19 mar 2018
Roni Rotem, one of the Israeli participants in the festival to be rejected
Feminine Tripper festival in Oslo rejects 6 Israeli choreographers from participating due to Israeli government's attempts to use culture to 'whitewash or justify its occupation of the Palestinian people'; artists accuse festival of 'reverse-discrimination.’
A Norwegian femininity and gender identity festival blocked six Israeli choreographers from participating due to what was described as the Israeli government's use of culture to "whitewash or justify its occupation of the Palestinian people."
The organizers of the festival, "Feminine Tripper", informed the Israelis their request to participate was rejected on political grounds.
The five Israeli artists applying to participate in Feminine Tripper—which is set to open this Saturday in Oslo—are Eden Wiseman, Roni Rotem, Nitzan Lederman, Maayan Cohen Marciano, Adi Shildan and Maia Halter.
The response, sent by organizers Kristiane Nerdrum Bøgwald and Margrete Slettebø, said, "Thank you for your interest in the festival. We regret to have to inform you that after careful consideration we have decided we cannot at this moment invite Israeli participants to our festival.
"The reason that we have made this decision is that we cannot, with a clear conscience, invite Israeli participants when we know that artists from the occupied Palestinian territories struggle with very restricted access to travel to international art venues and that they have little opportunity to communicate their art outside of the occupied territories.
"We also have reason to believe that the Israeli government at the moment uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people."
The organizers then linked to a 2005 article from Haaretz's English website on the Foreign Affairs Ministry's decision to increase budgeting for Israeli cultural exposure worldwide.
"We appreciate your artistic project and hope to have the opportunity to invite you to Norway again once the political circumstances have changed," they added. "We hope that you—as artists—will help raise awareness in your society about the concern many of us artists and cultural workers around the world have about the brutal effects of the occupation on Palestinian artists and the rest of the population."
Taken aback by the rejection and the letter accompanying it, the Israeli artists struck back with a missive of their own.
"We find that your decision to deny participation in the festival from Israeli artists is encouraging division and the continuum of conflicts rather than setting an example of another path to the world—one that meets the values of inclusiveness, freedom of speech and expression, dialogue, openness, seeing beyond labels and multiplied perspectives.
"Instead of using the same strategies you are coming (out) against, which can be defined as generalization and collective sanctions, we think that in order to make real change we all should (adopt) different strategies than the ones we oppose."
The Israelis further noted that the article was written in 2005, and represented an approach that has since changed, saying, "Artists (in Israel) are fighting in order to obtain their freedom of speech and expression due to recent censorship attempts by the Israeli minister of culture.
Surprisingly as it might sound, Maayan and Adi's works were marginalized both by our own minister of culture and by your own festival.
"Would you reject a Spanish artist for the Spanish policy against Catalonia and the Basques? Would you reject a Saudi artist for Saudi restrictions on women's rights? Would you reject an American artist for the American policies regarding the 'Muslim ban' regulations? Would you reject a Syrian artist for bloodshed caused by the Syrian government? Would you reject an Iranian artist for the forceful reaction to the last uprising in the country?
"If we were Muslim Arab Israeli artists, Christian Arab Israeli artists, Bedouin-Israeli artists, Circassian-Israeli artists, Druze-Israeli artists, or Jewish-Israeli artists living abroad, would we have been denied participation in your festival as well?
"We are confused. Your decision to deny access (to) Israeli artists seems to go against your mission and values, as it is not based on an artistic appropriation of our works, but on political reasons. The only conclusion we can come to is that (this) is an act of reverse-discrimination."
Festival organizers Bøgwald and Slettebø acknowledged receiving the Israeli reply, but said their decision remained the same. They further promised to elaborate on it once the festival was over due to their "heavy workload."
Feminine Tripper festival in Oslo rejects 6 Israeli choreographers from participating due to Israeli government's attempts to use culture to 'whitewash or justify its occupation of the Palestinian people'; artists accuse festival of 'reverse-discrimination.’
A Norwegian femininity and gender identity festival blocked six Israeli choreographers from participating due to what was described as the Israeli government's use of culture to "whitewash or justify its occupation of the Palestinian people."
The organizers of the festival, "Feminine Tripper", informed the Israelis their request to participate was rejected on political grounds.
The five Israeli artists applying to participate in Feminine Tripper—which is set to open this Saturday in Oslo—are Eden Wiseman, Roni Rotem, Nitzan Lederman, Maayan Cohen Marciano, Adi Shildan and Maia Halter.
The response, sent by organizers Kristiane Nerdrum Bøgwald and Margrete Slettebø, said, "Thank you for your interest in the festival. We regret to have to inform you that after careful consideration we have decided we cannot at this moment invite Israeli participants to our festival.
"The reason that we have made this decision is that we cannot, with a clear conscience, invite Israeli participants when we know that artists from the occupied Palestinian territories struggle with very restricted access to travel to international art venues and that they have little opportunity to communicate their art outside of the occupied territories.
"We also have reason to believe that the Israeli government at the moment uses culture as a form of propaganda to whitewash or justify its regime of occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people."
The organizers then linked to a 2005 article from Haaretz's English website on the Foreign Affairs Ministry's decision to increase budgeting for Israeli cultural exposure worldwide.
"We appreciate your artistic project and hope to have the opportunity to invite you to Norway again once the political circumstances have changed," they added. "We hope that you—as artists—will help raise awareness in your society about the concern many of us artists and cultural workers around the world have about the brutal effects of the occupation on Palestinian artists and the rest of the population."
