National M.E.Ch.A. Endorses Palestinian Boycott Call Against Israel

Latin@ Groups Across US Take Historic Stand at 19th Annual Conference; Decision Announced on National César Chávez Day

March 30, 2012 — At the 18th annual national conference of M.E.Ch.A. (Movímíento Estudíantíl Chícan@ de Aztlán), the largest association of Latin@ youth in the US, chapter leaders voted by a landslide decision to endorse the global call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel, due to its military occupation and settlement of Palestine.

The announcement that M.E.Ch.A. chapter leaders endorsed BDS comes on the coinciding international observances of “César Chávez Day” and “Land Day,” commemorating ongoing civil rights and anti-colonial struggles for Latin@s and Palestinians. The chapter delegations (including some 600 delegates) met in Phoenix, AZ, last weekend, the site of the very first M.E.Ch.A. conference in 1993.

The local ASU M.E.Ch.A. chapter, who hosted the conference this year, was the first to endorse the BDS call prior to the conference.  Before M.E.Ch.A. could endorse BDS at a national level, ASU Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) President, Lina Bearat, attended an ASU M.E.Ch.A meeting to discuss BDS and ask for their endorsement.  Without that crucial vote of endorsement and support from ASU M.E.Ch.A. prior to the conference, ASU SJP could not have been able to ask for the endorsement of BDS by the national M.E.Ch.A. ASU SJP was also required to hold a workshop on BDS to educate the national members on the issue. Erin McGough, ASU SJP member, had the opportunity to discuss and hold a workshop on BDS at the national M.E.Ch.A. conference. The University of Arizona SJP collaborated with ASU, in all, on three educational workshops on Palestine given at the conference.

“Palestina 101,” a workshop run by ASU SJP Vice President, Aman Aberra, discussed the history and current situation in Palestine, as well as US involvement and complicity in Israel’s crimes and how the attendees could get involved in supporting justice in Palestine.  “Conexiones Concretas/Concrete Connections,” run by Gabriel M Schivone of UofA SJP, discussed cross-border analyses — ranging from both walls to cultural attacks on Palestinian/Latin@ ethnic studies by the US and Israel — and provided prospects for cross-movement building between both struggles. Member representatives also distributed “A Plea from a Mexican-Palestinian and Chicano-Jew to National M.E.Ch.A.,” by Yasmine A. Moreno Yatim and Schivone, UofA SJP coordinators, urging the conference to adopt BDS.

Beyond ASU and UofA, some of the schools where M.E.Ch.A.s and Latin@ groups have ongoing cross-movement relationships with SJPs and Palestine solidarity groups include The Evergreen State College, University of New Mexico, Brown University, University of Illinois – Chicago, and UCLA.

The decades-old legacy of M.E.Ch.A. stretches back to the late 1960s US Civil Rights Movement.  M.E.Ch.A. has traditionally supported intertwining struggles such as opposing police brutality and the US war on Vietnam.

This year, Land Day marks the 36th anniversary of the massacre by Israeli soldiers killing unarmed Palestinians citizens of Israel whom protested the illegal expropriation of Palestinian land. Like his Palestinian counterparts, Chicano civil rights leader, César Chávez, led boycotts and strikes for the rights of farmworkers — including the “Salad Bowl Strike,” the largest farmworker strike in US history — that inspired waves of social movements in the US.

In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations created the BDS call, a year after the historic ruling by the United Nation’s International Court of Justice condemning Israel’s illegal apartheid wall and reminding the international community of its obligation to pressure Israel to end its prolonged occupation and illegal settlement of Palestinian lands.  Together, these civil societies — from Arizona to Palestine — are working towards one goal of fighting oppression and resisting everyday injustice.

Contacts:

Lina Bearat -ASU SJP President

602-528-5124, Lbearat@asu.edu

Shifa Al-Khatib -ASU SJP Media/PR

602-349-5524, shifa.alkhatib@gmail.com

Gabriel M Schivone -UofA SJP Co-coordinator

520-302-6006, gabrielm@email.arizona.edu

Rebecca Iliana -National M.E.Ch.A.

