The Hampshire students are back and they’re looking to go big time. Last Spring we devoted a lot of space on this site to the inspiring battle over divestment at Hampshire college, led a courageous group of students. This story not only included the debate and struggle on campus, but national attacks against their effort including threatening, early morning phone calls from Alan Dershowitz. Well, it appears they have not been intimidated.
Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine has announced that it is holding a national campus BDS conference at in Amherst, MA from November 20-22. The conference is looking to build a coordinated BDS campaign on campuses across the US. From the conference announcement:
As campus members in the United States, we are directly complicit in perpetuating the injustices committed against the Palestinian people – our schools’ money is invested in companies that directly profit from Israel’s militarism, annexation of Palestinian land, and apartheid practices. After sixty-years of displacement, over forty-years of occupation, a two-year old siege, and in light of the recent invasion of Gaza and the continuing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, we must act now to cultivate the BDS movement in the United States. As members of academic communities, we can engage BDS as a means of applying economic and public pressure on Israel to abide by international law and we can change the discourse around Palestine/Israel in this country.
Full conference announcement after the jump.
National Campus Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Conference
endorsed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
What & Where: This fall from November 20th through the 22nd, students, faculty, and staff from around the country who are engaged in Palestine solidarity activism will converge for a conference on campus Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). This conference has three key goals:
1) To co-educate and share resources amongst campus organizers on the process of initiating BDS campaigns on campuses
2) To strategize tactics to address the needs of different campuses in carrying out BDS campaigns
3) To bring together Palestine-solidarity campus groups that have or have not met under a larger network in order to strive towards a coordinated national BDS campaign.
There have been many BDS conferences around the country, but rarely have they focused exclusively on the campus movement. This conference therefore presents an exceptional and important opportunity for this movement.
Why: In July of 2005, “a clear majority of Palestinian civil society called upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.”* In addition, BDS is a non-violent means of protest and action that campuses in the United States can directly engage in to effectively stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people. A similar strategy was adopted in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and campus groups played a large role in helping spark and maintain that successful movement.
As campus members in the United States, we are directly complicit in perpetuating the injustices committed against the Palestinian people – our schools’ money is invested in companies that directly profit from Israel’s militarism, annexation of Palestinian land, and apartheid practices. After sixty-years of displacement, over forty-years of occupation, a two-year old siege, and in light of the recent invasion of Gaza and the continuing expansion of settlements in the West Bank, we must act now to cultivate the BDS movement in the United States. As members of academic communities, we can engage BDS as a means of applying economic and public pressure on Israel to abide by international law and we can change the discourse around Palestine/Israel in this country.
How to Participate: Attend the National Campus BDS conference at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA along with other members of your campus group. You will have the opportunity to organize workshops and panels, engage in discussions led by peers, listen to panels and lectures by influential members of the movement, develop skills, share resources, explore strategies, build networks, and more. Workshops at this conference will have a particular focus on: education and campus outreach, movement building strategies, and utilizing publicity and media for BDS. We encourage both Palestine-solidarity and allied groups to attend and contribute to this important conference through general participation, the building of a larger organizing network, and the facilitation of workshops. (In order to facilitate a workshop, please see the “Workshop Proposal Submission Form” attached to this e-mail.)
Prominent public figures and outspoken supporters of the BDS movement will be attending the conference as keynote speakers and panelists, including representatives of the BNC and PACBI.
Dates and Times: Friday, November 20th at 6 PM through Sunday, November 22nd, at 9 PM.
Hosted By: Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine and allied groups, and endorsed by various Palestine Solidarity organizations
For more information about the conference, please visit HSJP’s website at www.hsjp.org, where we will announce updates, lodging/food information, financial aid, and a place for registration for the conference.
Please forward this to other Palestine solidarity activists and mark the date! See you at Hampshire!
To a free Palestine,
Hampshire College SJP
hampshiresjp@gmail.com
Amherst MA — almost right in Dershowitz’s backyard. And thus a movement was born.
Just when the British Campus BDS movement is faltering.
Well, progress over here might re-energize progress in the UK. One can hope.
Please what aparthied policy?
Do minorities have any rights in Arab countries?
Lets talk about the Kurds, Coptics, Berbers and Black Christians of Sudan.
Actually, yes they do. Unlike in Israel, where Palestinians are not allowed own property free from the threat of having the government confiscate and redistribute it to Jewish immigrants, even in Palestinian territory, where Palestinian spouses and family are barred from entering Israel, where even dressing as a Muslim gets you banned from theaters and other public venues… need me to go on?
So you are saying, Jurist99, that Israel has the intrinsic right to do the worst things that anybody else has done?
So, since Hitler burned people up in ovens and Stalin killed 30 million people, we shouldn’t say a word until Israel surpasses that?
“Your Honor, while it’s true I raped the twelve year old girl, as a devout Jew and fervent Zionist I left her infant baby brother completely un-molested! How’s about a lite sentence?”
Isn’t that about what it comes to?
I think this is number 3 in the ’5 Steps to debating like a Zionist’, right?
“Everyone sucks.”
Sorry to go O/T, but where’s Witty? Banned or did the audit business just pick up?
To be quite honest it gnaws at my conscience. In case he is watching: I am sorry.
He surely must feel a bit lonely among the Mondoweiss crowd. But if he’s gone there’s surely something missing.
I doubt he was banned. Say what you will of the guy but he was one of the most polite Zionist-leaning people I’ve met. Granted, he was still dead wrong, hypocritical and unconsciously racist, but that’s a vast improvement over the pro-Israeli crowd I usually run into — like the denier above, Jurist99 for starters.
Witty banned? What on earth for? There’s no ban on being tiresome! (Or they would bounce my raggedy ass in a heartbeat) What on earth did Witty do? Did somebody finally get an authentic re-action out of him?
I find it hard to think that Witty actually engaged anyone enough to get himself banned. I always miss the good stuff, story of my life.
He was pretty active here over the weekend, maybe he just burned out.
Maybe he is on a well deserved vacation from here, maybe his computer crapped out. He’ll be back. Anybody care to hazard a small wager?
I think we’re wondering because A) he’s always here and B) he is polite, and would probably be a nice guy in-person
This is devoid of the actual opinions and perspective of the guy. Once we actually think about that, it changes things.
I take back what I said before, Witty does display a certain kind of courage to post here consistently. I don’t agree with anything he says, and I think he’s very dishonest in his arguments.
But I can’t imagine going onto a Zionist blog and being bombarded with ‘Islam is a death cult!’ ‘Muslims have 23 countries, Jews have only 1!’ ‘Never again!’ ‘Palestinians just want to kill Jews!’ Blah blah blah
There is great conflict over the BDS debate at Hampshire.
I worked there for two years in 1999-2000, and know more than a couple students and faculty.
In Amherst last year, I attended a pro-peace demonstration, with a counter demonstration organized by Hampshire Students for Justice for Palestine. The pro-Palestinian demonstration was conspicuously and negatively confrontational.
The pro-peace demonstration on the other contained a variety of opinions, including pro-Israel and critical of Israel. The neo-conservatives that spoke at the demonstration (for balance?) were booed, even by us “hasbara-types”.
I’m in Florida helping my mother move to an assisted living facility. Its not easy. We got her moved in, but she is anxious, has a cold, and no phone.
Phil knows my mother. I hope he’ll bother to comment in some way.
I attempted to post from a library on Tuesday, but got a “we don’t accept postings from proxy servers”.
Yes, I remember when you told us this story before. How a family friend’s daughter was getting ‘radicalized’ because of the pro-Palestinian camp’s tenacity and ‘aggressiveness’.
Oh and labeling ‘your’ rally as ‘pro-Peace’ is very Orwellian (and inherently meaningless).
What you saw at the rally could be true though. Of course. That doesn’t mean anything inherently though. I can pull up pictures at another ‘pro-Peace’ rally where a sign reads ‘Wipe Gaza off the map.’
Or, the Max Blumenthal video of another ‘pro-Peace’ rally in NYC.
Yes, this back and forth is easy Witty.
BTW, care to give more details? Who were the neocons who were booed? Who was booing? How prevalent was this ‘dissent’? What did the other people think of the ‘dissent’?
How much of the rally was ‘Israel has a right to defend itself’ sloganeering? Accompanied by signs that read like ‘Free Gaza from Hamas’? Did they simply talk about peace? Or did they acknowledge the grievances of the Palestinians? Did they humanize the Palestinians? Or did they resort to more pretentious and cynical claptrap? Similar to the ‘Free Iran’ (Zionist backed) movement here in the West?
It’s all in the details. Context helps too.
Your recollection is purposefully vague.
Excellent. So great to see the Campus Watch Campus Block of the I/P conflict starting to crumble
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