SBA 2010 a success!
Aug 10, 2010 Announcements, Uncategorized
Hello world! While this website is not currently being used/updated, this doesn’t mean the work isn’t happening. We just finished our second successful Students Boycott Apartheid delegation in Palestine, and are growing our network of student BDS activists in the US, North America, Palestine, and globally. Please send us an e-mail if you want to be in touch for any reason, have ideas, etc: studentsboycottapartheid [at] gmail.
Thanks!
Students Boycott Israeli Apartheid - on Electronic Intifada
Jul 19, 2009 Uncategorized
(click title or read below)
Boycott apartheid: student delegation to Palestine
Doug Smith, , 17 July 2009
For the first time since the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against institutions supporting Israeli apartheid, students from North America and Palestine came together in Ramallah to share their ideas and experiences. Consisting of eight days of travel and a four-day workshop, the North American student delegation spent their two weeks getting connected with the struggle in Palestine in order to better articulate the BDS movement in their respective cities. The visiting students met face to face with those who are living and resisting the systematic oppression of Palestinians by the state of Israel.
The travel portion brought the students nearly everywhere giving them a chance to see the distinct realities of what it is to be a Palestinian; be it in Hebron living next to violent settlers, in Haifa where they live as second class citizens or the Negev where a majority of Palestinian villages are not recognized by the state and therefore do not receive basic services such as running water. All the while the group respected the boycott as much as possible booking all accommodations and transportation with Palestinian businesses in every city, even those within Israel.
Aside from personal connections, they attended several meetings with Palestinian organizations like Badil - Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (also instrumental in the BDS campaign), Baladna (developmental and capacity building agency for Arab-Palestinian youth in Israel) and Adalah and Addameer (two rights-based organizations working mostly in the court system), solidifying direct lines of cooperation for future campaigns on and off campus. They also met with some Israeli activists working from within on promoting the boycott, the right to return, refusal to serve in the military and corporate complicity.
The delegation consisted of representatives from Palestinian-youth community and student organizations from three Palestinian universities and several cities within Israel, which totaled around 25 with their North American counterparts.
The obvious non-represented group of students were those from universities in besieged Gaza to whom we spoke via an all-too-short video conference session in Birzeit University. Their message was clear in that they felt that the cruel military blockade needed to be dealt with as an urgent matter however that talking about the BDS campaign was a way in which this could be done without efforts being spread too thin on certain specific issues.
The workshops themselves had their positive and negative sides in so far that the challenges faced and achievements gained on Palestinian and North American campuses are quite different. The discussions resulted less in concrete plans and strategies, but much more in an understanding and future direction between the youth Palestine solidarity movement from the inside and abroad. Some of the biggest challenges Palestinian student activists faced were the seeming impossibility of running a successful boycott in some areas where the Palestinian economy is totally dominated by Israel (Birzeit University being the only exception) and the opposition from the Palestinian Authority (PA), which has considerable influence on campuses, to any Gaza solidarity work due to the political situation. However unlike in North America students in Palestine do have a large base of support in nonpartisan civil society and the community at large that the visiting students are trying so hard to build in their own countries.
In stark opposition to the coming together that was the delegation, the group as a whole was given a tour of the apartheid wall by the Stop the Wall campaign and was able to see the land confiscations and strategic settlement expansions that accompany it. Due to the fact that this construction is ongoing, it gave the group a collective sense of what will happen if Israel’s racist polices of apartheid are not opposed.
The group also met with other Palestinians instrumental in the BDS campaign such as Omar Barghouti. The delegation was only the first of others that will be sure to follow in the near future now that the foundations are laid.
Doug Smith is a Montreal based student organizer, writer and activist currently working in solidarity with the Palestinian call for BDS on campus as well as in the community.
The Jabbar Family.
Jul 5, 2009 Uncategorized
The Jabbar Family
Our taxi could not seem to find our host families house. We were driving up and down a road that seemed to have nowhere to go. After a few turn around’s and phone calls the car stopped. A man was waiting for us on the side of the road. He introduced himself as ‘Atta Jabbar. He showed us a pile of rocks and trash and explained that it used to be a road leading to his house until the Israelis blocked it. He showed us a field where he used to grow tomatoes until the Israelis cut his water supply. He pointed to a house at the top of the hill and said it was his. We started to climb up. On the way he showed us two piles of rocks. They used to be houses,his houses. Both were demolished by the Israelis only a few months apart from one another. He was arrested for refusing to leave his land. With international out cry and media support he was ” allowed” to build a new home further up the hill. Not before living in a tent with 4 young children and his wife first. When we got to his home he showed us pictures of this tent and how his family cooked food and brought it over so they could all eat. I was in awe that they made light of such a horrifying situation. He showed us pictures of his arrest and of the protesters outside his tent who came to support him. They shared a lot with us that night. Food, their bed, tea and coffee but most importantly their story and for that I am grateful. I will never forget ‘Atta Jabbar or his family. Not only because they posses more strength than I thought possible but because they shared it with me.
