year, several Muslim and Arab student groups joined with the JSU and PDXHillel to bring StandUp for Peace – a comedy duo featuring a Palestinian and Jewish American – to campus.
Max Werner, a Portland State student and JSU officer said, “The relationships that were built during the planning and production of the event, I believe, were more meaningful than the event itself.”
Even more so, politics seem to take a decisive back-stage to more common celebrations of ethnic or religious culture. Identity is even an important difference in the officers’ core of several PSU student groups.
JSU officer Mehdi Sianaki is neither interested in Israel Apartheid Week – nor Jewish. Nevertheless, Sianaki is an integral part of the JSU at the university.
His views on cooperation between Arab, Palestinan, Muslim and Jewish campus groups seem to sum up the culture at the school: “the officers of both groups (JSU and the Arab-Persian Student Organization) are very close and have strong bond. APSO and JSU both agree that one cannot be judged on what takes place politically.”
“Israel – Worse Than Apartheid?” was written on the whiteboard of an American University classroom yesterday during a “Discussion on the Israeli Apartheid Analogy,” part of AU Students for Justice in Palestine’s roster of events for Israel Apartheid Week.
Being an SJP-organized event, opinions in the room tended to be favorable toward the pro-apartheid analogy preference, the clear exception being one Schuyler Polin, an Israeli-American, who will serve in the Israeli Defense Forces when he graduates from AU.
The event started off rather amicably, but tensions did rise between Polin and the rest of the group as they discussed the validity of the apartheid analogy, Israeli identity cards, the wall separating Israel proper from the territories, racism, the future identity of Israel and more.
Right from the start, Polin argued that the apartheid analogy was dangerous, saying, “This is no longer focused on ending the occupation but the deconstruction of Israel. That’s exactly what it’s calling for.”
Polin argued that the apartheid analogy depended on the right of return. If all Palestinians were allowed to return to their previous homes in Israel proper, Israel would no longer be a Jewish state.
Members of SJP disagreed, instead saying that Israel could not continue to be a democracy while also remaining Jewish. The two identities together were an “oxymoron,” as AU student Damian Fontanez said. Students argued that Israel’s identity would have to change for the sake of human rights. After all, South Africa was still South Africa after the end of apartheid, said Sammi Abdul-Ghani Al-Iryani, who is from Yemen.
“When you talk about apartheid, you’re talking about the lived reality of Palestinians on a day-to-day basis,” Al-Iryani said.
Noora Said, a Palestinian and a student at AU, echoed those concerns, saying she has had to live with the wall while living in the West Bank.
Students also focused on discussion of the difference between social apartheid and legal apartheid. While students were in agreement that Arab Israelis (which SJP member Emily Floyd described as “an offensive term”) faced racism in Israel, students couldn’t reach an agreement on whether Israeli policy discriminated against non-Jews.
Students for Justice in Palestine will continue to hold Israel Apartheid Week events over the next few days.
I’ll leave the water balloons aside for a minute and focus on the Tablet piece, which brings together a variety of people all combating IAW in their own ways. The gist of a few of parts of it:
David Bernstein of the David Project continues his media blitz on the subject of his organization’s new strategy. His bit in this Tablet piece is titled, “Don’t Go Negative.”
David Fine, a friend of New Voices and the editor of Columbia’s undergrad Jewish journal, says the best thing to do is “Publicly Confront Pernicious Arguments.” Recalling a panel he once sat on at a campus event, he writes, “It was the moment I had been told to fear—the dreaded campus debate about Israel—and yet no lightning struck. It turns out that it was fairly easy to expose this person’s despicable worldview.”
Yoav Schafer, a Harvard student and former IDF soldier, points out “that about 65 percent of the coverage of last year’s Israel Apartheid Week was in Israeli or Jewish publications.”
The rest of the piece is well worth reading. So go do that. Their illustration for it is also super-cool.
Now, on to this water balloon incident. In the US, IAW is happening right now, but in other parts of the world it was last week. At the London School of Economics, one of the infamous mock checkpoints appeared. But then, according to YouTube user davidsmithsonian201′s description, things went horribly awry as “ four students threw numerous water bombs.” Bombs! Bombs, I say!
