Israeli Apartheid Week
IAW 2010
Posted: April 6, 2011
The sixth annual Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) took place from March 1-14, 2010.
In 2010, IAW events were held in 14 U.S. cities or towns, including Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco, CA; Hartford and New Britain, CT; Chicago, IL; Boston, MA; Dutchess County and New York, NY; Pittsburgh, PA; Providence, RI; Houston, TX; Seattle, WA; and Washington, DC.
Below is a sampling of these events:
California
- Berkeley: A leader of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of California, Berkeley, was arrested after allegedly "assaulting" a pro-Israel student with a shopping cart, according to news reports. The SJP student, Husam Zakharia, was booked for battery and released.
- San Francisco: The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid tabled outside the Safeway supermarket urging shoppers not to buy Israeli products. The event was titled "The Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid Goes Shopping? NOT!" and was organized to raise awareness about the boycott movement.
Connecticut
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Central Connecticut State University: After a screening of "The Iron Wall," a film critical of the "Israeli occupation" and settlements, several individuals gave short presentations condemning Israel. Stanley Heller, the director of the Middle East Crisis Committee, called for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and argued that the decline in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians is not a result of Israel's security fence but because Palestinian terrorist organizations have voluntarily decided to cease such activity. Another presenter called Zionism a "terrorist organization" and a CCSU professor argued that Israel's alleged mistreatment of the Palestinians is the result of capitalism and that Zionism is responsible for making Palestinians and Jews enemies.
New York
§ Midtown Protest: More than two dozen anti-Israel and antiwar groups sponsored a protest outside the annual Friends of Israel Defense Forces dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria.
Demonstrators chanted, "The Palestinian people are the people of the land; The Israeli Zionists are the Ku Klux Klan," "Long live Palestine, long live the intifada, Palestine will never die" and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," a call for the dismantling of the state of Israel. Many of the demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and signs, including ones that read, "Nuremberg Justice for Israeli War Criminals," "Israeli War Criminals Feast on U.S. Tax Dollars" and "Gaza to Iraq Resist Occupation." Some protesters specifically denounced the IDF's Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, the keynote speaker of the dinner, with signs that read, "Butcher of Gaza" and "Justice for Gaza's Children: Jail Ashkenazi." The demonstrators also shouted at several individuals handing out pro-Israel fliers, at times screaming anti-Semitic slurs like, "[Expletive] you, you Jewish Israeli mother [expletive]ers, you jesus killers!"
- New York University: An event titled "The Indigenous Struggle: A Call for the Boycott of Israel" compared the Palestinians to other indigenous peoples, including Black South Africans and Native Americans. One of the speakers, Nada Khader, director of the WESPAC Foundation, compared Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto and another speaker, a graduate student at NYU, alleged that Israel is not a democracy and that Israel's system of apartheid is worse than South African apartheid. Both speakers advocated for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as a way to force Israel to change its policies.
§ Columbia University: A mock "apartheid wall" was set up in a main area of campus and an evening event featured three speakers who condemned Israel's use of force during the Gaza war, accused Israel of apartheid and called for boycott initiatives against Israel.
The event's main speaker, Ben White, author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner's Guide, condemned Zionism as "inherently anti-democratic" and alleged that Palestinians face discrimination, suppressed political activity and an apartheid system. A representative from Adalah-NY highlighted a variety of successful boycott efforts against Israel and claimed that academic and cultural boycotts of Israel are legitimate because these institutions benefit the state of Israel and are often financed by the government.
Rhode Island
- Brown University: An event titled "Education Without Occupation" called on the university to divest from corporations that benefit from "Israeli occupation." The event was organized by the Brown chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is part of a coalition group pressuring the university to disclose its investment holdings as the first step toward divesting from Israel. The SJP also set up a table on the Main Green with information about Israel's alleged apartheid system and encouraged passersby to sign a petition calling on the university to release information about its investments.
Texas
- University of Houston: A mock "apartheid wall" was set up on campus that called for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and featured slogans like "Right to Return" and "Refugee of my Own Land." Students handed out fliers that described Israel's security fence as an "apartheid wall" and called for an end to U.S. military aid for Israel. An evening event featured Ester King, a longtime Black Power movement activist, and was billed as a discussion about the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The events were organized by the Students for a Democratic Society.
Washington, DC
- Busboys and Poets Café: Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), presented about the alleged parallels between the treatment of Native Americans and Blacks in the U.S. and South Africa with the treatment of Palestinians. Barghouti alleged that Israel dehumanizes Palestinians, the situation in Gaza is "genocide" and Israel intentionally denies Palestinians of basic necessities. He criticized the U.S. for not cracking down on Israel's "institutionalized discrimination" of Palestinians and called for a BDS movement against Israel, which he described as a growing movement that is becoming more successful.
- American University: Barghouti gave a similar presentation at American University during an event hosted by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. He was first introduced by Bill Fletcher, the executive editor of The Black Commentator, who condemned the United States' "totally uncritical support for Israel" and described Israel and the United States as "settler state[s]." During the Q&A session, Barghouti called Israel an "ethnocentric racist society" and alleged that Israel discriminates against Palestinians simply because they are not Jewish. In response to a question about the effectiveness of Israeli Apartheid Week in light of the U.S. Congress' siding with the "Zionist agenda," Fletcher responded that politicians have a "fear of retaliation" from the pro-Israel establishment.
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