The AAUP’s statement is nothing new and is as incoherent on the academic and cultural boycott of Israel as it has proven to be since 2006 when it succumbed to outside pressure and withdrew support for an AAUP conference on academic boycott at the Rockefeller Conference Center in Bellagio, effectively engaging in censorship. In the first place the statement is factually misleading. The academic boycott is not merely being “advocated by some pro-Palestinian groups”, nor did Stephen Hawking make his decision based on the call of “pro-Palestinain groups”. He did so, according to his own statement, in response to the appeal of Palestinian scholars, just as USACBI has responded to the call of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations who have endorsed the Palestinian call for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. What the AAUP seeks to disguise by its framing of the issue is that the academic boycott has never been the work of some small pressure groups in the US, but represents a global movement that is seeking a non-violent means to end the systematic dispossession of and discrimination against the Palestinian people. In this respect, it does resemble the boycott movement against South Africa’s apartheid regime, which the AAUP did support, with the difference that whereas that movement did call for individual boycotts of South African scholars, cultural workers, and sports persons, PACBI’s call is specifically and exclusively institutional.

The AAUP’s statement furthermore falsely implies that the boycott is directed at the opinions or beliefs of Israeli and other academics. It is not. It is directed at the ongoing practices of the Israeli state and of its institutions. Part of Israel’s systematic dispossession of and discrimination against the Palestinians includes restrictions on freedom of movement that grossly violate academic freedom, interfere with the access of students and faculty to their institutions, prevent scholars from taking up fellowships abroad or attending conferences; school closures whose duration prevents a regular academic life from being pursued; the deliberate destruction of academic and educational institutions; and the establishment of a network of discriminatory regulations that prevent Palestinians in Israel from having equal access to higher education there. That is merely a partial list of violations of academic freedom that are so pervasive as to amount to what some scholars have named “scholasticide” and which form part of a larger system that can only be understood as aimed at preventing the reproduction and survival of Palestinian intellectual life and culture. Israeli institutions of higher education not only have remained silent on these issues; they participate daily in shaping the infrastructure of occupation within which this discriminatory system operates and, by their own maintenance of discriminatory regimes, further that system.

Academic freedom is indeed a universal right. But the AAUP’s position makes an exception for Palestinians, suggesting that, so long as Israel and its supporters maintain a loud and prominent voice that demonizes all criticism of and practical opposition to that state’s policies, Palestinian rights, and the means that Palestinians have overwhelmingly advocated to defend and secure them, can be safely disregarded. This flies in the face of the long recognized notion that parties responsible for the persistent and ongoing breach of universally recognized norms of conduct should face the sanction of their peers.

In effect, AAUP’s position on academic boycott succeeds in making nonsense of any claim that an organization of academics could have any practical impact on issues that concern us most closely, namely the protection of rights to academic freedom. Individual expressions of distaste for governmental policies that are, it should be added, policies that are protected and abetted by successive US administrations and even more so by the US Congress, may be honorable but are surely ineffective unless they are articulated within the context of an organized social movement. Only a powerful and moral civil society movement can challenge the blockade on change that occurs when governments collude in the denial of rights. In the 1980s the name of that collusion was “constructive engagement” with apartheid and it took the international divestment movement to break it. That necessarily involved not merely the boycott of oranges from the Cape, but a more powerful and effective sports and cultural boycott. The academic boycott of Israel is the equivalent of that sports and cultural boycott, In the present time, US academics can and should exercise their legitimate influence by organizing and subscribing to the institutional academic boycott of Israel: it is not only morally imperative; it is consistent with the fundamental principle that academic freedom is a universal right. Or, in the language of other unions, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” To refuse to engage is to suggest that, for whatever reasons, Palestinian scholars do not belong in the community of scholarship nor, by extension, in the full community of human beings.

The latter is not a position worthy of the AAUP.

We in the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) congratulate the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) for their historic and principled decision to support the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The resolution that was passed at the national conference of AAAS makes clear the commitment of the AAAS “to the preservation and support of academic freedom and of the right to education for students and scholars in the U.S. and globally” and “the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine.”