Taken aback by the rejection and the letter accompanying it, the Israeli artists struck back with a missive of their own.
"We find that your decision to deny participation in the festival from Israeli artists is encouraging division and the continuum of conflicts rather than setting an example of another path to the world—one that meets the values of inclusiveness, freedom of speech and expression, dialogue, openness, seeing beyond labels and multiplied perspectives.
"Instead of using the same strategies you are coming (out) against, which can be defined as generalization and collective sanctions, we think that in order to make real change we all should (adopt) different strategies than the ones we oppose."
The Israelis further noted that the article was written in 2005, and represented an approach that has since changed, saying, "Artists (in Israel) are fighting in order to obtain their freedom of speech and expression due to recent censorship attempts by the Israeli minister of culture.
Surprisingly as it might sound, Maayan and Adi's works were marginalized both by our own minister of culture and by your own festival.
"Would you reject a Spanish artist for the Spanish policy against Catalonia and the Basques? Would you reject a Saudi artist for Saudi restrictions on women's rights? Would you reject an American artist for the American policies regarding the 'Muslim ban' regulations? Would you reject a Syrian artist for bloodshed caused by the Syrian government? Would you reject an Iranian artist for the forceful reaction to the last uprising in the country?
"If we were Muslim Arab Israeli artists, Christian Arab Israeli artists, Bedouin-Israeli artists, Circassian-Israeli artists, Druze-Israeli artists, or Jewish-Israeli artists living abroad, would we have been denied participation in your festival as well?
"We are confused. Your decision to deny access (to) Israeli artists seems to go against your mission and values, as it is not based on an artistic appropriation of our works, but on political reasons. The only conclusion we can come to is that (this) is an act of reverse-discrimination."
Festival organizers Bøgwald and Slettebø acknowledged receiving the Israeli reply, but said their decision remained the same. They further promised to elaborate on it once the festival was over due to their "heavy workload."
15 mar 2018
A Palestinian athlete from Occupied Jerusalem on Tuesday withdrew from an international boxing competition hosted by Thailand after an Israeli competitor was selected to play against him.
The 14-year-old Abdulsalam Aqel said that he decided to withdraw from the annual championship instead of competing with an athlete who represents Israel which occupies his land and oppresses his people.
Aqel, who plays for Jerusalem Tigers for Muay Thai in Beit Hanina, said in a statement to al-Jazeera Net that playing with the Israeli rival means recognizing Israel and accepting its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Aqel is a member of a three-athlete team from Jerusalem participating in the Thailand-hosted competition.
The 14-year-old Abdulsalam Aqel said that he decided to withdraw from the annual championship instead of competing with an athlete who represents Israel which occupies his land and oppresses his people.
Aqel, who plays for Jerusalem Tigers for Muay Thai in Beit Hanina, said in a statement to al-Jazeera Net that playing with the Israeli rival means recognizing Israel and accepting its crimes against the Palestinian people.
Aqel is a member of a three-athlete team from Jerusalem participating in the Thailand-hosted competition.
11 mar 2018
The Palestinian community and the Palestinian House in the Netherlands on Saturday organized a bicycle procession in The Hague called for by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
This symbolic bike rally was staged as part of the Palestinian Nakba anniversary activities and to protest, in particular, the Italian bicycle marathon (Giro d’Italia) that will start in Occupied Jerusalem.
Scores of Palestinian citizens living in the Netherlands and pro-Palestine activists participated in the rally.
The participants started their rally from the Dutch Parliament Square in The Hague and cycled to the headquarters of the International Court of Justice and then the International Criminal Court before they went back to the square again.
The movement has already urged the organizers of the cycling race Giro d’Italia to “steer clear of apartheid” by relocating the start of its 2018 race from Israel.
The Giro d’Italia, an annual multiple-stage bicycle race founded in 1909, has made foreign starts in recent years in Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Northern Ireland. Israel will be the first non-European country to host the start of this race.
The race will start in Jerusalem, followed by stages from Haifa to Tel Aviv and the Negev.
The BDS movement called on activists to take action “to stop this sports-washing of Israel’s occupation and apartheid.
“Starting the race anywhere under Israel’s control will serve as a stamp of approval for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Would the Giro d’Italia have considered starting a race in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s?” the movement said.
BDS also called on the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the governing body of cycling, to take action to relocate the start of the Giro d’Italia cycling race from Israel.
This symbolic bike rally was staged as part of the Palestinian Nakba anniversary activities and to protest, in particular, the Italian bicycle marathon (Giro d’Italia) that will start in Occupied Jerusalem.
Scores of Palestinian citizens living in the Netherlands and pro-Palestine activists participated in the rally.
The participants started their rally from the Dutch Parliament Square in The Hague and cycled to the headquarters of the International Court of Justice and then the International Criminal Court before they went back to the square again.
The movement has already urged the organizers of the cycling race Giro d’Italia to “steer clear of apartheid” by relocating the start of its 2018 race from Israel.
The Giro d’Italia, an annual multiple-stage bicycle race founded in 1909, has made foreign starts in recent years in Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Northern Ireland. Israel will be the first non-European country to host the start of this race.
The race will start in Jerusalem, followed by stages from Haifa to Tel Aviv and the Negev.
The BDS movement called on activists to take action “to stop this sports-washing of Israel’s occupation and apartheid.
“Starting the race anywhere under Israel’s control will serve as a stamp of approval for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. Would the Giro d’Italia have considered starting a race in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s?” the movement said.
