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College Students Say the Darndest Things: "Divest From Israel," for Example

By Roxane Ellis Rodriguez Assaf

Whoever said that college is wasted on the young should make an exception for the likes of University of Michigan senior Fadi Kiblawi and his associates. Kiblawi's school, along with the University of California at Berkeley, are at the forefront of a nationwide student effort to urge their institutions to divest from Israel in the same way that this country's academic community took a stand against South African apartheid in the 1980s.

Despite President Mary Sue Coleman's admitted objection to the idea of divestment, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor hosted visitors from 70 colleges for the Second National Student Conference on the Palestinian Solidarity Movement. The Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) had pitched their conference with enough aplomb to receive $5,000 in funding from the student government and to earn the school's approval for use of its facilities from Oct. 12 to 14. Promised demonstrations by pro-Zionist protesters, as well as an atmosphere tinged with the mystery of e-mail sabotage and legal action by Zionists against the university, had campus security on high alert.

"We want to make more mainstream the idea that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory is apartheid," said Kiblawi, an American of Palestinian ancestry. The articulate computer science major and other conference organizers stressed the importance of advancing nonviolent ideas that will ultimately lead to peace in the region. They view religious discrimination as an obstacle, asserting that equality can be achieved by applying pressure on the side with the power-Israel. Following official school policy, SAFE has submitted a request for an investigative committee at U of M to assess the morality of the $155 million the university has invested in companies that do business with Israel.

Such an action is not without precedent. In 1978, the U of M broke financial ties with South Africa because of ethical concerns over apartheid. Today, the Board of Regents is being challenged to do the same, given Israel's flouting of U.N. Security Council resolutions and numerous counts of ongoing apartheid committed by Israel against the Palestinian people. SAFE's eloquently composed request includes a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu's April 29, 2002 article "Apartheid in the Holy Land," in which Tutu stated, "It reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa."

A verbal gauntlet greeted conference goers on Saturday. Flanking the hall entrance were men of varying ages in yarmulkes and prayer shawls shouting protestations including, "You go in there, and you're supporting suicide bombers!" and "This is an act of anti-Semitism. You are participating in a Jew-hating conference." Undaunted attendees walked around in "Free Palestine" T-Shirts and keffiyehs.

Amid accusations of funneling support to terrorist organizations, the speakers took to the podium with confidence. Mahdi Bray, a seasoned civil rights activist and executive director of Freedom Foundation, received several rounds of applause and a standing ovation. "Freedom is not complicated. It's an inherent right of all people," he said. "Israel is indeed a repressive, racist apartheid state. It doesn't delegitimize the State of Israel to say it maintains an apartheid regime. And to set the record straight for Daniel Pipes and the rest, this isn't about anti-Semitism. It's about doing the right thing."

Facetiously thanking the "pro-Zionist forces for the great publicity," UC-Berkeley professor and native Palestinian Hatem Bazian went on to say, "It takes a child to say, 'The emperor has no clothes.' So we are the new children who are saying to Israel, 'You have no clothes.'"

Referring to divestment as a "tall order," Bazian nonetheless encouraged "creative tension" on campuses and pointed out that if it were not for U.S. purchases, "Israel Bonds would be rated lower than junk bonds."

Newlyweds Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American U of M honors graduate from the Detroit area, and Adam Shapiro, a Jewish-born Brooklyner, shared the stage at one of the breakout sessions. Recently returned to the U.S. for a spell, their fulltime direct action peace efforts in the West Bank with the International Solidarity Movement have attracted internationals from around the world to resist in nonviolent solidarity with the besieged Palestinians. Shapiro shared his recent personal experiences of life under increasingly violent Israeli occupation, impressing upon the mostly converted audience the need for divestment. He showed a video revealing extensive destruction to civilian homes and reported seeing a Palestinian boy dying in the hospital with part of his head blown off. He then turned the microphone over to his dynamic wife, who with compelling energy outlined the history and implications of ongoing violations of human rights committed under military occupation and in the name of security for Israel.