This resolution makes the AAAS the first national, professional academic organization in the U.S. to honor the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott “Israeli academic institutions [which] are deeply complicit in Israel’s violations of international law and human rights and in its denial of the right to education and academic freedom to Palestinians, in addition to their basic rights as guaranteed by international law.”

It is inspiring that scholars in the AAAS have taken this step to express the anti-colonial, anti-racist, and anti-war principles that are core to Asian American and ethnic studies, noting that “the Association for Asian American Studies seeks to advance a critique of U.S. empire, opposing US military occupation in the Arab world and U.S. support for occupation and racist practices by the Israeli state.” This is also an important act of solidarity, given that “Arab (West Asian) and Muslim American communities, students, and scholars have been subjected to profiling, surveillance, and civil rights violations that have circumscribed their freedom of political expression, particularly in relation to the issue of human rights in Palestine-Israel.”

We hope that this resolution will inspire other US academic associations and scholars everywhere to follow the path of AAAS and endorse the academic boycott. The resolution supports the academic freedom of scholars and students in Palestine, as well as in the US, and challenges the exceptional silencing of critical discussion of Palestine in the US academy. As the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) grows globally, it is apparent that the AAAS is courageous, pioneering, and on the right side of history, willing to take actions to realize a world free of colonialism, apartheid, occupation, and war.

The resolution that passed may be downloaded and read here: http://www.usacbi.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/AAAS-resolution.FINAL_.pdf

AAAS campaign’s facebook page: https://m.facebook.com/oppalestine/posts/595701773775504#!/events/146226035549855?__user=1125593404

Alicia Keys is scheduled to play to a segregated audience in Israel on July 4, 2013 at Nokia Arena in Tel Aviv. Other bands will open for her, but have not been announced yet.

Join the Facebook/Twitter campaign here.

CONTACT:
Sundus Seif, brooklyncollegesjp@gmail.com

NEW YORK – The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter of Brooklyn College deplores the efforts of politicians and others to bully student activists and faculty and to smear supporters of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel as anti-Semites.

In recent days, opponents of an event on BDS to be held on campus February 7 have attacked the organizers and scheduled speakers, internationally renowned philosopher Judith Butler and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti, as well as the political science department and university administration for co-sponsoring the event. This is just the latest in a series of incidents involving attempts to silence criticism of Israel at Brooklyn College.

Opponents of the February 7 event have made deeply offensive and inflammatory accusations against supporters of BDS, with State Assemblyman Alan Maisel going so far as to warn of “the potential for a second Holocaust here.” Other prominent critics include lawyer Alan Dershowitz, who has openly called for the United States and Israel to use torture, and State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a follower of the late Meir Kahane, an Israeli-American rabbi whose racist Kach movement has been outlawed by the US and Israel as a terrorist organization for advocating the expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories and for carrying out violent terrorist attacks against Palestinians and others.

It is outrageous and perverse to conflate BDS proponents and our stance in support of equal rights and freedom for Palestinians with anti-Semitism and Nazism. Contrary to the claims of these detractors, the BDS movement is an inclusive, nonviolent, civil society-led campaign whose goal is to pressure Israel into respecting Palestinian human rights and abiding by international law, in the absence of action on the part of the US government and international community to do so. It is comprised of people of all faiths and backgrounds, including many Israeli and American Jews. Leaders of the BDS movement have always rejected and condemned any and all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism. As SJP-BC’s mission statement says, we “reject any form of hatred or discrimination against any religious or ethnic group.”

As supporters of Palestinian rights and of academic freedom and free speech on campus, we commend Brooklyn College President Karen Gould for showing leadership and not succumbing to pressure from bullies like Dershowitz and Hikind, who seek to suppress criticism of Israel by smearing advocates of Palestinian freedom and equality as bigots.

For nearly 65 years, Palestinians have been dispossessed, colonized, and denied the most basic of human rights and freedoms by Israel. For more than 45 years, they have endured a brutal and illegal Israeli military occupation that becomes more entrenched each day. More than 11 million Palestinian refugees, the survivors and descendants of the approximately 750,000 Palestinians who were ethnically-cleansed during Israel’s creation in 1948, are prevented from exercising their internationally-recognized right of return to the land and homes they were expelled from simply because they are not Jewish, while those Palestinians who remained inside Israel after 1948, who make up about 20% of the population today, face widespread institutionalized discrimination and are treated as second- or third-class citizens. As the international community looks on and does nothing to hold Israel accountable for its actions, global civil society is taking the lead with BDS.