760-265-3880, Gomez_rl@yahoo.com

Tony Verdugo IV -ASU M.E.Ch.A.
623-225-3708, tverdugo@asu.edu

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Students for Justice in Palestine will be hosting Israeli Apartheid Week from Feb 27 to March 2, 2012.

Monday, February 27
“Hebron: A Microcosm of Israeli Occupation and Palestinian Resistance”
7:00-9:00pm, Business Administration (BA) Room 341

What does peacemaking look like on the ground in places like Hebron, Palestine? Join us for a lecture by Bob Holmes, an activist working to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Father Bob Holmes is part of the Christian Peacemaker Teams and works alongside Palestinians, Israelis, Internationals, Muslims, Jews, Christians and others in leading nonviolent resistance initiatives against the Israeli occupation.

Wednesday, March 29
Tears of Gaza: A Movie Screening
7:00-9:00pm, LSE Room 106

This documentary by Norwegian director Vibeke Lokkeberg focuses on the Gaza War from the perspective of children. The film is based upon videos taken by the civilian population in Gaza during the 2008-2009 Massacre and has won several international film competitions, including a Human Rights award from the Al-Jazeera Documentary Festival in 2011.

Free pizza and drinks will be provided!

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Join Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Law Students’ Association for a lecture with Dr. Noam Chomsky, a renowned linguist and social activist from MIT. Dr. Noam Chomsky will speak about the conflict in Palestine-Israel, the roles that United States and the media play in the conflict, and prospects for peace and justice in the land.

The lecture will be in the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Great Hall (http://www.asu.edu/map/interactive/?campus=tempe&building=LAW) at 12:00 pm on Thursday, February 9. We hope to see you there!

Note: The lecture will also be streamed online tomorrow at noon. Please click on the following link to view Dr. Chomsky’s talk: http://online.law.asu.edu/events/2012/chomsky/

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Join us for an inspiring lecture from Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The author of BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, Omar will lecture on the boycotts, divestment, and sanctions within the nonviolent movements of Mandela and King and how these tactics can be applied within international Palestinian solidarity activism.

The lecture will be in COOR 170 (http://www.asu.edu/map/interactive/?campus=tempe&building=COOR) at 7:00pm. The best parking option for this event is the Apache parking structure (http://www.asu.edu/map/interactive/?campus=tempe&building=PS%20APACHE%20BLVD).

Hope to see you all there–help us support the struggle for equal rights in Israel and Palestine!

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Please sign and share this petition, telling ASU’s Student Government NOT to support the Israeli occupation of Palestine! Sign here: http://www.change.org/petitions/arizona-state-university-undergraduate-student-government-support-an-end-to-the-israeli-occupation-of-palestine-2

As a student, alumnus, or faculty member at Arizona State University, I support equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. The Israeli occupation violates standards of human rights and international law, since it:

1) Denies Palestinians’ their right to autonomy
2) Restricts Palestinian movement within the West Bank and Gaza
3) Prevents Palestinians from accessing appropriate medical care
4) Annexes Palestinian land via illegal settlement construction
5) Transfers part of the Israeli population to the West Bank in contradiction of the Fourth Geneva Convention
6) Leads to the construction of the Separation Wall, a barrier that was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice and is constructed primarily on Palestinian lands
7) Requires the use of armed military force against civilian populations, including the Gaza Massacre where over 1,400 Palestinians were killed

Finally, I am opposed to the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, which costs the United States over $3 billion per year. This money could be better used to support education, healthcare, or other social programs in the United States.

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Join Students for Justice in Palestine as we protest the AIPAC National Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona!  This Sunday, October 30, we will protest AIPAC’s support for human rights abuses outside the Fairmont Hotel from 4:00-6:30 pm, while AIPAC holds a closed summit for high-profile donors.

