International Solidarity Movement Nonviolence. Justice. Freedom.
PMWATCH ACTION CALL
02/13/2006
Op-ed libels PSM/ISM
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PMWATCH – February 13, 2006 — On Sunday, February 12, 2006, the Washington Post published a defamatory op-ed by two academics, Eric Adler and Jack Langer, calling for the cancellation of the upcoming Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) conference at Georgetown University and accusing the PSM of being a “dangerous”, “pro-terrorist organization”.
The authors also used their forum to disparage the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and claimed that the ISM purposefully puts the lives of young international activists at risk in order to attract media to the Palestinian cause.
“Tragically,” the authors write, “the group got its wish in 2003, when ISM member Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed while trying to block Israeli bulldozers from demolishing Palestinian houses in Gaza.” It does take a certain special kind of chutzpah to cynically exploit Rachel Corrie’s killing to accuse the ISM of cynically manipulating its activists!
Please write to the Washington Post and share with them your thoughts on the ISM/PSM and the underhanded attacks they have endured from a crowd in whose eyes Israel can do no wrong, no matter how criminally they behave. Letters may be sent to letters@washpost.com
A copy of the Washington Post editorial is at the bottom of this post.
ISM and PSM talking points:
* The PSM and ISM are on the side of international law and numerous UN resolutions blatantly violated by decades of Israeli Occupation.
* The FBI does not consider the PSM to be a terrorist organization nor does any other government agency in the US or abroad.
* Divestment is a non-violent way to oppose Israel’s ever-expanding colonization of the West Bank.
* Communities in Norway and Ireland have taken steps to divest from Israeli interests.
* The PSM is joined in its call for divestment from mainline Christian churches, university faculty unions and student governments around the country.
* South African Jews such as Ronnie Kasrils, Max Ozinsky have highlighted the similarities between Israel’s system of control over Palestinians to South African Apartheid, as have respected South
African leaders, such as Bishop Desmond Tutu.
* Calls for divestment have come from Israeli University professors, like Ilan Pappe, and from well-respected human rights lawyers, such as Shamai Leibowitz.
* The Israeli government has not declared ISM an illegal organization.
* ISM works with several groups who advocate for a just peace in Palestine: Rabbis for Human Rights, The Christian Peacemakers Team, International Women’s Peace Service and the Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions.
* One of ISM’s founders, Dr. Ghassan Andoni was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize along with Jeff Halper, co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition.
For tips on writing letters, go to:
Please also feel free to share with us your letters or a summary of your conversations with editors at letters@pmwatch.org
You can also call us at: (866) DIAL-PMW
Palestine Media Watch
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dyn/content/article/2006/02/11/AR2006021101014.html
Why Is Georgetown Providing a Platform for This Dangerous Group?
Sunday, February 12, 2006; B08
This month Georgetown University plans to host the annual conference of an anti-Israel propaganda group called the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM). The PSM certainly is controversial. It is also dangerous.
The purported aim of the PSM is to encourage divestment from Israel. To this end, its conferences boast a cavalcade of anti-Israel speakers whose speeches often degenerate into anti-Semitism. At the 2004 conference at Duke University in North Carolina, for example, keynote speaker Mazin Qumsiyeh referred to Zionism as a “disease.” Workshop leader Bob Brown deemed the Six-Day War “the Jew War of ’67.” Not to be outdone, Nasser Abufarha praised the terrorist activities of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The PSM maintains that it is a separate organization from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which sends foreign students to the West Bank and Gaza to foment anti-Israeli sentiment.
All the same, the two groups seem to have intimate ties. At the 2004 PSM conference, for instance, the International Solidarity Movement ran a recruitment meeting called “Volunteering in Palestine: Role and Value of International Activists.” In that session, the organization’s co-founder, Huwaida Arraf, distributed recruitment brochures and encouraged students to enlist in the ISM, which, she acknowledged, cooperates with Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Another ISM co-founder, George Rishmawi, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a July 14, 2004, news story why his group recruits student volunteers.
“When Palestinians get shot by Israeli soldiers, no one is interested anymore,” he said. “But if some of these foreign volunteers get shot or even killed, then the international media will sit up and take notice.”
Tragically, the group got its wish in 2003, when ISM member Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed while trying to block Israeli bulldozers from demolishing Palestinian houses in Gaza. The Israelis said the houses were covering tunnels used to smuggle weapons.
Nor is this an ancillary part of the PSM’s mission. In the aftermath of the 2004 PSM meeting, conference organizer Rann Bar-On — who is an ISM member — informed the Duke student newspaper, “I personally consider the Palestine Solidarity Movement conference a huge success, as it brought about a tripling of the number of Duke students visiting Israel-Palestine this year, making Duke the most represented American university in the West Bank this summer.” By Bar-On’s own admission, recruitment into the ISM is the PSM’s raison d’etre.
In agreeing to host the PSM from Feb. 17 to Feb. 19, Georgetown can’t even claim that its regard for free speech and expression trumps all. In 2005 the university’s conference center refused to host an anti-terrorism conference sponsored by America’s Truth Forum on the grounds that it was “too controversial.” So why is free speech and expression of cardinal importance now? Perhaps it is related to the recent $20 million donation from Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, a prominent financier of the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
If Georgetown President John J. DeGioia is concerned for the safety of his student body, he will reject the 2006 Palestine Solidarity Movement conference. Pleasing donors is an important duty of a university president, but preventing the recruitment of Georgetown students into a dangerous, pro-terrorist organization is a more vital obligation.
— Eric Adler — Jack Langer
are respectively, a lecturer in the history department at Rice University and a doctoral candidate in history at Duke University.