LYD
Jul 5, 2009 Uncategorized
Growing up near Detroit the word “ghetto” is nothing new to me. Hearing about drugs and crime is also not out of the norm so when I heard these things about Lyd I thought it would be something familiar so far from home. When I arrived in Lyd I realized there are many differences. In Detroit I think it would be fair to say we lack building demolition. Many old buildings we leave stand become crack houses. In Lyd however peoples home are demolished. Not crack houses, but rather houses where families live for the reason of ” building permits”. Israel denies people permits then later demolishes homes for not having them. In Detroit there are definitely “ghetto’s” but nice houses are further away from them. In Lyd the nice houses are just past a wall. The wall was requested by Jewish citizens so that they no longer had to see the “ugliness” of Lyd. This said a lot to me. The Israeli citizens of Lyd were not at all concerned about the families and children that are subjected to living under these conditions but rather their concern lied in the fact that they just did not want to see it. What kind of people are they? How can you witness these things and feel no concern or anger? When we went to see the wall it was still being built. We were told that construction of the wall had been stopped for awhile. The reason the construction was going on while we were there is because a family who lived near the wall was told that either their home would be demolished, or they and the other inhabits of Lyd had to sign a paper saying they agreed with the wall. Everyone decided the family keeping their home was more important than objecting to the wall. The unity amongst the people never seizes to amaze me. Israel can built it’s walls but it will never stop the strength of the Palestinian people.
Things that go bump in the night, and other Hebron stories
Jul 4, 2009 Uncategorized
There were a great deal of things about Hebron that were maddening and sickening to witness. The boulders on grates above Palestinian streets thrown by Israeli settlers from apartments above, the security cameras buzzing from atop street corners hinting at the repressive surveillance which props up the apartheid regime, the racist anti-Arab graffiti scrawled in Hebrew along the city’s walls, and the young, arrogant and bored Israeli settlers who operate with virtual impunity to racially profile and harass the residents of Hebron– all of these realities were deeply disturbing in their own right. So too were the testimonies we received from Hashem A. about the violence enacted upon his family (including a child, then aged 9, whose teeth were smashed in by an Israeli woman) by right-wing ideological settlers in his neighborhood of Tel Rumeida, and the videos we watched of marauding settlers destroying gates and homes and attacking the Palestinian residents of Hebron under the watchful eye (and with the active support) of the Israeli army. The trees around Hashem’s house, all cut, the windows with metal grates to prevent further smashing, and the heaps of garbage lobbed down from settlers living above his home–all of these images remain burned in my brain, as does the text of a sticker that Baruch Marzel, leader of the right wing extremist settler Kach movement (and Hashem’s neighbor), purportedly has hanging in his home: “I’ve killed an Arab, and you?”
But none of these stories–horrific manifestations of the cruel depths of Zionist racism–struck me as deeply as Hashem and his wife Nasreen’s gentle patience and palpable love for their children, and the trembling indignation in Hashem’s voice as he told us about them. The children have ongoing monthly psychological counseling with Doctors Without Borders to manage the stress of the violence which has been enacted upon them. They can’t sleep with the light out, he said, and they require the windows to be securely locked and shuttered in order to acquire what approximates a good night’s rest. I cannot imagine the horror of being a parent faced with the task of allaying a sleepless, frightened child’s fears with the knowledge that the things that bring them terror are not nightmares, but flesh-and-blood fanatics whose violence is governmentally sanctioned. The soothing reply of “but it’s not real” rings hollow in this case. The luxury of such a response remains out of reach for those living under Israeli occupation and apartheid.
Meeting with Toufic Haddad
Jun 25, 2009 Uncategorized
Toufic Haddad, Palestinian-American writer and activist, spoke to our group about the long history of Palestinian resistance movements.
Haddad began with protests in 1921, 1929 and 1936-39, which were early iterations of the anti-colonialist struggles that continue today. During and after the powerful 1936 - 39 rebellion, 5000 leaders were killed and their homes destroyed by trained British and Zionist troops, exhausting the nucleus of leadership for Palestinians in the region. By 1948, Palestinian villagers were unable to compete with Jewish troops with more structure and better weapons.