In spite of the attacks against us, SJP will continue with our efforts to educate the public about Israel’s grave and systematic abuses of Palestinian human rights and the racist, apartheid regime Israel has instituted in the territories
it controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

For more information, visit SJP Brooklyn College’s website at www.brooklynsjp.com or email us at brooklyncollegesjp@gmail.com.

G4S has been nominated for the infamous ‘Worst Company of the Year’ Public Eye People’s Award’. G4S is complicit in human rights abuses across the world and helps Israel commit crimes against the Palestinians.  G4S is involved in running Israel’s prisons, checkpoints, police force and Apartheid Wall.

Israel has a contract with the Israeli Prison service and provides equipment and services to prisons at which Israel detains Palestinian political prisoners without charge and subjects them to torture and ill-treatment. Many Palestinian political prisoners remain on hunger strike to protest detention without trial and one prisoner, Samer Al-Issawi, is approaching 165 days of hunger strike.

Voting closes on January 23 and the winner will be announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Let’s embarrass G4S for its support for Israeli Apartheid at one of the most important corporate events of the year.

Please take a minute to vote for G4S and and share this widely.

Click here to go to the voting page 
http://www.publiceye.ch/en/vote/g4s/ 

Background information 

G4S is a British-Danish private security company that provides services and equipment to Israeli prisons, checkpoints, the Apartheid Wall and the Israeli police.

In 2007, G4S signed a contract with the Israeli Prison Authority to provide security systems and other services for major Israeli prisons. G4S provides systems for the Ketziot and Megiddo prisons, which hold Palestinian political prisoners from occupied Palestinian territory inside Israel. Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer of prisoners from occupied territory into the territory of the occupier.

G4S also provides equipment for Ofer prison, located in the occupied West Bank, and for Kishon and Moskobiyyeh detention facilities, at which human rights organisations have documented systematic torture and ill treatment of Palestinian prisoners, including child prisoners. Defence for Children-Palestine (DCI-Palestine) has released an urgent appeal to end the practice of holding Palestinian children from the West Bank in solitary confinement in facilities in Israel. The organization has documented 53 such cases since 2008.

As Palestinian political prisoners begun a mass hunger strike on April 17, Palestinian organisations called for action to be taken to hold G4S accountable for its involvement with Israel’s unlawful detention of Palestinians.

G4S is also complicit with other aspects of Israel’s system of apartheid over the Palestinian people. G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank that form part of the route of Israel’s illegal Wall and to the terminals isolating the occupied and besieged territory of Gaza. G4S has also signed contracts for equipment and services for the West Bank Israeli Police headquarters and to private businesses based in illegal Israeli settlements. A panel of legal experts concluded that G4S may be criminally liable for its activities in support of Israel’s illegal Wall and other violations of international law.

G4S has attempted to deflect the criticism it has been facing by announcing that it intends to end some aspects of its involvement in Israel’s illegal settlements by 2015. However, this response is unsatisfactory. The public announcements make no mention of the participation of G4S in the illegal detention and torture of Palestinian political prisoners inside Israel. Additionally, the announcement mentions only some aspects of the company’s involvement in Israel’s illegal settlements and pledges only to exit them at some undetermined point in the future.

Solidarity activists have already started to take effective action against G4S:

- A student-led campaign at the University of Oslo pressured the university to announce that it will terminate its contract with G4S in July 2013.

- Pressure by campaign groups and members of the European Parliament was followed by a decision by the European Union not to renew its contract with G4S for security services at some of its Brussels premises.

- In the UK, mainstream newspapers prominently covered a demonstration that took place outside the G4S annual meeting and have pressured a major energy company to end ties with the company.

- In Denmark, a major bank and several large NGOs have cut their ties to the company because of its ties to Israeli apartheid.

Occupied Palestine
 
Dear Erik Truffaz,

We at the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) urge you to cancel your participation in the Red Sea Festival. We hope that this urgent appeal from us, a campaign that enjoys overwhelming consensus amongst Palestinian civil society, will convince you to cancel your participation in this festival.

