Students can help fight oppression
Looking for a print version?
Simply use your browser’s ‘Print’ command and a printer-friendly document will be generated automatically.
Anytime the issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has been brought up in the company of my friends, fellow students and peers, I’ve always received the same general response: The violence needs to stop.
I’m the last person who would disagree with that sentiment. As a Palestinian from a small town called El-Bireh, I’ve personally encountered the consequences of the brutal occupation. Our family home in El-Bireh — the place where my father grew up, his father grew up and was home to many of my relatives — was leveled by an Israeli rocket in 2001. I’ve had countless relatives who’ve suffered as a result of the brutality of the Israeli occupation. I’m not a fan of violence.
The Israeli invasion of Gaza was particularly brutal. Recent estimates have placed the Gazan death toll at 1,400, with nearly 6,000 casualties. Dr. Issam Younis, director of the Al-Mazen Centre for Human Rights, told the BBC that he estimates that 85 percent of those killed were non-combatants. In addition, the BBC reported 4,000 Gazan homes were destroyed and 400,000 Gazans were left without running water. The international community condemned Israel for its vicious assault on Gaza, with one notable exception: the United States of America.
Among the American people, however, a new rise of activism has taken place on the home front in response to Israeli incursion into Gaza and America’s refusal to stand against it. In particular, universities throughout the country have faced increasing pressure to divest from corporations that profit from human rights violations and war crimes. In February, Hampshire College divested from several companies which profited from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. After this victory, a coalition of student groups at NYU peacefully occupied the Kimmel Center, calling for the university to commit to socially responsible investment. The actions of the courageous demonstrators have served to build momentum around the desire to cut financial ties to human rights violations.
Our wonderful university has a history of committing to socially responsible investment. University of Wisconsin investment policy 97-1 stipulates that the Board of Regents will seriously reconsider investments in companies that “violate, subvert or frustrate the enforcement of rules of domestic or international law intended to protect individuals and/or groups against deprivation of health, safety, basic freedoms or human rights.”
In that vein, the UW System Board of Regents became one of the first university administrative groups to divest from companies which did business with the apartheid regime in South Africa in 1978. In the late ’90s, the university also became one of the first to divest from companies that profited from the humanitarian crisis in Burma/Myanmar. Most recently, in 2006, the university also divested from companies which profited from the genocide in Darfur. It’s not far-fetched to draw a connection to Palestine, especially when South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu did the work for us by describing the Israeli occupation of Palestine as “another apartheid.”
A growing coalition of student organizations on this campus are calling for our Board of Regents to uphold and enforce investment policy 97-1 and divest from specific companies that profit from human rights violations in the Palestinian territories. Among the most egregious of these investments is in Caterpillar, a company that manufactures the bulldozers responsible for the destruction of nearly 12,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, homes that are replaced with Israeli settlements. Other companies that the university invests in, such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman and Raytheon, are particularly culpable since they manufacture weapons that allow the Israeli army and security services to cause substantial suffering to the Palestinian people.
During the next week, Justice for Palestine, Student Progressive Dane and a coalition of other student organizations are analyzing the occupation of Palestine in a series titled “Eyes on Palestine.” This series, which starts Tuesday, March 24 and runs through Friday, March 27, will take place at 7 p.m. every night in Humanities 2650. Each night, a different perspective will be taken on the occupation of Palestine, including two student panels that will offer a present-day and long-term look at a potential peace process and two films that will analyze the conflict through the eyes of Palestinians, Israelis, Americans and the international community. We invite the entire campus community to participate in this fantastic series of events.
But this week only serves as the beginning of a long struggle to fight for peace and justice for the people of Palestine. The first thing we can all do is wash our hands of the occupation by demanding our university commits to divesting from companies which profit from it. The next thing we can do is demand that our government does the same. I’ve always believed that small victories lead to great changes, and that you must, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Samir Jaber is a member of Student Progressive Dane and can be reached at sjaber@wisc.edu.
President’s Visit Marked a Speech to One of the Last Groups Not Critical of Him
The NYU Kimmel Center protest accomplished nothing. In fact, NYU’s administration openly said they are doing nothing in response. To cite this discredits your entire framework. Poorly done.
