Statement on Hunger Strike

We, a collection of members of the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, will hold a hunger strike for one day on Thursday, March 1, to proclaim our support for Palestinian victims of Israeli administrative detention and to raise the issue of such illegal practices at Harvard.

Today, 309 Palestinians are held by Israel indefinitely, charged with no crime and with little hope of release. Since 1967, 700,000 Palestinians- or 20% of the population, and 40% of all men in the Occupied Territories- has been detained at some point in their lives, and 95% of these have been subject to torture, according to the Palestine Monitor (link below).

Administrative detention is a practice by the Israeli military to arrest and hold Palestinians without proper trials for indefinite amounts of time. Under administrative detention, an arrested prisoner may be kept without access to legal counsel and without due trial for periods up to four months, which can be renewed without limit by Israeli military authorities. At times, Palestinian prisoners will be detained within Israeli territory and not in Palestinian territory (such as the West Bank), in violation of the Geneva convention ban on imprisoning people within the occupying power's territory. This practice makes it impossible for Palestinian lawyers to travel to see their clients. During this type of detention, Palestinians (including minors) are often subject to torture and abuse.

According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, 309 Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, with at least 60% of them having had their terms extended. Several Palestinians have been detained in this way for over eight years. More information on Palestinian prisoners in Israel can be found here: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=214 and information on torture against these prisoners can be found here: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/?p=216.

In the last few weeks, many activists around the world have engaged in hunger strikes out of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners held in administrative detention. This Wednesday, we add our voices to this global chorus of opposition to Israel's unjust policies and the regime of apartheid it has imposed across the Holy Land. We will be having a joint dinner at 6 PM on Thursday at Casablanca in Harvard Square to end our strike together. We invite all members of good conscience of the Harvard community to join us.

This hunger strike is a part of Harvard Israeli Apartheid Week, a series of events held annually in cities across the world to raise awareness of Israel as an apartheid state and to build support for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns. More info can be found at the global site: http://apartheidweek.org/ as well as on our own website.

Statement of solidarity with the assaulted activists at UNM

The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, the GSAS Alliance for Justice in the Middle East, and the Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine stand in solidarity with activists who were physically assaulted by a mob at the University of New Mexico (UNM) while peacefully protesting an Islamophobic event.

On Thursday evening, the UNM Israel Alliance hosted a speech by Nonie Darwish, a notorious Islamophobe who has called Islam "a poison to society." Darwish is a member of the speakers' bureau of the extremist Zionist group StandWithUs and a fixture of the right-wing lecture circuit.

In order to draw attention to Darwish's record of racist statements, student activists peacefully disrupted the talk with a "mic check" -- a brief intervention in which audience members stand up to collectively voice their opposition to the speaker. Video footage on Youtube shows that audience members charged at the protesters, and hit, punched, and scratched them before forcibly ejecting them from the room. Most of the attackers were adult males, many of the victims were young or teenaged women. At least one of the victims' phones was also destroyed. According to media reports, no arrests have been made.

While Palestine solidarity activists in the U.S. and U.K. have been the target of harassment and demonization for years, we note an escalating pattern of physical violence against them as well. Last week at the London School of Economics, pro-Israel students threw water balloons at a street theater event demonstrating a checkpoint in Palestine. Last year, a member of the Israeli lobby group AIPAC assaulted a protester disrupting Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu's address to Congress, resulting in her hospitalization.

We condemn all of these attacks and note that while Palestine solidarity activists are consistently demonized as supporters of violence by Zionist organizations, actual violence by defenders of Israel's racist policies remains largely unpunished by authorities.

Friday, 12/16: Vigil for Mustafa Tamimi

Friday, 16 December, 2011, 6:00 p.m., small square outside Harvard Station T stop. Candles will be provided. Please forward widely.

Please join us for a vigil for Mustafa Tamimi on the seventh day of his killing. Mustafa was a 28-year old Palestinian from the village of Nabi Saleh, and part of a popular resistance committee that protested weekly against the Israeli occupation. He was shot in the face with a tear gas canister by an Israeli soldier. He died of his injuries. He is the first resister from Nabi Saleh to be killed during the protests. Other popular resistance committees where protesters have been killed include Nilin, Bilin, Biddu, and Budrus.

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Background information:

A courageous Palestinian has died, shrouded in stones

No miracle in Nabi Saleh

'When I was holding him, I’m sure that he died in my arms. He let out a gasp and his soul left.'

Tel Aviv protest after Tamimi's killing

Tamimi's funeral [video]

Tamimi's funeral [photos]

November 4: Harvard Tree of Life Conference

Statement in Solidarity with the Irvine 11

September 24, 2011

Solidarity with the Irvine 11

The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee and the GSAS Alliance for Justice in the Middle East stand in solidarity with the “Irvine 11.” We are appalled by the criminalization of these students for nonviolently protesting a 2010 speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

Yesterday, the Orange County Superior Court found ten University of California-Irvine students guilty of two misdemeanor counts of disturbing a meeting and of conspiring to disturb a meeting. The students had stood up during Oren’s speech and raised objections to Israel’s criminal assault on Gaza, during which more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including over 300 children. The interruptions lasted several minutes, and the protesters were escorted out of the room.

The Irvine 11 should be commended for confronting Oren’s propaganda effort to whitewash Israel’s criminal actions and policies in front of college audiences. Instead, they have been unjustly punished for constitutionally-protected dissent that is a routine part of student activism, including here at Harvard.

On November 23, 2009, Harvard students also staged a walk-out of a speech by Oren at the Harvard Kennedy School. Last year, AIDS activists from Harvard and other colleges heckled and interrupted President Obama while he spoke in Boston. In neither case were students punished for exercising their right to protest.

We also note with dismay that the selective prosecution of the Irvine 11 would likely never have gone forward if the protesters were not Muslim. As Jewish Voice for Peace noted: “Our young Jewish members engaged in a nearly identical protest of Israeli policies-only the venue was larger and the target was the Prime Minister of Israel, Bibi Netanyahu. They were let off without even a mark. Their Muslim peers were tried and criminalized.”

The decision to criminalize the Irvine 11 for their courageous action is an attack on all people who seek peace and justice in Israel/Palestine. However, such intimidation techniques will neither silence students nor will they quell protest. We call on students to support the Irvine 11 as they move ahead in appealing this unjust verdict. Further, we call on students to redouble their Palestine solidarity efforts. This attack only reinforces the urgency of continuing to organize in support of equality, justice and freedom for Palestinians and all oppressed peoples.

(For additional information about the protest of Oren’s speech at Harvard, see this op-ed in the Harvard Crimson.)