Since you have visited the occupied Palestinian territories before, you must know that Palestinian jazz fans, in the occupied West Bank and particularly those in besieged Gaza, will not be allowed to attend your concert. As you may have seen, in the West Bank, Israel restricts Palestinians’ freedom of movement and of speech; blocks access to lands, health care, and education; imprisons Palestinian leaders and human rights activists without charge or trial; and inflicts, on a daily basis, humiliation and violence at the more than 600 military checkpoints and roadblocks.  All the while, Israel continues to build its illegal wall on Palestinian land and to support the ever-expanding network of illegal, Jewish-only settlements that divide the West Bank into Bantustans. In Gaza, Palestinians have been subjected to a criminal and immoral siege since 2006 and repeated vicious attacks, the latest of which was less than two months ago.  As part of Israel’s siege, not only various types of medicines, candles, books, crayons, clothing, shoes, blankets, pasta, tea, coffee and chocolate are prevented from entering Gaza, but also musical instruments from reaching the 1.5 million Palestinians incarcerated in the world’s largest open-air prison [1].

The Red Sea Jazz Festival’s top sponsors are the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Sport as well as the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. The policy of using culture to whitewash Israeli violations of international law was openly confirmed by the Israeli government with the launch of a global ‘Brand Israel’ campaign. According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the objective of this rebranding campaign, which “could include organizing film festivals,” is to convey the message that “a better image for Israel and a better performance of that image is part and parcel [of] Israel’s national security. Contrary to popular belief, national security is not just based on military power, it’s also a strong economy and a strong image” [2]. This language reveals – as did similar endeavours by the South African Apartheid regime – a cynical and systematic attempt at manipulating world opinion. It aims to obfuscate the real nature of Israel’s military occupation and apartheid and to divert attention from its ongoing war crimes by portraying it as a vibrant, cultural and artistic hub. Your performance will hence be interpreted, especially by supporters of Israel, as an endorsement.

It is not unusual for jazz artists to refuse to play in front of the segregated audiences at the Red Sea Jazz Festival.  Stanley Jordan has just cancelled his participation in this festival.[3]   Furthermore, In 2011, Eddie Palmieri [4] and Jason Moran [5] both quietly cancelled their gigs.

With Israel’s continued disregard for international law and the basic rights of the Palestinian people, the kind of solidarity we expect from people of conscience around the world is to heed the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions, as they did in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Roger Waters recently wrote:

Where governments refuse to act people must, with whatever peaceful means are at their disposal. For me this means declaring an intention to stand in solidarity, not only with the people of Palestine but also with the many thousands of Israelis who disagree with their government’s policies, by joining the campaign of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel.  This is [however] a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.  Artists were right to refuse to play in South Africa’s Sun City resort until apartheid fell and white people and black people enjoyed equal rights. And we are right to refuse to play in Israel.[6]

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has this view:

“International Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions against the Apartheid regime, combined with the mass struggle inside South Africa, led to our victory … Just as we said during apartheid that it was inappropriate for international artists to perform in South Africa in a society founded on discriminatory laws and racial exclusivity, so it would be wrong … to perform in Israel“.[7]

The boycott is about turning away from the policy of appeasement of the oppressor and instead,  standing in solidarity with the oppressed.  By cancelling your planned performance at the Red Sea Jazz festival, you would be helping greatly to stop this unjust form of apartheid which denies Palestinians their basic rights. Boycotts were effective in stopping South African apartheid, and they can also work to stop Israeli apartheid.

Respectfully,
PACBI

About PACBI

In 2004, inspired by the triumphant cultural boycott of apartheid South Africa, and supported by key Palestinian unions and cultural groups, PACBI issued a call for the academic and cultural boycott of institutions involved in Israel’s occupation and apartheid [8].  The 2004 Palestinian call appealed to international artists to refuse to perform in Israel or participate in events that serve to equate the occupier and the occupied [9] and thus contribute to the continuation of injustice.  Following this, in 2005, an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil society called for an all-encompassing BDS campaign based on the principles of human rights, justice, freedom and equality[10].  The BDS movement adopts a nonviolent, morally consistent strategy to hold Israel accountable to the same human rights standards as other nations. It is asking artists to heed the boycott call until “Israel withdraws from all the lands occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem; removes all its colonies in those lands; agrees to United Nations resolutions relevant to the restitution of Palestinian refugees rights; and dismantles its system of apartheid.” [11]

