Gee thanks Daily Cal, this really helped me understand what people were protesting about yesterday. It’s nice to know that students oppose “conflict.”
Actually, Daily Cal, yesterday students participated in a die-in in solidarity with the 116 Palestinians that the Israeli army killed over the weekend in Gaza. We did not stand against “conflict,” but the Israeli occupation. Can you say those words, or is that a little too informative?
Though I was unable to help with the enormous efforts that members of SJP put into Israeli Apartheid Week over the past two months due to other obligations, I did come to recognize last week for the first time just how I felt about our organization.
To be sure, the number of asinine remarks, statements, opinions, and arguments that saturate the discussion regarding Israel and Palestine is enormous. Most of these are either chauvinistic or based in falsehoods. And, I think, for a long time the mainstream perspectives (and to this day, the mainstream of Israel advocacy) merely reproduced the statements and arguments of “official representatives” of either people, acting as simple propagandists. [Read more →]
Background
Throughout the spring of 2006, students from the Israel Action Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley were filmed while organizing their activities. Many individual members of each group were interviewed by the documentarians, who had said they were making a documentary for the “America at a Crossroads” series about campus activism related to Israel and Palestine. That documentary ended up with the name “Campus Battleground,” airing tonight, Monday Nov 26, on PBS for the first time.
That spring was the first that Students for Justice in Palestine had existed on campus during my time at Cal. At the end of my first year, a group of us had decided to bring the organization back to campus. There are, of course, a few things you learn along the way, intellectually, personally, politically, practically, tactically, etc, even over the course of what is now only about a year and a half, so it is safe to say that the organization, myself included, has matured in all these ways over time. Those differences only become so clear with the ability to refer back to this taped record of the past.
In writing about this documentary, I want to be clear that I am not responding out of anger in opposition to it. I am not angry at all. I want to be clear, though, that I am not wholly comfortable with the way I or the various issues raised in the documentary have been portrayed. I don’t feel that I have been slighted or manipulated, though I do feel that the political message that this documentary advances is not in line with my own political views. I will touch more on this after laying out a few of my main objections.
The Demonization of Religion
No Palestinians
Superficial Understanding of ‘Otherness’
The Jewish-Arab Battlefield
On Wednesday evening, the ASUC Senate, in a vote of 11-7-2, narrowly passed SB75, a resolution “affirming the US-Israel relationship.” Among other things, the resolution suggested that the “relationship” between the US and Israel was based on “shared ideals” including “commitments to freedom, equality, and tolerance for all people.” The resolution, void of any mention whatsoever of the occupation of Palestinian land and of the actual nature of that mystical “relationship,” further stipulated that the ASUC Senate supports a “diplomatic relationship” while it does not support any “specific policies” of Israel.
 |
| Some Senators rushed through the bill to celebrate Halloween. Scary, huh? |
While the resolution was heard for about two hours, it would be a mistake to say that the issue was discussed comprehensively. It was disheartening to see many senators itching to get out of their seats so they could drop by the various Halloween parties that were happening around campus–it was even worse to see those who didn’t care to pay due attention to the issue at hand decide to vote yes rather than to abstain. One gets the impression that there is a general sense of apathy on one side of the senate chambers, a sense which, besides being irresponsible for any elected official, also seems to imply that some senators don’t recognize the gravity of their decisions. If not for them personally, then for others on campus, in the wider community, and around the world.
Out of Berkeley on Wednesday night, the imagined progressive capital of the US, the ASUC Senate passed a regressive and reckless resolution that ignored the realities of the US-Israel relationship. That relationship is not about “shared ideals,” but about the billions of dollars in aid and military supplies that go from the United States to Israel every year. Click to continue reading…
Is it really so surprising that those who support apartheid should be afraid of the Handala, that never-dying symbol of a never-dying Palestine, and of an image of the illegal wall Israel is building in and around the West Bank?
