Countering last week’s Israel Peace Week, Students for Justice in Palestine is hosting Israel Apartheid Week, bringing a number of speakers, including the former legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, to Boston University.
The organization’s goal is to “educate people about the nature of Israel as an apartheid system,” according to the Israeli Apartheid Week website.
Other Boston schools, including Northeastern University, Tufts University and the University of Massachusetts, Boston are participating in the week .
“The point is to show the apartheid-like conditions that are occurring in the occupied territories and within Israel itself,” said SJP member Ian Chinich, a second-year Ph.D student.
The claims made by SJP members have elicited responses from Boston University’s Students for Israel, a group associated with the Hillel House on BU’s campus. So far, the responses have mostly been limited to an email correspondence between the two groups.
According to the emails, given to The Daily Free Press by Chinich, BUSI was concerned about the SPJ’s plan to protest Israel by erecting a minature “apartheid” wall in Marsh Plaza on Tuesday.
The wall was meant to protest similar structures erected by Israel around the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Chinich said SPJ had no intention of building a wall before hearing of a “rumor” from the BUSI.
“We originally weren’t going to make a wall, but I guess some crazy rumor started in Students for Israel and they sent us a threatening email that told us not to make it, and that it would incite hatred on campus,” Chinich, who said he has worked with the International Solidarity Movement in a trip to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, said.
“Communities are separated by walls and will eventually become ghettos and there is a great disparity in water supply between Palestinian areas that badly need water and Israeli areas with swimming pools and green lawns.”
However, BUSI’s email stated that the group wished to “stand side-by-side,” with SPJ, “to promote an organized forum for discourse between all parties.”
“We would like to emphasize that we are not demanding that SJP refrain from expressing the substance of your opinions,” BUSI wrote. “In fact, we are demanding nothing.”
“We ask that you consider whether sensationalism, politicized slogans, and other forms of negative and grandiose propaganda are fitting for the academic integrity of Boston University,” the BUSI email continued.
Chinich saw BUSI’s email as an attempt at censorship of SPJ.
“We decided that because they were threatening us and because they were so scared of the wall, that we were going to build it, because students here should see the wall,” Chinich said of the email.
Chinich also said last week’s Israel Peace Week was a response to BU’s second Israel Apartheid Week.
“There hasn’t been enough understanding of the issue in both academia and in the U.S. in general,” said College of Arts and Sciences junior Jarib Rahman, an SJP member.
“We feel that it’s important that students get to know more about what’s really going on there because a lot of people seem to have the incorrect idea about what’s going on over there.”
Nearby the protesting SPJ members, who held their Styrofoam wall in front of the College of Arts and Sciences facing Commonwealth Avenue, BUSI members handed out flyers while calling for peace.
“I think it’s important to remember that Israel’s main objective, just like the Palestinians want, just like the Israeli want, is everybody just wants peace,” said School of Education senior and BUSI member Arielle Adler, who was handing out flyers near the SJP’s wall.
“I think that it’s really important to show both sides of the story.”
For Thursday, SJP will have a lecture entitled “Palestine on the Precipice,” featuring the former legal adviser to the PLO, Dianna Buttu, in the Photonics Center.
Also on Thursday, BUSI members will gather at Marsh Chapel at 3 p.m. to “show support for Israel,” according to a BUSI email.
Update: This article was updated on March 3, 12:21 p.m.
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I love the Freep, I don’t really know all that much about this issue but this literally sounded like that group “Students for Justice in Palestine” wrote the article themselves. The freep is something I use to find out what is happening on our campus not to be spoon fed information that is clearly only presenting and supporting one side. Please remember that we want UNBIASED reporting not forced opinions. Also, according to the President Ian Chinich he was threatened. I was totally shocked and appalled when I read that but then you included the quote: “We would like to emphasize that we are not demanding that SJP refrain from expressing the substance of your opinions,” BUSI wrote in their email. “In fact, we are demanding nothing,”Ha, okay I’m sorry but if the BUSI group specifically said “we are demanding nothing” how is that possibly a threat. We’re getting a little over dramatic here. they specifically said they DONT demand anything. This is clearly complicated issue, but this article actually really bothered me. Also, why didn’t you guys explain why the other group is gathering at Marsh? People don’t make protests just from a quote. Like what if I wanted to go or didn’t want to go to their thing you didn’t give me enough info to make the choice. People WANT to be involved in things on campus!! This just seemed liek really shoty reporting that just left me more confused about the issue and feeling like you guys just gave me no info at all. Come on Freep, I love you guys- stop letting me down! I’m sorry I had that long rant, just had to get it off my chest.
what is the point of an email if there is no demand/request/whatever… don’t be fooled by word play.. For more info. read, or go to the gsu.. sjp has been tabling for 2 weeks.