BDS also called on the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), the governing body of cycling, to take action to relocate the start of the Giro d’Italia cycling race from Israel.
8 mar 2018
On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced that it maintains its opposition to the revisions made in the “Anti-BDS” that was presented by the US Congress over a year ago.
In addition to their opposition, Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project stated that “the revised bill continues to penalize participants in political boycotts in violation of the First Amendment.”
The ACLU also stated that should the bill pass, they would challenge the bill in the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to the PNN, the United States has a long tradition of boycotting as a form of non-violent protest. As a matter of fact, prior to the Revolutionary War, the American colonists of 1767 began boycotting the tax that the British placed on imported goods, then known as the “Townshend Act.” They boycotted in an attempt to change the policies of the government.
Its impact was felt in loss of revenue, forcing the British to revoke the Townshend Act three years later. Less than ten years later, the American Revolution was won and the US Constitution was carefully crafted with simultaneous objectivity and ambiguity. The First Amendment was written first for a reason. The authors of the US Constitution knew that, in order for freedom to be protected, the right of citizens to speak and act out against injustices was what gave them their freedom from the tyrannical practices of the British government.
And, so, it was written:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” -1st Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It makes it rather hard to understand how S.170 Combating BDS Act of 2017 was introduced in the 115th Congress. In summary it states, “This bill allows a state or local government to adopt and enforce measures to divest its assets from, prohibit investment of its assets in, or restrict contracting with: (1) an entity that engages in a commerce- or investment-related boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity targeting Israel; or (2) an entity that owns or controls, is owned or controlled by, or is under common ownership or control with such an entity.
Such measures are not preempted by federal law. A state or local government that seeks to adopt or enforce such measures shall comply with specified requirements related to notice, timing, and opportunity for comment.
In addition, the bill amends the Investment Company Act of 1940 to prohibit a person from bringing any civil, criminal, or administrative action against a registered investment company based solely upon that company’s divestment from securities issued by a person that engages in a commerce- or investment-related boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity targeting Israel.
Though the actions of the ACLU are certainly a win for BDS and those of us who still believe in democracy and civil rights, it’s hardly the last we will see of this bill.
On the upside, when the bill was challenged by the Olympia Food Company’s 16 board of directors. Though the case has been seen by several lower courts as meritless, the case is still being challenged.
A summary judgement hearing is scheduled for March 9th of this year.
In addition to their opposition, Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project stated that “the revised bill continues to penalize participants in political boycotts in violation of the First Amendment.”
The ACLU also stated that should the bill pass, they would challenge the bill in the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to the PNN, the United States has a long tradition of boycotting as a form of non-violent protest. As a matter of fact, prior to the Revolutionary War, the American colonists of 1767 began boycotting the tax that the British placed on imported goods, then known as the “Townshend Act.” They boycotted in an attempt to change the policies of the government.
Its impact was felt in loss of revenue, forcing the British to revoke the Townshend Act three years later. Less than ten years later, the American Revolution was won and the US Constitution was carefully crafted with simultaneous objectivity and ambiguity. The First Amendment was written first for a reason. The authors of the US Constitution knew that, in order for freedom to be protected, the right of citizens to speak and act out against injustices was what gave them their freedom from the tyrannical practices of the British government.
And, so, it was written:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” -1st Amendment of the United States Constitution.
It makes it rather hard to understand how S.170 Combating BDS Act of 2017 was introduced in the 115th Congress. In summary it states, “This bill allows a state or local government to adopt and enforce measures to divest its assets from, prohibit investment of its assets in, or restrict contracting with: (1) an entity that engages in a commerce- or investment-related boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity targeting Israel; or (2) an entity that owns or controls, is owned or controlled by, or is under common ownership or control with such an entity.
Such measures are not preempted by federal law. A state or local government that seeks to adopt or enforce such measures shall comply with specified requirements related to notice, timing, and opportunity for comment.
In addition, the bill amends the Investment Company Act of 1940 to prohibit a person from bringing any civil, criminal, or administrative action against a registered investment company based solely upon that company’s divestment from securities issued by a person that engages in a commerce- or investment-related boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity targeting Israel.
Though the actions of the ACLU are certainly a win for BDS and those of us who still believe in democracy and civil rights, it’s hardly the last we will see of this bill.
On the upside, when the bill was challenged by the Olympia Food Company’s 16 board of directors. Though the case has been seen by several lower courts as meritless, the case is still being challenged.
A summary judgement hearing is scheduled for March 9th of this year.
5 mar 2018
The BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) Campaign Thailand and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) Thailand are welcoming the decision by Kasetsart University in Bangkok and the International Center for Research and Development (ICRD) to end all ties with Israeli settlement university Ariel for the upcoming International Conference on Gender & Women’s Studies.
BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand were informed a few weeks ago by some academics that Ariel University was a partner of the conference planned for 29th June to 30th June 2018 at the Kasetsart University.
In addition to this official partnership, Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton, Vice Rector, Head of the Criminology Department of Ariel University, was announced as the “Academic Chair of the Conference” and also as the main “Keynote Speaker” and a member of the “International Scientific Committee” of the conference.
With the support of the academics and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand contacted the Kasetsart University authorities and the International Center for Research and Development (ICRD) to ask them to withdraw from the Ariel University partnership and to revoke the invitation to Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton.
The BDS movement targets institutions over their complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, not individuals. In the case of Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton, the call to withdraw her invitation was warranted due to her role as a representative of a settler-colonial college engaged in grave violations of international law.
BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand raised the fact that Ariel University is an Israeli University located in an illegal Israeli colonial settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and hence built on stolen Palestinian land. According to international law, the transfer of population from the occupying state into the occupied territory and the creation of settlements constitute a war crime.
Israeli settlements have repeatedly been declared illegal in international law by United Nations institutions such as the Security Council, the General Assembly and the International Court of Justice. Providing a venue to an event organized, even partly, by a settler university involved in war crimes would have implicated the Kasetsart University and the ICRD and deeply harmed their reputation.
After an exchange of emails and letters, Kasetsart University and ICRD have decided to cancel the Ariel University partnership and the invitation to Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton. This wise decision has been taken promptly and is in line with International Law and the position of the State of Thailand that has constantly voted for the UN resolutions declaring illegal the Israeli settlements and has recognized Palestine as a sovereign State.
Via the BDS Campaign Thailand and Palestine Solidarity Campaign Thailand.
BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand were informed a few weeks ago by some academics that Ariel University was a partner of the conference planned for 29th June to 30th June 2018 at the Kasetsart University.
In addition to this official partnership, Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton, Vice Rector, Head of the Criminology Department of Ariel University, was announced as the “Academic Chair of the Conference” and also as the main “Keynote Speaker” and a member of the “International Scientific Committee” of the conference.
With the support of the academics and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand contacted the Kasetsart University authorities and the International Center for Research and Development (ICRD) to ask them to withdraw from the Ariel University partnership and to revoke the invitation to Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton.
The BDS movement targets institutions over their complicity in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, not individuals. In the case of Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton, the call to withdraw her invitation was warranted due to her role as a representative of a settler-colonial college engaged in grave violations of international law.
BDS Campaign Thailand and PSC Thailand raised the fact that Ariel University is an Israeli University located in an illegal Israeli colonial settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and hence built on stolen Palestinian land. According to international law, the transfer of population from the occupying state into the occupied territory and the creation of settlements constitute a war crime.
Israeli settlements have repeatedly been declared illegal in international law by United Nations institutions such as the Security Council, the General Assembly and the International Court of Justice. Providing a venue to an event organized, even partly, by a settler university involved in war crimes would have implicated the Kasetsart University and the ICRD and deeply harmed their reputation.
After an exchange of emails and letters, Kasetsart University and ICRD have decided to cancel the Ariel University partnership and the invitation to Professor Mally Shechory-Bitton. This wise decision has been taken promptly and is in line with International Law and the position of the State of Thailand that has constantly voted for the UN resolutions declaring illegal the Israeli settlements and has recognized Palestine as a sovereign State.
Via the BDS Campaign Thailand and Palestine Solidarity Campaign Thailand.
4 mar 2018
UC Berkeley students demonstrate after the student senate failed to overturn a veto on a bill that would divest from American companies profiting off the occupation.
By Tom Pessah
On American university campuses, pro-Palestine activists are routinely smeared as anti-Semites seeking to destroy Israel. But contrary to what pro-Israel activists claim, the BDS movement has been instrumental in challenging anti-Semitism on the left.
Anti-Semitism is unlike most other forms of hatred, in that it is both a form of bigotry and a false accusation — too often part of a relentless propaganda campaign aimed at silencing critics of Israel. That’s why defining anti-Semitism correctly is a crucial target for our activism. As with homophobia, misogyny, or anti-black racism, there are always those who demand Jews “get over it” for the supposed good of the movement.
But bigotry is always bad. It is bad for Jews inside the pro-Palestine movement who cannot be required to accept or internalize what is toxic for them; it is bad for attracting Jews from outside the movement; and it provides plenty of ammunition for those seeking to silence Palestine solidarity activism by equating it with anti-Semitism. Because the hatred of Jews bred Zionism and all the hardships it brought upon Palestinians, ignoring the issue actually ends up harming the latter. In short, accurately calling out anti-Semitism isn’t a distraction – it’s a gift that can deeply contribute to the health of any political group.
Jews For Racial and Economic Justice’s (JFREJ) new booklet, [PDF] “Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to Our Movement,” does a good job of defining anti-Semitism as an ideology that uses lies and stereotypes about Jews in order to blame them for society’s problems. The booklet provides a rich outline of Jewish history, does not whitewash Zionism, and delineates the ways in which some Jews enjoy white privilege.
What remains missing, however, is a how-to guide: not information on what anti-Semitism is, but a demonstration of how to recognize and call it out if necessary. Confronting anti-Semitism is trickier than it sounds; it is a skill that people can eventually master, yet they are likely to make plenty of mistakes on the way. I hope to address these questions based on my own experience as an Israeli Jew in the pro-Palestine movement in the U.S. between 2006 and 2013.
Here are some of the mistakes I made until I became better at distinguishing between genuine anti-Jewish bigotry and certain forms of speech that made me uncomfortable.
I joined the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in 2006 because I identified with its goals. That doesn’t mean that the anti-Palestinian prejudices I acquired from growing up in Israel immediately disappeared, however. The most glaring example was the right of return for Palestinian refugees, an issue that is taboo in Israel and which I had never thought a lot about. I noticed my Palestinian colleagues referring to it often, which made me feel conflicted.