I’m a peace-loving guy, and I want Israelis and Palestinians to find peace. Samir was right…I just want the violence to stop. But holy crap, the Gaza invasion was incredibly vicious. If Israel wants peace, why did they bomb the shit out of Gaza? That’s only going to build more resentment and hatred. They should look at the causes of the Palestinian resistance if they want to find solutions and peace.
I just read an article in Ha’aretz about how some Israeli soldiers were purposefully targeting civilians. That’s just fucked up, no matter who you are.
Excellent! This campus seriously needs an event like this. Thanks for putting this on!
If the author of this op-ed piece is against violence, how does he justify violence against innocent Israelis? How does he justify the hundreds of rockets launched from Gaza into the Israeli town of Sderot? Violence is one thing, self defense is another.
Maybe once Hamas recognizes Israel, stops firing rockets at it, and starts condemning attacks targeting civilians the Palestinians can stop feeling “oppressed” and Israel won’t be forced to retaliate anymore. It isn’t Israel’s fault, not for a second, that the Palestinians have brought a knife to a gun fight. They are always the provokers of violence, and when they want peace, it will come.
Perhaps it would help if no rocket bombs were shot into Israel?
Would it also be useful to stop calling for the death of all Jews?
PS. From what I read, it seems that Hamas is the greatest threat to human rights in the Palestinian territories.
I would like you to mention the THOUSANDS of rockets that have been fired into southern Israel by Hamas, a palestinian terrorist organization which was elected into office in Gaza. Those rockets have terrorized the people and economy of southern Israel for the past 8 years. Let it be known that if Canada or Mexico started launching hundreds of rockets per day, they would swiftly and efficiently be whipped off of the map by the great nation of the USA.
I think it might be too soon, for some, to get over the whole David and Goliath thing.
I commend this article. The only problem is that you assume everyone views the situation as occupation. And I sympathize with you when you say you have been directly effected by this situation. However, explain to me how it is acceptable for Palestinians to fire rockets into Israel and not expect retaliation. Though the death toll for Israelis is extremely low in comparison (hardly any really), that does not mean that it could not rise any day now, or that Israelis should not be doing anything to protect themselves. In my opinion, neither Israelis or Palestinians are correct. Both are single-minded and believe that the land is theirs. Nobody should be resorting to violence, so don’t try to call one better than the other. I feel terrible for the innocent lives lost, it happens more often than it should, and everywhere—not just in your place of birth. I hope that the events this week are more moderate than extremist, because the closer we all meet to the middle, the more likelihood there is that peace could be on the horizon.
It’s about time this issue was brought to our campus in a visible manner.
While I agree with Samir overall, associating himself with the NYU protesters is unwise. The protest was tiny and the location lacked any relevance to the government. By the time it got press, it was down to a dozen kids sitting around a room lazily, looking pissed off.
Christ, 2:09 makes me cringe.
7:54pm, the less BS we have to navigate around to get to our classes, the better UW-Madison will be as a school. Keep your extremist-left trash to yourself, ya hippy POS!!
Great article Samir! Keep up the good work!
1:49am How we determine BS from fact takes patience and a willingness to explore. If in an alternate world all the mainstream media happened to be “extremist-left trash,” it would take endurance to get to the truth.
You can’t assume each story is being presented accurately from companies whose pocketbooks rely on people reading it.
3:36pm, if they can’t give us the truth without a bunch of BS to sift through, then what’s the point in even reading it in the first place? and if you care about trees as much as you care about truth, you’d have something constructive to say about it. Or am I just wasting my time with you?
Samir: Excellent point. It is no wonder that Israel did not allow reporters in. Israel is becoming more racist as time goes on. Take a look at a Israeli newspaper that shows that their solders are celebrating killing a pregnant Palestinian and unborn child by using just one bullet. What would the U.S. reaction be if the Palestinian did this? http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html
5:40pm, why do you trust Haaretz when it’s the only news outlet that even carried the story? In case you have fallen behind on your reading, the Israeli soldiers who claimed to have even saw the alleged celebration were contradicted by the findings of an IDF investigation. One of those soldiers wasn’t even anywhere near the location of the shooting!
Or are you just one of those morons who lets other morons tell you what to believe?
5:15pm Truth without BS is rarely seen, for it is human nature to frame the world in a self-benefiting way. It is up to you to keep digging for the facts and not block your mind from listening to those who may know something that you don’t.