Or check out the BU SJP blog for the whole picture….
It’s hysterical than Chinich is being threatened, because a clergy member who has been monitoring the demonstrations just sent out an email about Jewish, especially Jewish female students, being harassed, screamed at in obscenity-laced tirades, and physically pushed around. Chinich is a disgusting little twit who employs thugs to threaten his opponents and then cries like a whiny child over an email.
Sorry, I meant “claims he is being threatened”. Poor baby, having to deal with those mean and nasty Jooooos. Apparently having to deal with people who have a mind, a conscience, and a soul is too threatening for him to deal with.
I do not like the direction that our campus is going on, you for real need to mellow out. Let’s deal with these issues in a calm and rational way not one that involves screaming at people on comm ave or showing graphic pictures to try and win people without explaining things.
Will the “Student’s for Justice in Palestine” also provide a model of the Palestinian bomb vest? These are simple devices filled with improvised but deadly explosives and bits of scrap metal, ball bearings, metal bolts and designed to wreak havoc when exploded by Arab suicide bombers infiltrating in Israel. Their main targets are city buses, university cafeterias, restaurants, kindergartens, public cafes. They particularly targeted businesses that were owned and managed by both Jews and Israeli Arabs.
If anything, it was this kind of urban terrorism that built the wall, which the Israelis decided to do rather than militarily subdue the population of the West Bank. Since the construction of the wall, deaths of both Arabs and Jews due to terrorist acts has been radically reduced.
The only really effective way to end this conflict is by negotiation anyway. And sadly this “Israel apartheid week” is nothing less that a propagandistic con job by radicals who have no intention of building a unique Palestinian country…rather they are much too lazy and violent and radicalized and more intent upon destroying the country of their neighbor and killing all of the inhabitants.
No
I fail to understand why, if the true nature of this wall is security, does it deviate so greatly from the Green Line, cutting deep into the West Bank in some places to surround illegal Israeli settlements in what appears to be little more than a land grab. Why does it completely surround the town of Qalqilyah, from all sides, isolating farmland and markets on the other side of the wall?
Nothing of what SJP is saying is a lie, you just don’t like the message and label it propaganda in the hopes that people will dismiss it and the reality of the situation as easily as you can. What has SJP done this week that is violent? What has SJP done that is so lazy? Because it seems to me the group is engaging in peaceful activism, which is neither lazy nor violent. Uncomfortable? Yes! What’s going on in Palestine should make people uncomfortable because the system is so badly broken and needs to change. Please don’t make claims and sling insults against fellow students unless you can back them up.
Wrong, you are a complete lie and moreover the students know it. You have zero support on campus and all you are doing is hurting yourself and your case. Do you think this won’t follow you after you graduate? We are aware of your names and potential employers will certainly know about it.
You are so clueless that you don’t even know that the Green Line is nothing more than an armistice line. It is not a border and has no legal significance. Do you know what Area A is? Do you know that 98% of “Palestinians” live and vote under P.A. rule? Do you know that deaths from terrorism declined from 1,500 in the three years before the fence (not wall) was completed to nearly 0 afterwards?
You are supporting genocide, anti-semitism, and anti-woman laws. Are you proud?
There is no need to sling insults at you as your stupid, racist and false claims proclaim your stupidity for you.
That first part sounds like a threat if you ask me… maybe stop taking pictures of us without our permission and following SJP members. It’s bordering on harassment. I don’t think your employer would take kindly to that either.
I am well aware the Green Line isn’t a border, but it is a demarcation of Israeli/West Bank space and will certainly be a consideration in the borders of the future Palestinian state, which is why its constant expansion is so troubling. I am also aware that even within area A, Israeli raids and action are frequent and disruptive, so don’t kid yourself into thinking Palestinians have sovereignty in these areas.
Tell me again how I am supporting genocide, anti semitism and anti women laws? Because in fact, I am calling for the equal treatment of all people, the peaceful coexistence of two cultures and the end to policies of segregation aimed at making life difficult for the Palestinians.
I am entitled to an opinion (the wonders of the first amendment), am I not and I am expressing them in a respectful way. And yet you’re the one calling me stupid? How does that make you look.
I’m sorry to you BU students who want to live out your college years in quiet comfort, ignoring the realities of the world around you. I came to college to learn and grow as a person, and some of the things I’ve learned have been uncomfortable and have made it hard for me to sit back meekly and watch injustice tolerated. So no, I will not chill out. I will peacefully yet firmly express my beliefs and the facts, figures, pictures, walls which cannot be ignored any longer in the hope that, if I was ever oppressed and brutalized, someone would care enough to do the same.