On the one hand, they seemed genuinely accepting of me as an Israeli Jew. On the other hand, I had a vague feeling that the idea of Palestinian refugees returning to their homeland implied violence against Israelis. Didn’t they want to violently drive us out? Wasn’t this the only way to interpret the phrase? I eventually approached some non-Palestinian Arab members of the group, who were quite surprised, almost amused, that this was my interpretation. Of course Palestinians returning to their homeland didn’t have to mean expelling the current Jewish inhabitants. From then on, I started to make the right of return a central part of my advocacy work.
This misunderstanding was far from a coincidence. Coming from Israel meant coming from a place where endless state violence is completely normalized, while any form of resistance is pathologized as barbaric. Leila Khaled, who hijacked planes to raise awareness for her people’s plight, and who never killed anyone, was a feminist hero for many of my friends. I initially found that idea much more shocking than the fact that most Israelis I knew admired and voted for ex-generals who actually did have the blood of civilians on their hands. This urge to pathologize Palestinians as unusually violent came up again and again. It took me years to unlearn it.
Another reason for such sentiments was my own exposure to propaganda. It was only after I became active in Berkeley that I gradually became aware of the power of the hasbara (Israeli state-sponsored PR) machine that Israel and its supporters use against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. Once I did, I learned that it was highly useful for hasbara groups to label us as anti-Jewish; doing so enabled them to mobilize the wider Jewish community by playing on its fears. It captivated their donors’ attention, helped them build legal cases against our activities, and got them media coverage. This forced me to do proper research about potential speakers, to make sure that their words couldn’t be used to smear us.
In 2007, far-right Zionist students on campus formed their own club in response to our successes. At the core of this new club were students trained and paid by donors to defend the policies of the State of Israel. The university administration was always eager for “dialogue” to prevent what they saw as a potential PR disaster; they constantly lectured us about tolerance without fully understanding who we were or what we were fighting for. At their request, representatives from both groups held a meeting.
At the meeting, we were told that our actions were anti-Semitic and had made Jewish students on campus feel unsafe. I could see the surprise, even the anguish, on the faces of the people in my group. What had we done? First, said the pro-Israel students, we displayed a wooden map of Palestine with hooks representing destroyed villages and towns during one of our protests. The map was painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag. Didn’t this mean we wanted to expel Jews from Israel?
“No,” we responded. This was a map of historical Palestine, representing a past injustice we wanted to correct, without any wish to expel anyone in the future. However, in order to accommodate them, from now on we would put up a large sign reading “Historical Palestine” near our map, clarifying that it was not meant to threaten anyone.
What else? There was our chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” Didn’t we mean we wanted Palestine to be free of Jews, that is — a new Holocaust? Of course not. We meant freedom for everyone. But just to make sure we weren’t misunderstood, we promised to stop using this chant. Those were two big concessions we offered. Anything more?
Yes. Our speakers criticized the Israel lobby. This was also anti-Semitic. The Zionist students wanted us to have different speakers.
By the end of the meeting my friends were holding back tears. We had gone out of our way to be sensitive, taking the claim of Jewish safety seriously, while ignoring the politics these lobby groups were trained to promote. We realized, however, that what they wanted was not merely consideration or sensitivity. It was our very presence that offended them. Rather than relating to us as people, we were being treated as household appliances that had malfunctioned: we weren’t providing them with the expected level of comfort.
In 2010 our chapter campaigned for the student senate to back a bill [PDF] calling on UC Berkeley to divest from American companies profiting from the occupation. The senate held three long debates on the bill, during which sobbing pro-Israel students repeatedly declared they would feel unwelcome on our campus if the resolution were passed.
After one of the debates, we found leaflets with talking points that had been left behind by pro-Israel organizers. Titled “Unifying Strategies for Our Jewish Community,” the document suggested that students “Make it personal, include personal experiences and emphasize feelings of personal attack. BE EMOTIONAL. Don’t be afraid to show how you feel (angry, sad, etc.)… DON’T try to deconstruct the bill. DON’T focus on addressing the fallacies/specifics of the bill. Instead, focus on how it is an attack on the Jewish community. AVOID a debate on the Middle East. Supporters of the bill would like to argue on this platform.” We had heard all those points in the Zionist students’ statements earlier in the evening.
During the debates, our opponents made sure to “translate” phrases we used into familiar anti-Semitic tropes in order to smear us (I later dubbed this “anti-Semitizing”). I spoke against air strikes by the Israeli Air Force on Gaza (using weapons produced by those same American companies), mentioning that many children had been killed. Opponents of the bill, however, pretended I had said, “the Jews killed children,” which was akin to a “medieval blood libel.” Just as the talking points recommended, the opponents avoided discussing the troubling information I had brought up, and reframed my words as “an attack on the Jewish community.” Several Jewish students that I knew began distancing themselves from me, saying they were offended by what I had supposedly said. Our divestment bill passed with a clear majority before being vetoed by the president of the student senate. A similar bill eventually passed in 2013.
For me, this was a turning point. I had never realized the depth of emotional manipulation the Israel lobby was willing to employ in order to achieve its aims. The reckless deployment of the anti-Semitism charge risked de-sensitizing anyone who opposed their politics. In other words, the lobby wanted to defend the Israeli government so badly that it was willing to sacrifice the fight against actual anti-Semitism.
One important lesson was for us to make Jewish solidarity with Palestinians visible and vocal (though, importantly, without overshadowing Palestinian testimonies). While pro-Israel lobbyists had attempted to portray the Jewish community as unified in opposition to the bill, numerous community members, as well as several brave students, spoke in favor of it, while many signed a petition in support. After three years in SJP I now had several Palestinian friends, and expressing full and unconditional solidarity with them became a powerful way of simultaneously advancing our cause while combating anti-Semitism. The two issues really were linked.
