Students for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestine student group, kicked off Boston University’s first annual Israeli Apartheid Week on Monday to make their case to BU students that the Israeli treatment of Palestinians is comparable to apartheid in South Africa.
By holding the IAW week at BU, SJP members hope to encourage discussion of Palestinian’s human rights and raise awareness about the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict at Gaza.
According to apartheidweek.org, IAW is taking place in over 40 cities around the globe with a goal of “[educating] people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system and [building] Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns as part of a growing global BDS movement.”
“SJP believes that while the Palestinian people must ultimately be able to decide their future in Palestine, certain key principles, grounded in international law, human rights and basic standards of justice, are fundamental to a just resolution of the plight of the Palestinians,” the group’s blog states.
Throughout the week, the group will screen films and host lectures at BU. They also have a table set up at George Sherman Union, where members will hand out fact sheets and information about events.
As part of IAW, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Emeritus Noam Chomsky will address the conflict in a lecture at Jacob Sleeper Auditorium.
“As a Jew, I can get citizenship in Israel and not have to face unfair and unequal laws, not have to pass through checkpoints, not have to have my land stolen, have my house demolished, have my family evicted,” said Graduate School of Arts and Sciences student and SJP member Ian Chinich. “Whereas a Palestinian whose family had been living in Jaffa or Haifa but now live in a refugee camp cannot get citizenship.”
Benjamin Kalmanowicz, a School of Management freshman and member of BU’s Arab-Israeli Peace Alliance, said he believes the term apartheid is illegitimate.
“The word choice of this has to be very carefully examined,” he said. “It is an attempt to compare and show people who have no idea about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Israel is the evil part, but I think everybody can agree that both countries have a part in this conflict.”
The New Oxford American Dictionary defines apartheid as “a policy of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.”
Kalmanowicz said IAW should be protested because it is wrongly comparing Israel to the formerly apartheid state of South Africa.
AIPA, founded in 2005, is another campus group dedicated to bringing peace in the Middle East. Their goal, according to their Facebook page, is to “educate students on the complex situation between the Israeli and Palestinian nations, show their commonalities and allow co-existence to thrive on a campus.”
AIPA doesn’t take a standpoint on IAW because the organization’s intention is to promote peace, not tension and separation, Kalmanowicz said.
Some students are skeptical about the IAW’s intentions.
“Having this week is turning the campus into more of a battleground than any awareness booster,” said College of Arts and Sciences freshman Rachel Kessler.
Others said they believe it will help raise awareness.
“It’s a great opportunity to educate the public about an important issue and to clarify some misconceptions about the situation at hand between Israelis and Palestinians,” said College of General Studies freshman Sebastian Filgueira-Gomez.
SJP says IAW is important to have on college campuses because it is part of a global effort.
“The debate on this campus has been deliberately skewed to condemn the victim of occupation by the occupier,” Chinich said. “We are part of an international movement to change that.”
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