The realities of the world around us are that there is no end to stupid and racist thugs who hate Jooooos and can’t wait to kill them. That’s you. The only thing that’s growing here is your stupidity and hate. You should feel uncomfortable, you are promoting genocide and hatred. You are supporting terrorist organizations which oppress women, non-Muslims, and which hate the West. Do you think these people will hesitate to kill you once they’re done with the Jews? Stupid, stupid, stupid.
If you really want to help “oppressed and brutalized” people, why don’t you do something about the FIVE MILLION DEAD and many more millions of near-dead in the Congo or the 10,000 people per day who die of AIDS rather than a bunch of lazy thugs who get $1.5 billion a year (nearly 20 times more per capita than Haiti), use it to buy weapons from Iran, and then complain they are “starving”.
Maybe because you’re a lazy thug yourself.
The wall that Israel is building isn’t even keeping the Palestinians out — because it goes THROUGH Palestinian communities, such as Bethlehem. The aim of the wall isn’t to keep Israel and the Palestinians separate — which is what it would do if it were for self-defense from Palestinians, like a border. It actually keeps quite a few Palestinians on the Israeli side. Meaning that the aim of the wall is to conquer more land and drive more Palestinians out of their homes, not keep them out of Israel.
This article would sound a lot worse if it weren’t for the one psychotic comment below it making it seem somewhat rational. How can this week be a “response” to Israel Peace Week if they’ve been doing it all around the world? It sounds more like Israel Peace Week was a sad attempt to respond to Israel Apartheid Week, like the organizer says. This article is full of contradictions, but thanks to the whack-job asking if SJP will have any bomb vests it seems less crazy, relatively speaking.
Negotiations can’t happen, anyway, because there is nothing for the Palestinians to negotiate with. In the past, during “negotiation,” Israel doubled the number of settlements it built AKA the amount of land it swiped, against international law. You can’t negotiate when you’re not equal; instead you get equality and then negotiate. Israel Apartheid Week is about putting pressure on Israel to create that equality. By the looks of how desperate and alarmist critics of SJP are to malign them, it looks like the activists are doing a good job keeping that pressure up.
For anyone who’s actually concerned about Palestinian terrorists (we know Israel isn’t, because they broke the last ceasefire with Hamas and continue planting their own people amongst Palestinians as settlers, flying in the face of “self defense”), it’s important to note that Palestinian suicide bombings and terror attacks generally only happen when Israel has removed all other options. Israel broke the last major ceasefire with Hamas (which Hamas was following diligently, even arresting their own people to prevent rocket attacks), and in general studies suggest that the only thing motivating suicide bombers anywhere is the belief of a foreign military presence on your own land. It’s also because Palestinians don’t have tanks and warplanes like Israel does. This doesn’t make it okay, but it’s important to note that Israel is hardly “defending itself,” and whether it’s breaking ceasefires or building a wall in all of the wrong places, it’s pretty obvious. They need to be held accountable, they’re a UN member state and they are violating the human rights of innocent people.
Having visited both Israel and the West Bank, I must say that I hope the fence goes down. I hope that one day Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side. However, the fact of the matter is that since it began to be erected, and specifically since it was completed in 2005, the number of casualties killed in suicide bombings have dropped by 90%. Until Israel can be sure of no more terror, the fence is necessary. When terrorism is abolished, so too can the fence be abolished.
You make it sound as if this is a chain link fence harmlessly separating two lawns. It’s not a “fence” it’s an 8meter by 760km concrete wall. I thought that the numbers of suicide bombings started dropping before the wall was built because of a change in tactics. Regardless, what are the Palestinians supposed to do about Israeli terror?
terrorism from the Israeli side has dropped how much % since the wall?
Or are you only concerned with the victimization of a certain population?
It’s so easy for you pro-Israeli types to point your fingers and yell “Liar!” without actually looking into any of the information in question. I beg you to fight the indoctrination and not let your emotions cloud the issue.
Great choice to boycott Israel! Just don’t forget not to use Intel micro chips or micro processor used in every laptop computer, it was invented in Israel. Don’t use any of the computer operating softwares XP, or Vista, it was made
by Microsoft Israel.
Don’t use Google, it is based on Israeli search algorithm. Make sure you don’t use the cellphone camera function, it was invented in Israel.
Don’t use messenger, ICQ, or any other instant message function, it was invented by two Israelis in 1997.
Make sure the doctor gives you a hand written prescription because the computer medication scrip function was invented in israel.
Don’t use the camera pill, Don’t use catheterization for heart failure, it was invented in Israel. There are many more things, make sure you remember to boycott them all. Have a good day!