The first issue of the Action Palestine Newsletter which includes news from student groups across the country, BDS development, news from Palestine and list of actions and events on campus.
Please find the PDF edition attached or on: www.actionpalestine.org/docs/APnewsletterOct09.pdf
Sussex Palestine activists before the vote
On Wednesday 28th of October the University of Sussex Student Union voted in line with the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS to boycott Israel. The movement calls upon Israel to respect international law and end the occupation of Palestine.
The referendum result mandates the Students’ Union to remove all Israeli produce from its stores, and review its sources for food outlets. The vote was one of the largest and most closely-contested in the Union’s history, with 562 voting in favour of the boycott and 450 voting against it.
The debate over the boycott was often tense, with the Friends of Palestine Society leading the ‘Yes’ campaign, and the ‘No’ campaign running under the slogan ‘Build Bridges Not Boycotts’. Martha Baker, a member of Palestine Society and speaker at one of the events, said that the biggest challenge for the pro-Boycott team was not, however, the pro-Israeli campaigners.
Baker commented: “Our biggest challenge was ignorance: most students are not aware of the situation facing Palestinians living under occupation. The more we spoke to people, the more they understood the reasons for boycotting Israel.”
Yasmin Khan, Senior Campaigns Officer at UK charity War On Want added: “Palestinians have suffered under the Israeli repression for 61 years, during which time governments all over the world have allowed Israel to act with impunity. It is time for this to change. The Boycott movement could be just the thing to finally bring justice to Palestine.”
Palestine Society member Bushra Khalidi says that the society will now focus its efforts on gaining scholarships for Palestinian students, and lobbying the Union to sell Palestinian West Bank produce.
Sussex becomes the latest student UK union to vote to boycott Israel, the University of Manchester Student Union and the University of Essex Student Union both voted for a boycott in March of this year, several other student unions in the UK have taken similar steps in recent years. The Right to Education campaign sees these boycotts as a symbol of solidarity with Palestinian students and a positive step towards securing academic freedom for Palestinians by highlighting the ongoing injustice of the Israeli occupation.
The imposition of immediate boycott, divestment and sanctions against the state of Israel is one of the strongest ways to register criticism and delegitimize the actions and policies of the Israeli government towards Palestinians. In particular, Israel’s siege on Gaza and their refusal to permit Gazans the basic equipment and supplies necessary for universally-acceptable living standards highlights the Israeli government’s flagrant disregard for human rights and international law.
As such, the methods of boycott, divestment and sanctions remain vital tools of activism until Israel abides by international human rights and humanitarian laws, dismantles its apartheid regime spanning both the occupied territories and Israel proper, and commits to pursuing a long-lasting, just solution.
Delegation of UK students prevented from reaching Gaza on board of HOPE FLEET
www.actionpalestine.org/from-palestine/free-gaza-boat…kers-kidnapped/
Today Israeli Occupation Forces attacked and boarded the Free Gaza Movement boat, the SPIRIT OF HUMANITY, and abducted 21 human rights workers from 11 countries. A delegation of UK students are amongst those abducted. The passengers and crew are being forcibly dragged toward Israel.
Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate, who is amongst those abducted, said “This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip. President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that’s exactly what we tried to do. We’re asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey.”
The student delegation, coordinated by Action Palestine, a UK umbrella organization which facilitates grass roots coordination between Palestine groups and campaigning on campuses, was to meet with students and staff to explore ways of improving solidarity links with UK Universities and Student Unions. The delegation aimed to highlight difficulties and educational needs due to the blockade and amongst the devastation of the Israeli bombing of December and January.
Schools, Colleges and Universities in Gaza were severely damaged during the bombing and many students were killed or injured. Other vital educational supplies are being deprived – according to UNWRA, Israel’s continuing blockade is also preventing ink, paper and other learning materials such as crayons and colouring books from entering into Gaza.
The delegation was to visit Al-Aqsa University, the Islamic University, the Al Azhar University and the Al Quds University. The information and networking gained from the delegation’s meetings with Universities in Gaza would have helped strengthen international student and education focused solidarity campaigns, in particular the academic boycott.
Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants were enduring their worst conditions for over 40 years according to aid agencies last year, with 80 percent of the population dependent on food aid, due directly to the Israeli blockade depriving normal food, infrastructure and medical supplies. As life became increasingly hard with death and malnutrition, Israel then launched an air and ground attack in late December and early January that killed a further 1300 people, over 300 children. Many thousands more were injured and the vast majority of the casualties were civilians. Over 4,100 houses were destroyed and a further 17,000 seriously damaged. 50,000 people are now homeless, tens of thousands lacking power, water and sanitation, as well as food and medical
treatment.
The Free Gaza Movement, a human rights group, sent two boats to Gaza in August 2008. These were the first international boats to land in the port in 41 years. Since August, four more voyages were successful, taking Parliamentarians, human rights workers, and other dignitaries
to witness the effects of Israel’s draconian policies on the civilians of Gaza. On December 30, their boat, the DIGNITY was rammed three times while 90 nautical miles out, in international waters, on its way to deliver emergency medical supplies to the people of Gaza, while
they were under the infamous attack by Israel. Contact them at www.freegaza.org.