Notes
[1] BBC Guide: Gaza Under Blockage http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7545636.stm
[2] http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/346848
[3] http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stanley-Jordan/14690024059
[4]Latin Jazz Great Eddie Palmieri: Thank You for Cancelling Israel Performance
http://refrainplayingisrael.posterous.com/latin-jazz-great-eddie-palmieri-thank-you-for
[5]Jazz Musician Jason Moran Cancels Concert in Apartheid Israel
[6]  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[7] http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article727749.ece/Tutu-urges-Cape-Town-Opera-to-call-off-Israel-tour
[8] http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=869
[9] http://pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1047
[10] http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/52
[11] http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=868

From New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT)

Join us on the first day of Cornell NYC Tech classes to leaflet and gather signatures

When: Monday 21^st January, 4-6pm

Where: 111 Eighth Ave (at 15^th St), NYC

Classes are to be held in donated temporary space at the Google offices until the main campus opens on Roosevelt Island in 2017.  NYACT will be distributing information outside the Google offices about The Technion’s involvement in developing remote controlled bulldozers, stealth drones, and protection systems for battle tanks used by Israel to destroy Palestinian houses and olive groves, assassinate Palestinian civilians, and rain terror from above in Gaza, as well as The Technion’s ongoing collaborations with major surveillance and weapons manufacturers.

Say No to Technion in NYC!

Support the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)

For more information and to sign our petition visit:

www.NYACT.net

NYACT@riseup.net

Ever since my childhood, I have always felt a deep connection with Native Americans. At the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker institution established in Palestine over a century ago, we learned about our shared history as indigenous peoples who have faced ethnic cleansing by European colonists and the importance of nonviolent resistance for freedom and dignity.

Many Palestinians and those in solidarity with our struggle had hoped that Joy Harjo would be principled in heeding the calls of another subjugated people. We have been profoundly dismayed by her recent decision to accept funding from Tel Aviv University, an Israeli state institution, and to not only perform there on Monday but also to serve  as a Writer-in-Residence. Soon after hearing this disappointing news, Native American peers of Harjo, including Robert Warrior, called on her to boycott the event. The Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) sent an open letter to Harjo imploring her to honor the boycott. A USACBI petition generated over 2,000 signatures within 36 hours. Harjo disregarded these requests and announced that she would proceed with the performance. Her statement expressed sympathy for Palestinian and Jewish suffering without acknowledging that many American settlers—like their Israeli counterparts—had also faced persecution in Europe, and that Jewish and Israeli voices have been invaluable to the BDS movement. Harjo crossed the picket line. She helped provide legitimacy to an institution that sits above the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Shaykh Muwannis while supporting the Israeli military occupation which is illegal under international law.

In Israel/Palestine, the displacement of Native Palestinian Christians and Muslims continues in an Israeli campaign to maintain a “Jewish state” privileging one ethno-religious group and institutionalizing segregation and discrimination with impunity. Israel just announced approval for 3,000 new Jewish-only settlement units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Each day, Israel steals more Palestinian land, bulldozes more homes, uproots more trees, and detains more children. The Palestinian cry for peace and justice continues after over six decades of dispossession. We look to people of conscience around the globe to hear this cry. Considering that Israel is the world’s largest recipient of U.S. aid, American tax dollars prolong the oppression of Palestinians.

Although this Trail of Tears continues, we have the power to stop it. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) call was issued in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations. This has become a global movement that draws inspiration from the South African struggle. Israel was one of apartheid South Africa’s greatest allies. Israel adopted many of South Africa’s policies which have been fundamental to the apartheid system imposed on indigenous Palestinians. Apartheid came to an end in South Africa as a result of external pressure through a global boycott, and the movement today boycotting Israeli organizations that are complicit in segregation and ethnic cleansing has been growing dramatically. The power of this approach comes from its effectiveness, nonviolent nature, targeting of institutions rather than individuals, and our demands for basic rights and Israeli compliance with international law.