I now began to think of anti-Semitism independently, regardless of the lobby’s definitions. When one of our allies confused the terms “Jews” and “Zionists,” I wrote a long letter to my colleagues about the differences between the two. In general, most of the pro-Palestine activists were adept at making the distinction, unlike our opponents who always tried to blur it.
One day during the height of the Arab Spring protests, we heard that the Muslim Student Association intended to host a local preacher who had spoken up against state violence in Egypt. After years of following controversies in other student groups, I now had a working knowledge of questionable figures, and his name sounded familiar.
Google affirmed my suspicion – this was Amir Abdul Malik Ali, who had spoken at UC Irvine a few years earlier. In a secretly taped speech, he had claimed “Zionist Jews” were behind a series of violent incidents attributed to Muslims, including 9/11, and that these same Jews owned the media (he erroneously counted Rupert Murdoch as a Jew). I first watched the videos carefully and tried to ascertain he wasn’t being misquoted, and then my group contacted the Muslim students, who immediately canceled the talk. Since then, Abdul Malik Ali has never been invited back to speak, and we were taken seriously after demonstrating that we did not conflate anti-Semitism with opposition to Israel’s policies.
In a separate incident, after I found materials romanticizing the pogroms of Jews on pro-Palestine activist Alison Weir’s website, the Muslim Students Association also agreed not to host her. A few years later, in 2015, Weir was expelled from a leading BDS coalition for making and disseminating a series of anti-Semitic claims, including blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. The subsequent debate also exposed me to a lot of internalized antisemitism: older Jewish activists who insisted we cannot talk about her statements until the occupation ends.
The most celebrated call-out of an anti-Jewish figure in pro-Palestine circles was the 2012 statement on Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon, born an Israeli Jew, became a Holocaust denier and a supporter of “national socialism.” Yet through his obfuscating language and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, he had managed to make inroads and win allies within the pro-Palestine movement (including Weir). Years of Zionists crying wolf had made too many Palestine activists insensitive to the presence of a real anti-Semite. While a few Jewish activists had been sounding the alarm for years, they were usually accused of being “Zionists” or “crypto-Zionists,” in an attempt to bully them into silence.
The tide turned after the publication of a landmark statement against him by dozens of Palestinian activists, many of them leading figures in the BDS movement, in which they wrote that “challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities.”
Despite their people’s suffering at the hands of Israeli Jews and bullying by pro-Israel groups in the U.S., the Palestinian organizers that I know are generous and open-minded, fully aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and determined to stand up against genuine anti-Jewish bigotry without having to be prompted to do so. I often wondered why so few people outside the movement were aware of this deep kindness that exists against all odds.
This is true not only for Palestinians. In general, I have found that Arab and Muslim activists who have grown up in the U.S. become aware from an early age of what anti-Semitism is, and of the heavy price they pay by being accused of it. The real problem, in my experience, is privileged white activists like Weir and most of her defenders – those who have rarely faced consequences for their words, and who maintain social ties with white supremacists. Contrary to what Israel lobbyists claim, the BDS movement has been instrumental in decreasing the influence of these anti-Jewish white activists on the pro-Palestine Left.
By the end of my time in the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, I felt I had a list of what I considered serious anti-Jewish tropes that I was willing to confront others about. I had reflected sufficiently on my own position such that I did not get easily triggered by words that supposedly connoted Palestinian violence; I had a working knowledge of problematic speakers whose comments would reflect badly on us if we hosted them; and most importantly, I knew I wasn’t doing this work alone. My Palestinian, Arab and other non-Jewish comrades really had my back. When they encountered anti-Jewish statements, they would speak up without my having to ask them. Despite the deluge of misleading hasbara, our humanity had remained intact, and we were ready to take on all forms of bigotry as part of the journey to free Palestine.
*Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Gilad Atzmon was an active proponent of Nazism. That wording has been amended to reflect Atzmon’s support for “national socialism,” along with a link to substantiate that claim. A link has also been added to substantiate the claim that he is a Holocaust denier.
Tom Pessah is a sociologist and activist.
By Tom Pessah
On American university campuses, pro-Palestine activists are routinely smeared as anti-Semites seeking to destroy Israel. But contrary to what pro-Israel activists claim, the BDS movement has been instrumental in challenging anti-Semitism on the left.
Anti-Semitism is unlike most other forms of hatred, in that it is both a form of bigotry and a false accusation — too often part of a relentless propaganda campaign aimed at silencing critics of Israel. That’s why defining anti-Semitism correctly is a crucial target for our activism. As with homophobia, misogyny, or anti-black racism, there are always those who demand Jews “get over it” for the supposed good of the movement.
But bigotry is always bad. It is bad for Jews inside the pro-Palestine movement who cannot be required to accept or internalize what is toxic for them; it is bad for attracting Jews from outside the movement; and it provides plenty of ammunition for those seeking to silence Palestine solidarity activism by equating it with anti-Semitism. Because the hatred of Jews bred Zionism and all the hardships it brought upon Palestinians, ignoring the issue actually ends up harming the latter. In short, accurately calling out anti-Semitism isn’t a distraction – it’s a gift that can deeply contribute to the health of any political group.
Jews For Racial and Economic Justice’s (JFREJ) new booklet, [PDF] “Understanding Antisemitism: An Offering to Our Movement,” does a good job of defining anti-Semitism as an ideology that uses lies and stereotypes about Jews in order to blame them for society’s problems. The booklet provides a rich outline of Jewish history, does not whitewash Zionism, and delineates the ways in which some Jews enjoy white privilege.