In a concurrent session, Betsy Barlow, retired outreach coordinator for the university's Center for Middle East and North American Studies and organizer for the North American chapter of Jerusalem's Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Organization, expressed outrage. "The present government [of Israel] wants the land without the people," she stated. "Are we to assume that the U.S. is its junior and silent partner? Ariel Sharon does what he wants with our resources, and we just say, 'Yes, sir'?"

Barlow also sought to expose Israel's use of propaganda to sway the American consciousness. "Shared values? Americans value demolishing people's homes? Shooting children is not an American value," she concluded. "The U.S. has been misinformed."

Barlow suggested a threefold strategy for success of the divestment effort: academia, the media and churches.

A press conference followed the breakout sessions at which well-spoken U of M student and conference organizer Ora Wise, a self-proclaimed Jew, won the most rousing applause. "We categorically reject the accusation of anti-Semitism as a means to discredit the Palestinian Solidarity Movement," she proclaimed. "We maintain that any Jew should be devoted to ending the occupation and to ending Israeli apartheid."

Regarding the impending war with Iraq, Wise leveled boisterous criticism at President George W. Bush for encouraging a parallel between Israel and the U.S. "Bush is convincing people that their personal security is dependent on a military occupation of the people of Palestine and Iraq," she charged.

The ballroom was full for the keynote panel at the end of the first day, which included one of Israel's leading historians and writers, Dr. Ilan Pappé. Director of the International Relations Division at Haifa University and academic director of the Institute for Peace Research at Givat Haviva, Pappé is at risk of losing his position at the University of Haifa for planning to teach a course on the Nakba (the "catastrophe," the Palestinian expression for what Israel celebrates as its victory of independence). Furthermore, Pappé, who supports a boycott of Israel, insists that the Israelis have always had a conscious plan to oust the Palestinians from their land-an allegation many deny despite historical proof and continued actions which would seem to prove his point.

Standing trial at his university does not silence Pappé, however. "Policies of boycott and divestment are peace policies," he explained, describing them as strategic options one reaches because other approaches have failed. Referring to divestment as a long-term agenda, he predicted that Israel will make cynical use of Bush's war on Iraq as a "golden opportunity" to carry out an expulsion plan, finally cleansing Palestine of its native inhabitants. Pappé expressed alarm that talk of ethnic cleansing has become a "reasonable, moral, objective way of looking at the conflict" among academics, journalists and the Israeli public.

"When I come to America, I have to be 'balanced,'" Pappé complained, crediting the Israeli propaganda machine for having succeeded at selling to the American public what is a simple story of European colonialism as a case in which both parties are equally culpable and come to the negotiating table with equal leverage and power. "They want to be a bastion?" he queried. "Let them pay the price for being a European bastion in a vast Arab land and for their policies of occupation, expulsion and apartheid."

Other speakers included Diana Buttu, communications adviser to the PLO; Shamai Leibowitz, American-Israeli IDF tank gunner reservist and lawyer who refuses to serve in the West Bank and Gaza; Sami Al-Arian, the University of South Florida associate professor whom the FBI investigated but never charged with associating with terrorist groups; Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Na'eem Jeenah, a leading anti-apartheid activist in Johannesburg, South Africa and spokesperson for the Palestine Solidarity Committee; and Mark Perry, author and international news correspondent.

Despite a demonstration by nearly 100 pro-Zionist activists, activism workshops were held on Sunday, followed by a plenary session which passed a resolution to protest a war on Iraq. The students also formalized their support of the International Solidarity Movement, reaffirmed the Palestinians' right of return according to U.N. Security Council resolutions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and declared Nov. 13, 2002 and April 9, 2003 as days of action on American campuses.

"It took five years to divest from South Africa," said Kiblawi following the conference. "And they didn't have the huge effort working against them that we do."

For that reason, Kiblawi estimates that it will take 10 to 20 years for his movement to succeed. One vocal critic of the divestment campaign has pronounced his plans in the event of such success. In a Boston Globe article earlier this year, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz stated, "I would not remain at any university that would divest from Israel."

Roxane Ellis Rodriguez Assaf is a free-lance writer based in Chicago

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