Letter to the editor: NYU SJP
April 14, 2015
Thirty years ago last Saturday, tireless organizing by NYU students led the administration to recognize the need to divest from apartheid South Africa. Today, NYU Students for Justice in Palestine calls on the NYU community to join the struggle to achieve a similar victory for Palestinians.
NYU Out of Occupied Palestine, a campus coalition of students, student organizations and faculty, recently announced its campaign urging the university to divest any holdings it has in companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine. These are the companies that design security technology for Israel’s 325 mile apartheid wall, which is illegal according to international law. These are the companies that produce specially outfitted bulldozers, which the Israeli army used to illegally demolish Palestinian homes. These are the companies that provided the weapons for this summer’s Gaza-Israel conflict, in which 2,100 Palestinians were killed, 500 of whom were children and 1,473 of whom were civilians.
A faculty letter in support of the campaign has already garnered over 130 signatures. Following the letter’s publication, the NYU Faculty of Arts and Sciences held a historic forum on April 8 that addressed the issues of divestment from corporations profiting off Israeli apartheid and the illegal occupation of Palestine, fossil fuel companies and labor violations across NYU satellite campuses. Three campus groups were featured in the discussion: NYU Out of Occupied Palestine, Coalition for Fair Labor at NYU and NYU Divest.
NYU Students for Justice in Palestine lends full support to this faculty initiative. It is a significant step forward, following several other divestment campaigns nationwide, and an advancement of the international campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.
While this campaign focuses on the occupied territories, NYU SJP is committed to ending racism and colonialism within all of Israel and the Palestinian territories with the understanding that the violations in the occupied territories are the necessary consequences of Zionism. These oppressions include settler-colonization, ethnic cleansing, racist discrimination and segregation, bombardment and siege of Gaza and the illegal military occupation of the West Bank.
The Palestinian struggle for justice does not end in Israel and Palestine, but extends to many other areas of the world — even the NYU campus. In a recent statement, the NYU Senate Financial Affairs Committee Divestment Working Group stated that the university would only divest funds in instances in which there is “a clear and compelling moral or humanitarian objective.” Our university should not continue to invest in the occupation of Palestine and the perpetual Israeli violence against Palestinians — NYU must divest from the companies responsible for these human rights violations. It is time for the NYU community to make another critical contribution to dismantling oppression, racism and imperialism on a global scale by divesting from companies that enable Israeli apartheid.
Ellis Garey, Shafeka Hashash, and Evan Jones are organizers with NYU Students for Justice in Palestine. For more information about NYU-SJP, please visit https://nyusjp.wordpress.com/.
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, April 15 print edition. Email the authors at [email protected].
NYC81 • Nov 9, 2015 at 6:11 pm
I don’t support killing Palestinian civilians at all…but honestly, this issue is overblown way out of proportion at this point. Why not the Kurds or Tibetans or any other people? Are the Palestinians the only victims in this world, deserving of our attention?
William Devillis • Apr 21, 2015 at 8:30 am
Here’s the big difference between Palestinians and Israelis. This says it all.
Last summer’s war between Hamas and Israeli began, despite everything else that went on between the two parties, with the killing of three Israelinteens and the retaliatory killing of a Palestinian boy.
Hamas kidnapped three Israeli teens and killed them in the West Bank. The killers were hidden but finally found by Israeli police. The mother of one of the killers, the leading Palestinian imams and leaders and PA’s Abbas all praised the kidnapping and killings, called for more even putting this on their website and Facebook page. The PA honored the three as heroes as they have done before. Over 200 parks, streets, buildings, etc. have been named for these fierce freedom fighters who blew up a Sbarras filled with family’s, blew up a Passover Seder, blew up a bus to the beach, shot up a university cafeteria, blew up a teen night club, kidnapped a school bus and killed the children.
Hamas and the PA have publicly stated that killing Israeli children is legal since one day they might grow up to be Israeli soldiers. THATS THE PALESTINIAN WAY.
After the Three teens were killed, six Israelis kidnapped and burned to death a Palestinian boy for revenge.
The mother of one of the six arrested, Israelis leading rabbis and political leaders called the act horrific, disgraceful, inexcusable. Netanyahu called the six terrorists for he despicable act. Yes a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist if you murder innocent people.
This week was Holocaust Remembrance Week where Israelis also honor the victims of terrorism. The Palestinian boy was officially honored by getting Israelin govt as a victim of terror. THATS THE HUMANITY THAT THE PALESTINIANS HAVE NEVER AMD WILL NEVER HAVE.
AS a Saudi Arabian naval commander wrote two years ago, the Palestinians need to stop blaming everything on Israel and start building a Society. He stated that Israel was the least of the Arab world’s worries. Look where Israel is technically, agriculturally and every way since 1948. Had the Palestinians accepted Israel in 1948 instead of vowing their destruction, they might be in the same place as Israel today. Don’t think so? After Israels peace agreement with Egypt, Israel sent advisors to Egypt to train over 25,000 Egyptian youth on how to grow, food, set up irrigation systems, etc in the desert as succesfully as the Israelis had learned to do.
William Devillis • Apr 20, 2015 at 9:21 pm
Groups like SJP and MSA are the most honest supporters of Palestinian rights and are not bigots or hypocrites. That’s why they protested
1. The AP report last week that Hamas has used virtually all of the billions in aid, thousands of tons of cement and tens of thousands of concrete blocks received since the 2014 war to build new tunnels, purchase new rockets and rocket launchers while spending zero to help build housing and supply food and water. Oh wait, they didn’t protest such mistreatment of Palestinians.