He continues: “The balloons hit our members, with several of these missiles hitting these students directly in the face, who were as a result incredibly upset by the incident.” I’ll bet they were.
President Obama raised over $800,000 at a 'Jewish' fundraiser last night | photo By SEIU Walk a Day in My Shoes 2008, edit by Matthias.kötter (CC-BY-2.0), via Wikimedia Commons
Jake Kohlman, a Jewish soldier in the American armed forces, reflects on how his basic training enabled him to connect to his religion.
“At that Sunday service, for the first time, I started to understand. The chaplain’s words lifted my spirits. I remembered why I had joined in the first place, to the shock of my family and friends. My mother is slightly to the left of Keith Olbermann, and no one in my social circle was in the military. I’d never doubted my decision, but right then, after just four days in the Army, I needed that reassurance that this was a higher calling.”
“College is the birthplace of exaggerated emotions and extreme ideologies. Thankfully, it is also normally their graveyard. It’s the place where people go to learn that ideas exist, and it normally takes them nearly all of their time there to realize that most of those ideas are only any good if, like beer and whisky, they are taken in moderation. If not, then you just get drunk on them and do stupid things. Since getting drunk on beer and whisky and doing stupid things is pretty much the hallmark of most people’s college experiences (especially in the progressive, predominantly liberal-arts schools where Israeli Apartheid Week takes place) then why do we get so upset when they do the same thing with their ideas as they do with their Bud Light?”
He said she said? Just check their statuses [The Jewish Week]
The battle over men who elect not to grant their wives a get, thus making them still legally married under Jewish law, has come to the internet. Rabbi Jason Miller weighs in.
“This might be the first example of how social media can help get a recalcitrant husband to end the marital legal war and present his wife with a get, but it likely will not be the last. Prior to the immense growth in popularity of social networking sites, recalcitrant husbands were compelled to give a get through ads in local Jewish newspapers and boycotts of their business. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social media will be the weapon of choice in future agunah cases.”
An Obama fundraiser held last night targeted the president’s Jewish constituency. The event raised nearly a million dollars, leading one shrewd Politco commentator to ask “how much do kosher appetizers cost?”
A Paris University cancelled a conference entitled “Israel: an apartheid state?” that was scheduled to be held by a pro-Palestinian group yesterday.
“The university accused the organization of taking a radical stance on the issue and said that after offering the group an alternative option to the radical anti-Israel conference – such as holding a study day for a pluralistic public debate – the group refused.”
Israeli Apartheid Week began on Sunday. But some pro-Israel protesters at the University of California, Berkeley got started a day early, pepper spraying some folks on Saturday. Not to be outdone, a group of anti-Israel students mic-checked a speaker at the University of New Mexico on Thursday (see above video).
On Thursday, protesters interrupted a talk by Nonie Darwish, an Egyptian American who founded something called Arabs for Israel. According to the student who posted the video above, the lecture “was attend by some UNM students who exercised their right to freedom of speech by vocally protesting the against the opinions put forward.” The students drowned out the lecture by shouting that Darwish supports Israeli apartheid (not unusual, given the season) and even Israeli “genocide” of the Palestinians. (Seriously?)
Then “a number of audience members proceeded to get out of their seats and use force against the students. One of the students was hit in the face, another had her hair pulled, and many were pushed and shoved. One of the students caught much of these events on film before another audience member forcibly pushed down her camera.”
It’s pretty unclear from the video exactly what’s going on, but it definitely wasn’t pretty. The YouTube user who posted the video, Dizzyana, continues, saying “it is a shock” — a shock, I say! — “that a non-violent action was met with such aggression.”
Not that the old Jews (I’m just assuming here, obviously) in the room made anything less than a spectacle of themselves in their reactions, but I’m not sure what the protesters expected. Come into a room full of religious people and start shouting offensive things at them and it’s pretty clear that the whole point is to have a confrontation.
Meanwhile, in Berkeley, The Daily Californian reports, some anti-Israel protesters and some pro-Israel counter-protesters got into a bit of a scuffle that eventually escalated to pepper spray levels. The pro-Israel folks were the ones wielding the pepper spray, but they only sprayed “three people not involved with either side of the protest [who] tried to mediate the situation.” Because of that, writes The Daily Cal, the police aren’t considering it a hate crime.
