Tag: Students for Justice in Palestine

PACBI: A million dollar festival will not rescue Israel’s image as an apartheid state

17 August 2010 | PACBI

Occupied Ramallah, 15 August  2010

Once again, the Brand-Israel machine is in high gear, this time organizing a million-dollar international youth extravaganza in Eilat in September 2010 called “Funjoya.”  This unabashed propaganda exercise is sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Tourism and the Israeli Student Union, among other official and semi-official bodies.  The Ministry of Tourism explains one of the aims of the festival: “branding Israel as an attractive tourism destination for students, an improvement in Israel’s image among this target group and facilitating multi-cultural encounters for students from Israel and European countries.” [1]

There is no question that Israel is working hard to whitewash its crimes and to justify its occupation, colonization and system of apartheid.  Since 2005, the official “Brand-Israel” campaign [2] has tried to present Israel in a new light, as a vibrant state promoting culture and the arts.  However, Israel’s own actions make a mockery of this branding exercise, proving that no amount of re-branding will cover up the escalating agenda of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and violence against the Palestinian people, the last of which were the deadly assault on the Gaza Strip in the winter of 2008-2009, and the lethal attack on humanitarian aid workers aboard the Freedom Flotilla in Gaza in May 2010, which resulted in the murder of nine Turkish citizens. This viciousness is customary to Israel. The report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, released in September 2009, found strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called for holding Israel accountable before international law.

We call upon students from around the world not to take part in this festival.  We invite you to join the international movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel (BDS) until Israel respects international law [3]. As students, you should be aware that Palestinian students do not enjoy the rights taken for granted by many of you: Palestinian students’ freedom of movement is severely restricted by the Apartheid Wall, checkpoints and road blocks and hundreds are detained in Israeli jails for resisting the occupation. [4]

We urge you to heed the words of the Gaza-based Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel in their open letter to students a few days ago:  “From under a most brutal siege humanity has witnessed during this modern age, we urge all students around the globe to boycott this festival We ask: will it speak about the cultural confiscation, the occupation of Palestinian history, the system of racial discrimination, home demolition, settlement expansion, settler colonialism and land expropriation? Will it tell of how apartheid Israel slices the West Bank into Bantustans separated by more than 600 checkpoints and a monstrous Apartheid Separation Wall preventing Palestinians from access to local hospitals, schools and universities, not to mention their families and relatives?” [5]

Don’t come to Eilat and honour the apartheid state! Support the Palestinian people in our struggle for self determination by boycotting “Funjoya” and exposing this vulgar Israeli hasbara effort!

PACBI

www.PACBI.org

pacbi@pacbi.org

Notes

[1] http://www.thinkeilat.com/Tourism_Euk/Tourist+Information/Press+Releases/FunJoya+Student+Festival.htm; http://eu.mfa.gov.il/mfm/web/main/Print.asp?DocumentID=172430

[2] http://www.forward.com/articles/2070/.  Jonathan Cook provides a comprehensive discussion of the brand-Israel effort in http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11093.shtml

[3] See the Unified Palestinian Call for BDS at  http://www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52

[4] For further information on the violation of students’ rights check: http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/

[5]  http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1336

To Know is Not Enough: How Hampshire became the First to Divest

Hampshire College is often credited with being the first US college to divest for the occupation, and this video attempts to understand the group and the campaign that made it happen. The video is constructed from interviews with over a dozen student activists from Hampshire College’s Students for Justice in Palestine.

“To Know is Not Enough” is a video by Will Delphia, a film and social science student at Hampshire College.

Hampshire College is a small liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Hampshire was started in the early 1970s to be a new sort of experiment in non-traditional education emphasizing independent work and allowing students to choose every facet of their own course of study.

Hampshire College describes itself as “experimenting” rather than “experimental” in order to emphasize the changing nature of its curriculum. From its inception the curriculum has generally had certain non-traditional features (Wikipedia).

It was in this context where a student group managed to win for themselves a victory in the international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

Will Delphia (director):

SJP and their campaign caught my attention like it caught the attention of the entire campus, I hope that this film serves the larger movement for Campus BDS just as it would serve Hampshire College as an document encapsulating an exciting and intense moment in the school’s history.

The title “To Know is Not Enough” is in reference to Hampshire College’s official motto: Non satis scire. – and in the opinion of the filmmaker it cannot mean anything unless it means that one must act on their knowledge. There is no better example of putting ideas into action at Hampshire College than the story of Students for Justice in Palestine and divestment.