Many activists have devoted countless hours in reaching out to Harjo on her Facebook page. So many of us have written respectfully as fans. I posted a comment explaining that Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip could not attend her performance because of the nature of the Israeli apartheid system, forced removal, and severe limits on mobility, including the right to travel from one Palestinian village to the next. It has been painful to see Harjo respond to various messages except those coming from Palestinian voices. She later posted: “I invite anyone here to sit at my kitchen table to speak with me.” Palestinians replied. I, too, sent a private email in addition to a Facebook message reiterating that we have limited mobility:

I understand what means to be indigenous to a land and to feel the spirit of our ancestors calling on us to return in the face of ethnic cleansing and colonization…My relatives and friends, who are now refugees in the West Bank… would all love to hear you speak, to meet you, to break bread with you on your kitchen table in Tel Aviv. Our village and ancestral lands are actually there beside you in Tel Aviv, yet we are refugees, and Palestinians are denied our right to return to homes and lands. My family and loved ones, who would be eager to accept your invitation cannot even travel freely within our own country, finding ourselves like animals behind cages, within Israeli prison cells, with a Wall three times the height of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of checkpoints between Palestinian towns, and Israeli settlements with Jewish-only roads devastating the earth.

I still have not received a response from Harjo.

We also drew her attention to those who have joined the boycott movement such as Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Roger Waters, Jewish Voice for Peace, among many others. We shared our recent victory with Stevie Wonder. We posted about our work with Palestinian Queers for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and an LGBT delegation from the U.S. to Palestine who endorsed BDS. The Indigenous and Women of Color delegation also called for BDS. We cited the Russell Tribunal on Palestine which included Dennis Banks from the American Indian Movement. We also posted that South Africans are helping to lead the global boycott struggle including Mbuyiseni Ndlozi. We shared the African National Congress’ official support for BDS and the statement by Baleka Mbete after her visit to Palestine that the Israeli regime “is far worse than Apartheid South Africa.”

No amount of pleading could move Harjo. She was persistent on accepting funds from—and granting legitimacy to—an institution complicit in Israeli colonization of Palestinian lands. Sarah Schulman, an esteemed writer and activist, who is lesbian, Jewish, and a supporter of the BDS movement also reached out to Harjo in an effort to convince her that the trip could instead engage Israelis and Palestinians in Tel Aviv and in the West Bank at venues that abide by the boycott guidelines. Schulman, too, had previously been invited to speak at Tel Aviv University and declined in order to honor the BDS call and used that as an opportunity for a solidarity visit that she chronicled in her recent book. Harjo refused Schulman’s request.

Academics and artists are not exempt from ethical responsibility. Just like with Sun City in apartheid South Africa, we saw the importance of musicians refusing to perform in solidarity with blacks and whites who expected action, not just words, in support of equal rights. Today, Palestinians and people of conscience around the world, including Israelis who are members of Boycott from Within are leading the struggle against ethnic cleansing and colonization despite the Israeli government’s criminalization of BDS activism. Though I am filled with sadness by Harjo’s actions, I am also filled with gladness that our movement will ultimately prevail because the arc of history bends toward justice. As Kahlil Gibran reminds us, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

Sa’ed Atshan is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. He is also a Lecturer in Peace and Justice Studies at Tufts University. Sa’ed is from Palestine where he continues to serve as an activist with alQaws, an organization promoting LGBTQ rights for Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Dear Joy Harjo,

We write you today on behalf of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Our Campaign is rooted in thePalestinian call upon academics and cultural workers of the world to take a stand for human rights and social justice by adopting the academic and cultural boycott of the state of Israel.

Over 1,000 people have signed the petition initiated by USACBI to date. This petition was written in order to urge you, now that you know about the boycott of Israel, to act in accord with the Palestinian call for BDS and cancel your performance at Tel Aviv University.

It is not too late. The performance has not yet happened. With your actions, you have the opportunity to have your voice against occupation, for human rights, and for compassion be heard ever more strongly and clearly – by cancelling your performance.

We urge you to join the global picket line of Israel – and not cross it. We would be happy to speak with you further about this.

Sincerely,

Nada Elia and Remi Kanazi
Organizing Collective members
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel