From the weblog of Hussein Ibish
“Recent efforts by student activists and others to convince the University of California Berkeley to divest from two companies with strong ties to Israel and its defense establishment is the first really powerful test of the "BDS" movement in the United States. The bottom line is this: if you can't get divestment through UC Berkeley, you're done. UC Berkeley is the epicenter of not only liberalism, but even radicalism, in American academia and indeed American social life in general.”
And, as we all know, divestment was defeated at UC Berkeley. Ariel Kaplan, a student involved in fighting the campaign explained how in this three part installment at Bluetruth.
Does this mean the BDS’ers have given up at UC Berkeley? Not, not a bit. An attempt to indoctrinate a new generation of students took place November 29th at Boalt Hall .The “Palestinian Youth Network” , co-sponsored by a who’s who of extremist organizations, including the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC ) and Al Awda held a teach in called “The only Peace That Israel Wants is the Last Piece of Palestine: The Liberation of our Land and people is Non-negotiable”
In the talk, peace with Israel, and the right of the Jewish people to self determination was unconditionally rejected.
Nadeen El Shorafa, discussing solidarity, claimed
“ I see solidarity in two different ways. There’s sort of a power solidarity and joint struggle and I’m going to explain them both how I see it. Power dynamics is central to these different definitions I want to talk about when it comes to solidarity. The first one which I call Power Solidarity is folks who have a lot of power in society in terms of class, race, gender and sexuality. So, for example, a heterosexual white male, upper class white male is someone who has power in our society. And a lot of folks who fit those identities are in solidarity with the Palestinian people. And then I see something called Joint Struggle. Joint Struggle are folks on race, class, gender and sexuality who experience a lot of struggle depending on how they identify. And the term Joint is key here. They struggle jointly with the Palestinian people. Because the Palestinian people suffer according to race, class, gender and sexuality .
Nadeen- the Palestinian people do suffer according to race, gender and sexuality, and they suffer at the hands of their own leadership. Polygamy, forced marriages, under-aged marriages and honor killings are problems in all Muslim communities. Forced female genital mutilation is a problem throughout North Africa.
Nadeen also mentioned claimed that building of infrastructure was not allowed, immediately contradicting herself with the statement
“ You might have heard there’s a mall being built in Gaza. We have a beautiful mall being built in Gaza.” She added “ I was just reading today that Gaza is experiencing a growth in its economy - very little - about 16%. “.
16 % is “very little”?
To Nadeen, “BDS is a means to an end it’s not the end”, and the end result is the end of Israel.
“The end goal is the end to Zionism that should be the end goal. And unless that is the focus and center of your activism and organizing when it comes to Palestine and joint struggle and solidarity then there’s a problem, because that really is the key to ending, or the goal to liberation also of Palestinians is the ending of Zionism. And it’s not just for the Palestinians in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, east Jerusalem, the Palestinians within Israel, the Palestinians in the Diaspora. “
There you have it boys and girls. The goal of BDS, the Boycotts Sanctions and Divestment Movement is not peace. Its not justice. Its not democracy. The goal of BDS is the end of Israel.
Bravo! Well written.
ReplyDeletehttp://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2009/03/74079_comment.php
ReplyDeleteApparently Nadeen el Shorafa is a well known community agitator, and was arrested in an incident involving (hard to tell exactly from the article) throwing rocks at San Francisco Police officers
http://arizona.indymedia.org/news/2009/03/74079_comment.php
ReplyDeleteArab organizers arrested in San Francisco
by Rahula Monday, Mar. 23, 2009 at 10:20 AM
Please forward widely, and remind the public and the press that rock throwing is legitimate non-violent resistence, both in America and in Palestine.
Murad Abuh Hamdieh, Lily Haskell, Nadeen Elshorafa and Mohammed
Ibrahim and 5 others were arrested earlier today during the
demonstrations and are calling for broad community support. Police appear
to have targeted youth, Lily and Nadeen tried to unarrest them; they're
being charged with resisting arrest, and bail was set at $53,000 each.
*Right now, they're asking for people to be on call for this Monday and
Tuesday to show up and support them at the arraignment proceedings. *
They've also asked anyone who can loan a large chunk of money ($500+) for
bail to contact Vanessa Huang (510-508-9106). The ideal is to raise the
entirety of the bail money so that it will be refunded (partial bail is
not).
We believe it's important in the wake of the attacks on Gaza, and our local
responses, to recall that Palestinians and Arabs are generally those who are
the first to be targeted by the police, violent zionists, and the media.
Now, more than ever, we need to stand in solidarity with our comrades in
strategic defense.
Please direct your questions to the following people around the
Maherah (maherah1218@yahoo.com) and Mai-Stella (maistella.k@gmail.com) -
Fundraising
Chris (clymbertos@hotmail.com) - Media and Communications
Rama (ramakased@gmail.com) and Marissa (marashkar@yahoo.com) - Legal Support
Please continue to keep those donations coming!! We need to urgently
raise money for the legal defense, so send all contributions to Maherah
Silmi at 1333 Gough Street, Apt. 1F, San Francisco, Ca 94109
more information on the rock throwing, er , non violent resistance arrest. Nadeen Elshorafa certainly gets around, doesn't she?