Israeli Apartheid Week begins on Sunday and runs through Saturday, March 3. New Voices writers will be covering it all week on several campuses. If you know of IAW events — or its counterpart, Israel Peace Week — on your campus, let us know by emailing Dafna Fine at dafna@newvoices.org.
The trailer below is from the documentary “Budrus,” which will be screened at American University this week as part of IAW:
Israeli Apartheid Week is only four days away, but it’s easy to miss.
“In the past, this has been a time for hardline pro-Palestinians and hardline pro-Israelis to rumble, counter-accuse, hurl half-truths and, often as not, scrum to an ineffectual draw,” Bradley Burston wrote in his Haaretz column on Wednesday. “Not this year. This year there’s something distinctly unfamiliar in the air. People have begun telling the truth about BDS,” wrote Burston, who explained that BDS (the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel) hides the fact that it believes in eliminating Israel.
Yet it’s hard to predict what this year will bring without knowing what the BDS supporters behind IAW have planned. There are sparse Facebook events for a smattering of campuses, but it’s impossible to find a comprehensive schedule or calendar of events. Missing from the IAW website is a list of participating universities for 2012. The website mostly lists plans for 2011 and as late as four days before the start of IAW, instructed readers to check back for 2012 plans. IAW starts on Sunday and runs through next Saturday, March 3.
IAW organizers have been extremely hard to reach. A group at Portland State University told a New Voices writer who is a student a there they were unwilling to give him any information.
Among the few campus schedules that have gone out, Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine announced keynote speaker Ali Abunimah, a prominent figure of in the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. Abunimah will speak at Brown University the following day as well. American University plans include a discussion on the Israeli apartheid analogy, a screening of the documentary “Budrus” (trailer embedded above) and an appearance by guest poet and human rights activist Remi Kanazi.
As a form of opposition to IAW, there is also Israel Peace Week. Peace Week is organized by the Hasbara Fellowship (a program run by Aish, the right-wing Orthodox outreach organization) and CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) fellows at universities across the country at the same time as IAW.
“Many of our students have been writing articles about Israeli Apartheid Week and exposing it for the bigoted and often anti-Semitic campaign that it really is,” CAMERA Campus Associate Samantha Mandele said.
“Students are bringing in speakers and lecturers to talk about how to combat the BDS movement, how to combat the metaphor of Israeli apartheid and a lot of our students are working hard to organize their own Israel Peace Weeks with workshops and music and speakers and food,” Mandele said. In addition, CAMERA launched a website designed to help students combat IAW.
Other organizations, including the David Project, have chosen to take a different approach this year in response to IAW. “We’ve realized that giving BDS and Israeli Apartheid Week a megaphone by providing publicity they wouldn’t have had on their own is not in our best interest,” David Project Executive Director David Bernstein said in a recent interview with New Voices earlier this week. “Our strategy has changed and shifted as we’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work on campus.”
The David Project, long known for its use of aggressive tactics on college campuses, surprised many in the pro-Israel community with a recent “white paper,” which details a new diplomatic strategy. Bernstein said that many pro-Israel organizations are on board with the new strategy. However, he said, “There are some organizations — and I’m not gonna name them here — which try to directly take on the detractors. We think that’s a big mistake and it only serves to amplify their voices.”
Yesterday, J Street and J Street U released a joint statement that began, “As in past years, J Street and J Street U are dismayed and troubled by the counterproductive rhetoric ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ (IAW) brings to campuses across North America.” In response to IAW, J Street U at the University of California, Los Angeles is holding two events, including guest speakers Uri Zaki of B’Tselem USA and Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now.
A group within UCLA Hillel will also spend next week promoting Save a Child’s Heart, an Israeli-based international humanitarian project, which helps children from developing countries. “The goal [is] to show that we are focusing on the support of human rights,” Hillel spokesman Ronen Weiss said. “We want to focus on the positive and not the negative.”
While the pro-Israel organizations are ready to retaliate next week, it’s no clear what exactly they’ll be retaliating against. A comprehensive and public schedule would be a good place to start.