What remains missing, however, is a how-to guide: not information on what anti-Semitism is, but a demonstration of how to recognize and call it out if necessary. Confronting anti-Semitism is trickier than it sounds; it is a skill that people can eventually master, yet they are likely to make plenty of mistakes on the way. I hope to address these questions based on my own experience as an Israeli Jew in the pro-Palestine movement in the U.S. between 2006 and 2013.
Here are some of the mistakes I made until I became better at distinguishing between genuine anti-Jewish bigotry and certain forms of speech that made me uncomfortable.
I joined the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in 2006 because I identified with its goals. That doesn’t mean that the anti-Palestinian prejudices I acquired from growing up in Israel immediately disappeared, however. The most glaring example was the right of return for Palestinian refugees, an issue that is taboo in Israel and which I had never thought a lot about. I noticed my Palestinian colleagues referring to it often, which made me feel conflicted.
On the one hand, they seemed genuinely accepting of me as an Israeli Jew. On the other hand, I had a vague feeling that the idea of Palestinian refugees returning to their homeland implied violence against Israelis. Didn’t they want to violently drive us out? Wasn’t this the only way to interpret the phrase? I eventually approached some non-Palestinian Arab members of the group, who were quite surprised, almost amused, that this was my interpretation. Of course Palestinians returning to their homeland didn’t have to mean expelling the current Jewish inhabitants. From then on, I started to make the right of return a central part of my advocacy work.
This misunderstanding was far from a coincidence. Coming from Israel meant coming from a place where endless state violence is completely normalized, while any form of resistance is pathologized as barbaric. Leila Khaled, who hijacked planes to raise awareness for her people’s plight, and who never killed anyone, was a feminist hero for many of my friends. I initially found that idea much more shocking than the fact that most Israelis I knew admired and voted for ex-generals who actually did have the blood of civilians on their hands. This urge to pathologize Palestinians as unusually violent came up again and again. It took me years to unlearn it.
Another reason for such sentiments was my own exposure to propaganda. It was only after I became active in Berkeley that I gradually became aware of the power of the hasbara (Israeli state-sponsored PR) machine that Israel and its supporters use against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian activists in the U.S. Once I did, I learned that it was highly useful for hasbara groups to label us as anti-Jewish; doing so enabled them to mobilize the wider Jewish community by playing on its fears. It captivated their donors’ attention, helped them build legal cases against our activities, and got them media coverage. This forced me to do proper research about potential speakers, to make sure that their words couldn’t be used to smear us.
In 2007, far-right Zionist students on campus formed their own club in response to our successes. At the core of this new club were students trained and paid by donors to defend the policies of the State of Israel. The university administration was always eager for “dialogue” to prevent what they saw as a potential PR disaster; they constantly lectured us about tolerance without fully understanding who we were or what we were fighting for. At their request, representatives from both groups held a meeting.
At the meeting, we were told that our actions were anti-Semitic and had made Jewish students on campus feel unsafe. I could see the surprise, even the anguish, on the faces of the people in my group. What had we done? First, said the pro-Israel students, we displayed a wooden map of Palestine with hooks representing destroyed villages and towns during one of our protests. The map was painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag. Didn’t this mean we wanted to expel Jews from Israel?
“No,” we responded. This was a map of historical Palestine, representing a past injustice we wanted to correct, without any wish to expel anyone in the future. However, in order to accommodate them, from now on we would put up a large sign reading “Historical Palestine” near our map, clarifying that it was not meant to threaten anyone.
What else? There was our chant, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free.” Didn’t we mean we wanted Palestine to be free of Jews, that is — a new Holocaust? Of course not. We meant freedom for everyone. But just to make sure we weren’t misunderstood, we promised to stop using this chant. Those were two big concessions we offered. Anything more?
Yes. Our speakers criticized the Israel lobby. This was also anti-Semitic. The Zionist students wanted us to have different speakers.
By the end of the meeting my friends were holding back tears. We had gone out of our way to be sensitive, taking the claim of Jewish safety seriously, while ignoring the politics these lobby groups were trained to promote. We realized, however, that what they wanted was not merely consideration or sensitivity. It was our very presence that offended them. Rather than relating to us as people, we were being treated as household appliances that had malfunctioned: we weren’t providing them with the expected level of comfort.
In 2010 our chapter campaigned for the student senate to back a bill [PDF] calling on UC Berkeley to divest from American companies profiting from the occupation. The senate held three long debates on the bill, during which sobbing pro-Israel students repeatedly declared they would feel unwelcome on our campus if the resolution were passed.
After one of the debates, we found leaflets with talking points that had been left behind by pro-Israel organizers. Titled “Unifying Strategies for Our Jewish Community,” the document suggested that students “Make it personal, include personal experiences and emphasize feelings of personal attack. BE EMOTIONAL. Don’t be afraid to show how you feel (angry, sad, etc.)… DON’T try to deconstruct the bill. DON’T focus on addressing the fallacies/specifics of the bill. Instead, focus on how it is an attack on the Jewish community. AVOID a debate on the Middle East. Supporters of the bill would like to argue on this platform.” We had heard all those points in the Zionist students’ statements earlier in the evening.
During the debates, our opponents made sure to “translate” phrases we used into familiar anti-Semitic tropes in order to smear us (I later dubbed this “anti-Semitizing”). I spoke against air strikes by the Israeli Air Force on Gaza (using weapons produced by those same American companies), mentioning that many children had been killed. Opponents of the bill, however, pretended I had said, “the Jews killed children,” which was akin to a “medieval blood libel.” Just as the talking points recommended, the opponents avoided discussing the troubling information I had brought up, and reframed my words as “an attack on the Jewish community.” Several Jewish students that I knew began distancing themselves from me, saying they were offended by what I had supposedly said. Our divestment bill passed with a clear majority before being vetoed by the president of the student senate. A similar bill eventually passed in 2013.
For me, this was a turning point. I had never realized the depth of emotional manipulation the Israel lobby was willing to employ in order to achieve its aims. The reckless deployment of the anti-Semitism charge risked de-sensitizing anyone who opposed their politics. In other words, the lobby wanted to defend the Israeli government so badly that it was willing to sacrifice the fight against actual anti-Semitism.
One important lesson was for us to make Jewish solidarity with Palestinians visible and vocal (though, importantly, without overshadowing Palestinian testimonies). While pro-Israel lobbyists had attempted to portray the Jewish community as unified in opposition to the bill, numerous community members, as well as several brave students, spoke in favor of it, while many signed a petition in support. After three years in SJP I now had several Palestinian friends, and expressing full and unconditional solidarity with them became a powerful way of simultaneously advancing our cause while combating anti-Semitism. The two issues really were linked.
I now began to think of anti-Semitism independently, regardless of the lobby’s definitions. When one of our allies confused the terms “Jews” and “Zionists,” I wrote a long letter to my colleagues about the differences between the two. In general, most of the pro-Palestine activists were adept at making the distinction, unlike our opponents who always tried to blur it.
One day during the height of the Arab Spring protests, we heard that the Muslim Student Association intended to host a local preacher who had spoken up against state violence in Egypt. After years of following controversies in other student groups, I now had a working knowledge of questionable figures, and his name sounded familiar.
Google affirmed my suspicion – this was Amir Abdul Malik Ali, who had spoken at UC Irvine a few years earlier. In a secretly taped speech, he had claimed “Zionist Jews” were behind a series of violent incidents attributed to Muslims, including 9/11, and that these same Jews owned the media (he erroneously counted Rupert Murdoch as a Jew). I first watched the videos carefully and tried to ascertain he wasn’t being misquoted, and then my group contacted the Muslim students, who immediately canceled the talk. Since then, Abdul Malik Ali has never been invited back to speak, and we were taken seriously after demonstrating that we did not conflate anti-Semitism with opposition to Israel’s policies.
In a separate incident, after I found materials romanticizing the pogroms of Jews on pro-Palestine activist Alison Weir’s website, the Muslim Students Association also agreed not to host her. A few years later, in 2015, Weir was expelled from a leading BDS coalition for making and disseminating a series of anti-Semitic claims, including blaming Jews for anti-Semitism. The subsequent debate also exposed me to a lot of internalized antisemitism: older Jewish activists who insisted we cannot talk about her statements until the occupation ends.
The most celebrated call-out of an anti-Jewish figure in pro-Palestine circles was the 2012 statement on Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon, born an Israeli Jew, became a Holocaust denier and a supporter of “national socialism.” Yet through his obfuscating language and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric, he had managed to make inroads and win allies within the pro-Palestine movement (including Weir). Years of Zionists crying wolf had made too many Palestine activists insensitive to the presence of a real anti-Semite. While a few Jewish activists had been sounding the alarm for years, they were usually accused of being “Zionists” or “crypto-Zionists,” in an attempt to bully them into silence.
The tide turned after the publication of a landmark statement against him by dozens of Palestinian activists, many of them leading figures in the BDS movement, in which they wrote that “challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities.”
Despite their people’s suffering at the hands of Israeli Jews and bullying by pro-Israel groups in the U.S., the Palestinian organizers that I know are generous and open-minded, fully aware of the difference between Judaism and Zionism, and determined to stand up against genuine anti-Jewish bigotry without having to be prompted to do so. I often wondered why so few people outside the movement were aware of this deep kindness that exists against all odds.
This is true not only for Palestinians. In general, I have found that Arab and Muslim activists who have grown up in the U.S. become aware from an early age of what anti-Semitism is, and of the heavy price they pay by being accused of it. The real problem, in my experience, is privileged white activists like Weir and most of her defenders – those who have rarely faced consequences for their words, and who maintain social ties with white supremacists. Contrary to what Israel lobbyists claim, the BDS movement has been instrumental in decreasing the influence of these anti-Jewish white activists on the pro-Palestine Left.
By the end of my time in the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, I felt I had a list of what I considered serious anti-Jewish tropes that I was willing to confront others about. I had reflected sufficiently on my own position such that I did not get easily triggered by words that supposedly connoted Palestinian violence; I had a working knowledge of problematic speakers whose comments would reflect badly on us if we hosted them; and most importantly, I knew I wasn’t doing this work alone. My Palestinian, Arab and other non-Jewish comrades really had my back. When they encountered anti-Jewish statements, they would speak up without my having to ask them. Despite the deluge of misleading hasbara, our humanity had remained intact, and we were ready to take on all forms of bigotry as part of the journey to free Palestine.
*Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Gilad Atzmon was an active proponent of Nazism. That wording has been amended to reflect Atzmon’s support for “national socialism,” along with a link to substantiate that claim. A link has also been added to substantiate the claim that he is a Holocaust denier.
Tom Pessah is a sociologist and activist.