In the refugee diaspora, two streams of political anti-colonialism emerged: the Arab nationalist movement to unite the entire Arab world, including Palestine, and the movement for an independent Palestinian state. By the 1970’s however, neither the PLO nor Fatah was able to maintain enough power and support to achieve its goals. Nationalist rebellion was growing, but most was on a local level without wider leadership. The 1993 Oslo accords perhaps in theory provided a potential base for statehood (liberation in stages, as per Fatah’s 10 point plan) but in practice, Oslo provided a formalization of apartheid. Oslo was a fulfillment of the Israeli occupier’s Allon plan to take land and use local leadership to control people.
Now, any Palestinian political leadership must engage in anti-colonialist, anti-Zionist struggle in a broader context which upsets regional control, fights the core of racism, and includes working-class people who both suffer from and pay for oppression. Engaging in deep analysis of the broader situation (including class dynamics) and re-thinking existing political parties can renew resistance in Palestine and bring more than McDonald’s to Palestine in the future.
Toufic’s magazine, Between the Lines, has been published as a book (with the same title) with his co-editor Tikva Honig-Parnas.
Tags: Palestinian resistance, Toufic Haddad, Trip
Support Palestinian centers of research
Jun 24, 2009 Uncategorized
In the world of Academia, so much clout is given to sources that are deemed to be credible (or not) enough to be used in an article, presentation or research project of any sort. But these institutions don’t gain legitimacy by divine intervention. Quite the contrary it comes from their ability to be corroborated by those who trust and use there information and if necessary, backup their research when it’s under attack…
Such a place that deserves our tangible support is the Badil Resources Center in Bethlehem, Palestine. Since 1998 they have been collecting information on displaced Palestinian refugees and have been proposing durable solutions for their unalienable right to return. Badil, which translates to “alternative” in Arabic is the only organization that still does the exhaustive research on Palestinian refugees (such as he ones who didn’t end up on a UN registry and where they ended up) and then in turn advocates in their behalf. Mohammad Jaradat, the center’s coordinator, spoke to us at length on the Palestinian refugee issue and how it ties into the comprehensive demands of the 2005 call for BDS. It seemed that out of all that was said, the most surprising aspect was that out of all world refugee crises, Palestinian refugees greatly outnumber all other contemporary cases but a large margin. All that to say, it is impossible to talk about possible solutions for the Palestinian people and restoration of their right without addressing the refugees, which is something that Badil does day in and day out.
Their exhaustive work (not to mention their really nice looking, clever posters and stickers) was really incredible, and so were the staff that welcomed us, spoke to us and took our questions. There’s not much more one can say but that if you’re doing this kind of Palestinian support work abroad, get to know Badil and use the information on their website … they do amazing work that should be supported!
Hashim’s house (homestay)
Jun 24, 2009 Uncategorized
I think I’ve made a mental journey around the world on this trip. Hashim’s house was the Atlantic Ocean. The whole group went to Hashim’s house on our first day of traveling together; he and his family live in Khalil/Hebron. We didn’t have much time there after touring the old city, but we got to hear a few stories, and tell a few videos. Of his children getting stoned by settlers on their way to school, and of settles breaking into a Palestinian home while a soldier looked on. But the group had to leave almost before we’d finished our drinks, although admittedly we were going slow on the syrupy-sweet juice. Luckily, Doug and I got the opportunity to head back that night to stay with the family. Ironically enough, we went because we were the least hungry in the group; we were to be taken to a party before headed back to the house, so we thought dinner might be late. Actually, that just meant that dinner was twice. We ate at the party, with Palestinians and many internationals, who were there to support the local Palestinians; one important thing they did was walk children to school through the settler’s stoning them. Another was camping out on land to try and prevent soldiers from occupying it. This was their goodbye party; a new group of internationals will be coming in August. Then we went to Hashim’s house. He carried a giant Palestinian watermelon through the checkpoint, up the road which only settlers were allowed to drive on, and up the long, rocky path which was the sole way to approach his house after the top access steps were closed by settlers.
Finally, we made it to the house, after seeing a camel on the way (destined, I later learned, to be eaten). We had another feast–my first homemade Palestinian food and very delicious, then we watched more movies of Khalil and the crazy settlers; how Hashim went once to try and harvest his olives, for example, and was harassed by settlers, who couldn’t tolerate his presence in his own olive grove in front of “their” homes. After many such stories, Doug and I pled exhaustion and retired. On my way from brushing my teeth, Hashim stopped me and reassured me not to worry about the gun fire. That we would be safe. I didn’t worry about the gunfire too much, and I hope that neither did he or his children. In the morning, Doug and I walked back through the checkpoint alone, but I know both of us will never leave behind the memory of that family.
