Students for a Democratic Society will kick off its fourth annual Israeli Apartheid Week starting Monday with a series of events throughout the week in hopes of educating students of the Palestine-Israeli conflict.
Israeli Apartheid Week is an annual international set of events from lectures, film screenings, cultural performances and mock set up of checkpoints that is held in cities and campuses across the globe that hopes to raise awareness about Israel’s apartheid policies toward Palestinians.
“We hope to combat Zionist propaganda and help our peers realize the realities of this inherently unjust oppression toward the Palestinian people through cultural programs and informative teach-ins,” said Fatima Syed, president of SDS.
In the West Bank, there is a separation barrier, also commonly referred to as apartheid wall, built that is 430 miles long and 26 feet tall. According to the September 2011 Fact Sheet, there are currently 522 roadblocks also known as checkpoints in the West Bank restricting movement for Palestinians.
“Students of all ethnic backgrounds should attend IAW not only to experience the life of a Palestinian in this day and age, but to gain knowledge about the $8 million a day that we Americans alone fund Israel. Our tax dollars should be spent here in our country and not to fund an illegal occupation,” said psychology junior Ola El-Mubasher.
SDS has built a mock separation barrier that will be set up Monday and Wednesday afternoon in Butler Plaza along with a mock checkpoint that students will go through in order to get a feel of what a checkpoint really is. At 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, there will be a discussion with professors and peers about our country’s pivotal role in this issue.
Along with a mock checkpoint, SDS will be screening “Roadmap to Apartheid” at 5 p.m. Tuesday in the Oberholtzer Ballroom.
Hungry for Justice Fast-a-thon will conclude the week with many students taking part in a 24 hour fast — they will not eat food for 24 hours but will drink water — to discuss political prisoners with the guest speaker Alison Weir, human rights activist and executive director of ifamericansknew.org.
“The prisoners in Palestine have broken every hunger strike record. The reason it’s important to maintain interest and keep their story in the media is because it’s clear Israel is not ready to negotiate their release. These prisoners have no charges against them; they have been detained entirely for political issues because of who they are; that doesn’t work today. We need to keep Israel accountable to international law, norms and common human decency,” said Dana El-Kurd, UH alumna who is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Apartheid = “apart” + “hood”. This is, and has been the Arabs’ policy; a Jew-free land. This is also why they ethnically cleansed Judea, Samaria, and Gaza of ALL Jews in 1948. It hasn’t been, nor is it, the Jewish policy, and over a million Arab citizens of Israel (and growing) are proof.
Yes children: Jews did live in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza- ALWAYS.
Well, obviously Jews lived here during Biblical times. We all know that.
If you look at the documents from the Cairo Geniza, dating back to the 9th century, you’ll find that there were Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
If you look at travelers’ accounts from the Early Middle Ages, such as Nahmanides, Benjamin of Tudela, and a host of others, you’ll find that there were Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
Rabbi Jechiel Ashkenazi, who was actually Sepharadi, purchased the Karite synagogue of Hebron in 1540 on behalf of the Sepharadi congregants.
If you read about Shabtai Tzvi, the false messiah of the 16th century, you’ll find that his “prophet” was Nathan of Gaza, where the center of his movement was located for a period.
In 1845, Dr. Ernst-Gustav Schultz, the Prussian Consul in Jerusalem, discussed the Jews living in Shechem (Nablus) and Hebron in his book, “Jerusalem, Eine Vorlesung”.
In fact, except for the periods of 1929-1931 and 1936-1968, there has been a significant Jewish presence in Hebron SINCE BIBLICAL TIMES.
The ONLY period of time where there were no Jews in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza was between 1948-1967, when the Arabs ethnically-cleansed ALL Jews from here.
And insisting that Judea be Jew-free again IS apartheid.
No one denies there was a Jewish presence in the West Bank in ancient times. You also cannot deny there was an Arab presence, as well as a Jewish presence “Arafat”. I don’t believe this pertains in any way to what is happening in palestine today. Settlers use different roads (which are off limits to Palestinians), Palestinians have Different ID’s, have to go through countless checkpoints that Jews don’t contend with, are subject to military law while Jews are not, have different colored license plates than Jews, the list goes on and on. It is apartheid because it is racial segregation through countless legislation from the Knesset. One such law shows itself in the form of the Jewish “right of return”. No matter your country of origin, a Jew around the world is given full citizenship simply because they are Jewish, while a Palestinian who was exiled In the years before and until 1948 are not given such a luxury (not to mention the refugees of 1967). Does it make sense that a Jew says they have a right to the land because they were forced to flee 2500 years ago while a Palestinian kicked out 50-60 years ago who still has the keys to their homes aren’t allowed to return? I think not. There is a law being pushed by the Likud Bennett coalition as we speak called the “Jewish law”, which says that Israel’s “Jewish identity” will be considered before its democratic identity. This means they are ready to segregate Palestinians even more in order to accomplish their artificial majority. Whatever I say will probably fall on deaf ears to you “Arafat”, yet that doesn’t matter because you are fighting a losing battle. Palestine will be free no matter what you put forth. It is only a question of how many more people must suffer until this day comes.