One of our delegates, Adie Mormech features on the following video about the preparation for
the boat: www.youtube.com/gazafriends
For more information please contact: Naji 00972599791585
Mona Baker
Radical Philosophy 155 (May-June)
http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2193&editorial_id=27992
At the end of December 2008 a wave of protest occupations swept across UK university campuses in response to the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The ‘occupation movement’ started on 13 January 2009, when students at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London occupied the Brunei Gallery and issued a list of demands in connection with the atrocities committed in Gaza and the University’s links to the arms industry. The national media largely failed to report on the SOAS occupation and others that followed. But the occupying students spread the word themselves, and managed their own publicity via Facebook, Wiki, blogs and YouTube.
During the occupation of King’s College London the following week, the students emailed academics asking for help in two ways: by writing to the principal of their university to express support for the occupation, and by going to talk to them during their occupation. This pattern of engaging academic staff directly in the protests repeated itself across the various occupations that soon followed. The lecture rooms they occupied were turned into spaces for dialogue and reflection, for engaging with issues they felt deeply about but knew they would be challenged on and hence needed to educate themselves in. The space was kept open to all: any student or member of staff could walk in and out, could listen to talks and discussions and contribute to them. In Manchester, the students even engaged the security officers who were stationed outside the occupied space to keep an eye on them – so successfully in fact that some of the officers took to wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, like the students.
Between 13 January and 6 March 2009 there were at least twenty-seven occupations at UK university campuses: School of Oriental and African Studies, London School of Economics, Essex, King’s College London, Birmingham, Sussex, Warwick, Manchester Metropolitan, Oxford, Leeds, Cambridge, Bradford, Queen Mary, Sheffield Hallam, Nottingham, Strathclyde, Manchester, Glasgow, Goldsmiths, Edinburgh, University of East Anglia, University of the West of England, St Andrews, University of East London, University of Arts London, Plymouth and Cardiff. Newcastle and Kingston reportedly also engaged in occupation, but little reliable information is available on these two. The shortest occupation, at Oxford, lasted a mere seven hours and ended with significant and immediate concessions from the University administration, including agreeing to the provision of scholarships to Palestinian students and a commitment to examine and reconsider university investment in companies that have links with the military. The longest, at Manchester University, lasted thirty-one days, beginning on 4 February and ending on 6 March.
Students’ demands varied slightly from one occupation to another, but a number of demands featured consistently. These include a demand for scholarships to be granted to Palestinian students and, in some cases, to Israeli students who refuse to serve in the army; a statement to be issued by the university administration expressing support for the right of Palestinian students to education and/or expressing solidarity with the Islamic University of Gaza, which was specifically targeted in the latest attack; various forms of aid to be sent to educational institutions in Gaza that have suffered destruction in the attacks, including the Islamic University; some form of fundraising effort on campus to provide support for the people of Gaza, with many occupations specifically calling for a DEC day of fundraising to be visibly promoted by university administration (the BBC had incensed the British public at large by refusing to televize an appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee in early January, and many of the student occupations in London and Scotland were accompanied by occupations of BBC offices to protest this decision); commitment to examining university investment portfolios with a view to divesting from companies implicated in the arms trade and in the occupation of Palestinian land; and ensuring immunity from reprisals for students involved in the occupation. Some occupations also demanded one or other form of boycotting Israeli goods and services, especially on campus. In Scotland, all occupations demanded that the (national) contract with Eden Springs to provide bottled water on campus be revoked. (Eden Springs is a UK company with unethical links to Israeli firms that source their water from the occupied Golan Heights.) In Birmingham, the boycott agenda included a demand not only to withdraw all goods illegally produced on Israeli settlements from university retail and catering outlets, but also to close the university account with Lloyds TSB and withhold renewal of its lease on campus because it had instructed the Islamic Bank of Britain, in its capacity as a clearing bank, to terminate the account of the Palestinian charity Interpal.
On many campuses, the occupying students managed to pass motions in support of several or all of their demands, strengthening their hand in negotiating with the university administration. For example, the SOAS occupation demand for an end to military activity on campus was backed up by a student union motion to the same effect. One of the concessions the occupation consequently won was the right for students to hold activities in the Brunei Gallery for free, instead of having to pay the £1,000 per day fee previously demanded by the administration and routinely waived for the Ministry of Defence.
Not all occupations succeeded in securing all of their demands. Nottingham, Sheffield Hallam and Birmingham were particularly heavy-handed in dealing with student occupations, using the police either to threaten to remove them (in Birmingham and Sheffield Hallam) or actually to remove them by force (in Nottingham, where outrage at the treatment and threatened deportation of Hicham Yezza remains high), without yielding to any demands. In Sheffield Hallam, students were also threatened with suspension. However, most occupations have ended in partial success, so far as demands are concerned. In Cardiff, for instance, the University agreed to divest all shares from BAe Systems and the aerospace arm of General Electric. Several universities agreed to provide scholarships to Palestinian students, though most tended to wrap this up within a package of scholarships to students in war zones in general.
But the achievements of the occupation movement extend well beyond concessions secured in relation to student demands. One has been managing to expose the hypocrisy of university administrations. When the director of the LSE refused to issue a condemnation of the attacks on Gaza, claiming that the university does not take positions on political issues, the occupying students were quick to remind him that he personally made an overtly political statement in May 2007 condemning a UCU resolution on Israel, and that previous LSE administrations had condemned South African apartheid and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. Another achievement is the successful alliances students forged with academic staff that are likely to endure in future and strengthen the activist base on campus. But perhaps the most significant achievement has been the shock waves the action sent through the system – from one end of the country to the other, and beyond, even inspiring two occupations on US campuses (at Rochester and NYU). Educational institutions in this country can no longer take their students for granted – especially on the issue of Palestine.