We are protesting AIPAC at this summit because AIPAC puts Israeli interests before American interests, and supports human right violations against Palestinians, including the apartheid wall, settlements, and siege of Gaza. AIPAC is the primary lobby behind the United States’ sending 3 BILLION dollars in military aid to Israel.

We need to show AIPAC that we Americans do not support them. Please join us in our protest and invite your family and friends! Carpools will be available from Arizona State University’s Tempe campus–contact us for more information.

The Facebook event can be viewed here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=246858632029540

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Join us for an insightful evening lecture from the Co-founder of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Dr. Jeff Halper.

When: Tuesday, October 18th
Time: 7-10PM
Where: BAC 216, Tempe Campus, ASU(http://www.asu.edu/map/interactive/?campus=tempe&building=BAC)

Dr. Jeff Halper, Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a peace and human rights activist for more than three decades, grew up in Hibbing, Minnesota. He took part in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s; after resisting military service and attending rabbinical school for a short time, he immigrated to Israel in 1973. He taught at universities in Israel, the US, Latin America, and Africa before taking up the directorship of ICAHD.

In Israel, Dr. Halper taught anthropology at Haifa and Ben-Gurion Universities.  During his mandatory Israeli military service, he refused to bear arms or serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. In 1997, he co-founded the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) to challenge Israel’s house demolition policies that create the dispossession of thousands of Palestinian families.

As Halper explains, “We are against the Israeli policy of occupation and displacement. If you create an apartheid situation, if you lock another people into prison, in the end, you cannot develop a healthy, normal, and prosperous society.  The occupation, the conflict, terrorism, the settlements — all affect Israeli society and its economy.  As long as the occupation continues, Israel itself cannot be free.”

“We think, as Israelis, that Jews and Arabs should live together,” Halper says.  “Palestinians have rights of self-determination just like we have.  We have to fight also for their rights.  One of our slogans is ‘we refuse to be their enemies.’”

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Arizona State University Students for Justice in Palestine joined with thirty-two other student Palestine solidarity groups to issue a statement condemning the unjust convictions of the Irvine 11.

“Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face.  But I left with a smile.  I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. It was the crime of joining my people in a nonviolent protest against injustice.“

-Martin Luther King, Jr. (Case No. 7399, convicted of “violating the state (of Alabama)’s anti-boycott law,” March 22, 1956, from Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story.)

We join our voices with the unjustly charged and convicted Irvine 11, who dared to draw attention to Israel’s war crimes. Orange County District Attorney, Tony Rackauckus, has punished students who care about the world enough to try to change it. The 11 students refused to remain silent when Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren spoke at the University of California, Irvine in February 2010. Their brief outbursts, at best representing protected First Amendment speech and at worst harmless civil disobedience, have led to McCarthyistic misdemeanor charges. On September 23, 2011, an Orange Country jury found them “guilty.”

We unequivocally condemn these charges, which unfairly single out and criminalize Muslim students who chose to exercise their First Amendment right to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses. Had the speaker not been Israeli, had the issue not been Palestine, had the students not been Muslim, these charges never would have been pursued. Rather, these charges reflect a climate of Islamophobia and an irrational exceptionalism for Israel when it comes to free speech. The charges chill the free exchange of ideas and students’ right to protest at universities nationwide.

It is our right and duty to speak out against Israel’s egregious violations of international law and Palestinian rights.  The American government gives Israel over three billion dollars a year in military aid and is therefore directly responsible for Israel’s actions. We are troubled by the increased suppression of student voices in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Student groups around the country continue to be targeted for their criticisms of Israeli governmental policies. University administrators find themselves under intense pressure from the Israel Lobby when pro-Palestine events occur on campus. It comes in the form of public smearing, alumni pressure, and frivolous lawsuits, as well as U.S. Department of Education investigations that seek to classify criticism of Israel as a violation of students’ civil rights. But it is the criminal prosecution of the Irvine 11 and the silencing of student activists everywhere that violate our civil rights.

It is inconceivable to suggest that Ambassador Oren, who has published four opinion-editorials in the New York Times alone and can easily command the attention of newspapers and television crews, has been denied a voice. On the other hand, it is routine for Palestinians to be silenced by the military and government that he represents without any media attention. The Irvine 11 shed light on the Palestinian voices constantly excluded from the media and public discourse.

To the Irvine 11: you are not alone. Like Dr. King wrote of his own unjust verdict, this week in September, the court convicted more than just you; it convicted every student dedicated to upholding human rights and ending injustice. We commend you for your courage and moral clarity. We know that the Irvine 11 are convicted criminals—but we are proud of their crime.

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“…Instead of stopping the movement, the opposition’s tactics had only served to give it greater momentum, and to draw us closer together. What the opposition failed to see was that our mutual sufferings had wrapped us all in a single garment of destiny. What happened to one happened to all.”

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Signatories

National SJP Coordinating Committee

American University SJP
Arizona State University SJP
Benedictine University SJP
Boston University SJP
Brandeis SJP
Brandeis JVP
Brown University SJP
Columbia University SJP
Cornell SJP
DePaul University SJP
Florida International University SJP
Florida State University Students United for Justice in Palestine
Hunter College SJP
Illinois Institute of Technology SJP
Loyola University MESA
Loyola University Chicago SJP
Northwestern University SJP
Ohio State University SJP
San Diego State University SJP
School of the Art Institute Chicago SJP
St. Xavier University SJP
Temple University SJP
University of California – Berkeley SJP
University of California – Los Angeles SJP
University of California – Riverside SJP
University of California – San Diego SJP
University of Chicago SJP
University of Michigan – Students Allied for Freedom & Equality (SAFE)
University of Minnesota Twin Cities SJP
University of New Mexico SJP
University of Pittsburgh SJP
University of Southern California SJP
University of Texas at Austin Palestine Solidarity Committee

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In a recent article on his website, JuanCole.com, Dr. Cole analysis the different excuses that Israel uses to deny statehood to Palestine and reject the 1967 borders. It is an excellent read and especially relevant in light of  president Obama’s recent speech and endorsement of the 1967 borders for the basis of a Palestinian state. I’m including a couple of excerpts below:

Why Israel needs to retreat to the 1967 borders:

…the annexation of territory from a neighbor through warfare is illegal according to the United Nations Charter, which is a treaty to which Israel and the United States are both signatories. ‘Greater Israel’ apologists attempt to get out of this difficulty by saying that countries used to conquer land away from their neighbors all the time. This is a bogus argument, since countries used to do a lot of things, including sponsor the slave trade; Britain even insisted on China allowing the sale of opium in the early 19th century. The world changed when World War II ended and the countries of the world established the United Nations to forestall any recrudescence of Axis techniques of conquest and rule. If Israel does not believe in the UN Charter, it should renounce its UN membership.

On Israel’s security concerns:

Netanyahu’s argument for not going back to 1967 borders is that it is inconvenient. He says that the 1967 borders are indefensible. This assertion is a logical fallacy, known as special pleading. You can’t launch a war and annex your neighbor’s territory because you fear that your own presents security challenges. Lots of countries are unhappy with their borders. Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait in 1990 in part because he felt that the British had erred in not giving modern Iraq a deep water port, which made Iraq ‘indefensible’ and put it at an economic disadvantage. Pakistan believes that its failure to secure the headwaters of the Indus Valley rivers in Kashmir in 1947 puts it at a permanent disadvantage vis-a-vis India and makes the country overly vulnerable (‘indefensible’). Netanyahu’s immoral argument that a country just has to take by main force whatever it feels will make it more secure is astonishing and is a standing danger to world peace if it were taken seriously by other countries.

The full article can be read here: What lies Behind Netanyahu’s Bluster on ’1967 Borders’

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Remi Kanazi, spoken word artist and activist, performed poems from his latest book, Poetic Injustice, at Arizona State University. To learn more about Remi Kanazi, visit http://www.poeticinjustice.net/.

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