2. ISIS beheaded hundreds at the Palestinan refugee camp atbYatmouk two weeks ago . Oh sorry, didn’t protest that mistreatment of the Palestinians.
3. Over the past two years, Syrian Rebels killed thousands in the same Yarmouk camp. Darn, sorry again, SJP and MSA didn’t protest that either.
4. Mais Ali Saleh, a Palestinian Muslim woman was valedictorian at Israels top med school in 2014. There are Palestinian women doctors, lawyers, engineers, techies and business people thruout Israel, opportunities they are not allowed under Hamas and the PA. Ha an Zoabi is a big Hamas supporter in the Israeli parliament because she was elected. No free elections under Hamas and the PA. Palestinian, as all women, raped in Israel are treated as victims. In the West Bank and Gaza, if raped, Palestinian women are the criminal and honor killings are not only legal but according to the PA itself, honor killings doubled in each othe past two years. SJP and MSA can’t protest that Palestinian women have more rights in Israel. It would be good for their hypocrisy movement.
5. Palestinan gays thrive in Israels growing gay community. Gays under the PA and Hamas are executed because it’s illegal. Didn’t see SJP and MSA show their support for Palestinian rights there either.
Still trying to figure out what reality SJP and MSA are living or lieing in.
6. After the 2014 war, 37 Gazans were executed in public for complaining about being forced to remain in their homes and be martyrs when Israel warned of attacks at nearby rocket launchers. Those are the PA and Hamas idea of civil rights. Remember the wall Israel built (successfully) to keep out terrorists. Palestinians in the West Bank sued the Israeli govt in Israel because the wall caused undue hardship. The Israeli Supreme Court agreed and ordered the govt to move the wall in a number of areas. Damn those Israelis. It’s not fair that they treat Palestinians better than their own govt.
7. When Israel pulled out its settlers from Gaza ten years ago., they left behind hundreds of houses and apartment buildings and 300 working and stocked greenhouses. Hamas response was to destroy it all. Our people won’t live in Jew houses or eat Jew food. Such concern for its own people. Let them starve and live in camps.
Just as an aside, Israel appointed a Palestinan as the new Deputy Minister of Science and Technology.
In 2000, 2001 and 2008, Israel offered the Palestinians a state with East Jerusalem as it’s capital. One time they offered to pull all settlers out. The other two times Israel offered an equal land swap. They offered a trade agreement. They offered billions in aid. All the Palestinians had to do was recognize Israel as a Jewish state (which had thriving Muslim and Christian populations as opposed to the PA and Hamad who’ve made it clear no Jews will be allowed) and they had to remove that portion of their charters which call for the destruction of Israel. They couldn’t bring themselves to do that in exchange for peace.
SJP and MSA are not human rights groups. They’re just another group of haters bigiots and hypocrites.
One last point, if you truly support your own BDS movement, why are you using digital phones, tablets,mlaptops, etc. all are made with printed circuit boards. The one company with the patent for the equipment used to make all these circuit boards, Orbotech. Israeli of course. So stop reading this and be true to your cause. Thought so, as I said Hypocrits.
Aniung • Apr 16, 2015 at 6:47 pm
This is a long due action for NYU, as one of the leading Universities in the country, to speak up and take a clear stance against the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories, the continue violence in Palestine and the recent racist and discriminatory remarks by Israel prime minister Netanyahu in the latest elections. Taking a stance against illegal activities perpetuated by the state of Isreal has nothing to do with Judaism, with religion of any kind, anti-semitism, presence or absence of a democratically elected government (one would say that a government elected by urging “Jews” to vote as <> is indicative of an apartheid state). If Israel wants to be an apartheid Jewish state, that is fine, but they should give Palestine full recognition as an Arab state (or maybe even a free state, where everyone is under the same law), with control of it’s own borders, freeing its territories and halting all illegal violence. I hope NYU continues to pursue justice, above all propaganda, because a higher education institution is about critical thinking and standing for peace and justice is an important sign of that.
Messy57 • Apr 23, 2015 at 5:34 pm
The Palestinians are in FAVOR of an apartheid state. Sunnis at the top, Shias next, then Christians…..Jews are to be BANNED. That’s apartheid.
Arafat • Apr 15, 2015 at 9:31 am
• In the world of the BDS (Bigoted, Discriminatory Scumbags) movement, Palestinian nationalism is OK, Muslim nationalism is OK, Arab nationalism is OK, but Jewish nationalism is evil and must be erased/destroyed.
And in the world of BDS, democracies are OK, except if they result in a Jewish state. So, if people vote, and choose to define their state as Muslim, or Arab, that’s OK. But if people vote, and choose to define their state as Jewish, that’s NOT OK, and the solution is to add 5 million Jew-hating Palestinians into that state, AND THEN VOTE AGAIN, and when Jews are now voted out of existence, and Israeli Jews become a hated minority under an Islamic majority that hates their guts, THAT is “justice” in the eyes of the BDS psychopaths.
Arafat • Apr 15, 2015 at 9:31 am
BDS is an anti-Semitic, racist movement, plain and simple. There are 49 Muslim majority countries in the world that identify themselves as Muslim and where Islam is considered the official religion of the state. But the BDS movement doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. They have a problem with only one nation, the Jewish one, which they wish to be supplanted with yet another dysfunctional Muslim state.
Arafat • Apr 15, 2015 at 9:30 am
The BDS movement represents malevolent fascism that has no problem with dictatorships and autocrats but seeks instead to target the only democratic, free country in the Mideast, Israel.