I hardly think the Arabs suffer. If they do–its cause they start most of the things they go through. It is an understood common mentality there that the Jews are hated and the Arab’s are teaching their children this hatred from the time of birth to now. It is your own government that places restrictions on your fellow kind. How sad!
When will there be a Saudi Apartheid Week?
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“To clarify: Wahhabism is the only officially recognized and allowed religion in Saudi Arabia. Other forms of Islam and other religions are banned and persecuted by the state. Saudi Arabia is the only Islamic state in which there is no church, no synagogue and no other place of worship of any other religion. Shiite Muslims have been systematically discriminated against for decades. Jews are even forbidden to enter the Kingdom. Saudi Arabia practices a form of Sharia law that is one of the most brutal systems in the world. Saudi Arabia has at all times rejected the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Women may not drive a car and can be punished by flogging. Corporal punishment, including amputations and executions, are part of everyday life in the country. Just two weeks ago a Sudanese immigrant in Saudi Arabia was publicly beheaded for ‘sorcery.’ Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries in the world in which the death penalty is enforced even on teenagers,” the paper said.
I think this event is absurd! And full of lies, and distortions! Israel is the Jewish Holy Land that has been ordained by God. Abraham led his people from Egypt to this land. It’s just unfortunate that the Arabs were there in Palestine (who are now crying all kinds of lies to get their own attention) at the time the state became Israel in 1948. I am utterly ashamed at UH for hosting or allowing such an event that does nothing but promote hatred for the Jews and Israel as well as the Democratic Society “dumbing-down” it’s students–well, that is another story altogether but the fact remains this event is in of itself FULL of lies and hate towards the Jewish People. I for one, will NEVER support a Muslim (false religion of Satan; Islam) or Palestine, or the Democrats.Second, I will ALWAYS support the Jews in THEIR homeland.
Tammy, you’re ignorant if you believe all of those stories. It’s also pretty appalling that you call Islam a “false religion of Satan”. I’m glad to have you support israel because its people like you that illustrate what kind of crap the Palestinians have to deal with.
No Judas—you are ignorant and clearly deceived. On the contrary Judas—it’s the crap that your groups spew that indoctrinates others–who are “tolerant” of a politically correct world–that your whole clan takes advantage of to spread your lies and filth….Sorry, if you don’t like the truth but it is. As for Islam–yes it is a false religion. No religion in the world ENCOURAGES hate, murder, pedophile, rape and intolerance as much as Islam does. Those are facts and again you are deceived into believing otherwise. This “wall” or “crap” that you have to deal with is, indoctrinated to you from birth. Its why you are easily deceived. Your so called government has such HATE running through their veins that it spills it’s way to the rest–this wall is: Israel is the most tolerant and diverse state in the Middle East) and that its security fence is an “apartheid wall” (false – the wall is a fence put up to keep suicide bombers out and has reduced Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jews by over 90%). These hate weeks are designed to de-legitimize Israel and soften it up for the kill. The declared goal of Hamas and the PLO is to “liberate” Palestine “from the river to the sea” – in other words to destroy the Jewish state and push its inhabitants into the sea. The growing BDS movement on campus (BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, which are the steps the movement advocates taking against Israel for its purported policies of “apartheid”) is another element in the jihadist assault. Enough said—I will continue to pray for those lost souls to Satan’s Religion! God Bless!
Myth 1: Israel occupies Arab Palestine: This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the middle east.
Since Roman times when the Philistines inhabited the region around the Jordan (hence the name “Palestine”) there has never been a political entity – neither a province nor a state – called “Palestine” and no one claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even Arabs.
There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.
Myth 2: Israel is an apartheid State: The term Apartheid refers to the segregation of groups on the basis of ethnicity or race, and the denial of basic civil rights to the segregated group. There is no such segregation in Israel. Arabs are granted full civil rights under Israeli law, which forbids discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or sex. Arabs take part fully in Israeli society and government. Arab citizens of Israel vote in national elections have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on the Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court benches, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the Arabs of any Arab state.
Myth 3: The Arabs want peace and a state on the West Bank: The Arab nations rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arab nations and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.
There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.
Myth 4: The Holocaust is Europe’s Problem; Palestinians had no role in it. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, planned death camps for the Jews in the Middle East. Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted follower of Hitler who spent the war in Berlin, recruited an Arab legion to the Nazi cause and planned a “Final Solution” for the Jews of the Arab world. The Muslim Brotherhood, which created Hamas, the government of Gaza, translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth.
Myth 5: Israel’s Security Fence is an “Apartheid” wall: This is two myths in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.
In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.
Myth 6: Israel is the cause of the refugee problem: The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arab regimes have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.
Israel Commits War Crimes by killing Civilians: This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from some Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.
The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”
Myth 8: Jews have little historical connection to Israel: Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.
Myth 9: The Koran describes Jerusalem as a Holy to Islam: The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.
Myth 10: The Temple of Solomon is NOT Jewish: This myth is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered.
“Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude”
-Harvey “Joe” Henderson
http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/31.pdf
A must read for anyone interested to learn more about MSA and their MB roots…