On February 15th, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Minnesota launched UMN Divest. This campaign calls on our University to take an active role in ensuring that we are not complicit in violations of international law. Our campaign brings forth a resolution to our student government that calls on our University to divest from corporations that profit off of human rights violations.
We target four particular companies: G4S, Elbit Systems, Raytheon, and Caterpillar. These companies provide the tools and equipment that enable Israel to maintain its occupation of the Palestinian people. UMN Divest calls on our university to divest from these companies and to ensure that we don’t invest in them in the future.
This resolution is not here to condemn a country, to target a people, or to determine a political solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict. This resolution is simply asking our University to work towards financial neutrality and to refuse to be complicit in violations of international law.
Our University has previously divested from South Africa and Sudan for their role in violations of international law. We as students see it as a responsibility to hold our University accountable to the standard that it has set for itself in standing against human rights violations. We ask that our University work to adhere to our Social Responsibility Investments clause. We also seek more transparency in our public institution’s financial activities.
We are proud to go to such a prestigious institution – one that is dedicated to progressing and improving itself. We ask that it continue this progress and divest from unethical companies profiting off of Israeli human rights violations of Palestinian people.
The UMN Divest resolution was presented to the University of Minnesota student government on Tuesday, March 1st. The resolution will be voted on to determine if it will be passed on March 8th.
Attacks on the Campaign
SJP launched our divestment campaign on February 15th with the graphic above. We included the olive branch as a symbol of Palestinian heritage (calling back to traditional Palestinian olive tree groves) and as a sign of peace.
We are sad to say that we have received news that it has been defaced in a very offensive manner:
Caption:
2016
THE PREMIER JEW HATING GROUP ON YOUR CAMPUS
SJPMN.COM
(we make hating jews cool)
This was posted by the Academic Engagement Network (AEN). The AEN was founded by Mark Yudof, a former president of both the University of California and the University of Minnesota. They imply in their post that it was made by SSI, Students Supporting Israel, at the University of Minnesota. SSI president, Sami Rahamim, reached out to us and has denied involvement in the creation of this graphic. It is not currently confirmed who made this obscene picture.
The use of the swastika on our divestment logo is a prime example of the backlash and attacks that Palestine advocates have to face. Legitimate criticism of Israel is often met with fierce accusations of anti-semitism. Members of SJP, and those who support them, are attacked with hateful words, smear campaigns, and intimidation tactics.
This attack on UMN divest is an attack on everybody who supports the campaign. This includes the members of SJP, the 35 groups that have sponsored our resolution, and the faculty who have placed their professional careers and personal safety on the line. Many of our supporters fear for both their reputation, and more importantly, for their safety.
This triggering image evokes a violent history and is also an attack on the Jewish community. This includes the group of Jewish students who support our resolution and the call for divestment. They are subjected to the same hatred and abuse we are.
Anti-Semitism is violence, discrimination, or hatred against Jewish people. We strongly stand against it and other forms of oppression. Advocating for human rights is not anti-semitic. We speak what we know to be true from the reports written by the UN, by Human Rights Watch, by Amnesty International, by B’tselem, and by the US State department reports. We speak from Palestinian student’s experiences in Palestine. We speak out about a people’s oppression under an occupation.
We should not be attacked for speaking out against oppression. We should not be demonized as Nazis for asking our university to support human rights. We should not be targeted and wrongly labeled as anti-semites because we advocate for Palestinian rights.
These attacks are an attempt to scare us away from our work. We ask our campus community, and community at large to stand against this fear-mongering.
Even in the face of hatred, we will continue to stand up for the oppressed and to get our University to stand on the right side of history.
#UMNDivest
it appears the Academic Engagement Network has deleted the post from their facebook page. it does not surprise me that SSI president, Sami Rahamim has denied involvement. even for a student group where concerns have been expressed “Students Supporting Israel’s display of “heavily racist and reductive imagery” ” (at least at columbia university and barnard college according to text and images at EI https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/students-say-pro-israel-group-spreads-hate-columbia-university) the use of the swastika is radical.
anyway, this is why, when i first encountered this image, i took a screenshot which i used in this article >> https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2016/03/divestment-opponents-attack-university-of-minnesota-sjp-with-swastika-graphic/
the FB posting was still up on the day that was published 3/3. someone should ask Academic Engagement Network where this defaming racist image came from because it didn’t just materialize out of ether.
at the time i found it suspicious that the text (of Academic Engagement Network ) next to the graphic implied SSI, but at the same time the text could be construed as maybe even a suggestion or encouragement for SSI to use heavier tactics (aside from initiating an anti anti semitism resolution/legislation). i discussed this w/adam at the time. it was just too bizarre to imagine someone of Yudof,’s stature or reputation — or anyone associated with that organization to be, in effect, promoting that image. and they were not condemning it either.
very very weird.
I think I understand the motives behind Students Supporting Israel (SSI) defacing the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) poster by replacing the olive branch with a swastika and adding vile text: to reputationally harm SJP. What I don’t understand is the logic of using a swastika to do that harm.
Historically it has been antisemites, Nazis and fascists who painted swastikas on walls or windows or published them in posters to incite discrimination and violence against Jewish people. It is for this reason that the swastika has rightfully become the eternal icon of evil. It is for this reason that its reproduction is outlawed in many countries. The world recoils from those who reproduce and use this symbol. What is SSI saying, about itself, with its version of the SJP poster?
Tellingly, SSI was taken to task by another Zionist institution, the Academic Engagement Network, not for being racist or inciteful but for being “unmodulated”. Does this mean it would have been fine with AEN if a different tone had been used?
Consider the graphics and captions in these authentically antisemitic posters. We know these posters are antisemitic not only from their despicable content but also because the publishers, for example the anti-Dreyfusards of late 1900’s France and Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s publicly stated their intention to tyrannize and terrorize Jewish people.
http://www.palestineposterproject.org/special-collection/antisemitismjudaeophobianazi-propagandaanti-jewish-racism
See also:
University of Minnesota – Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies/Visualizing Otherness II (An online exhibit of Nazi-published antisemitic posters)
http://chgs.umn.edu/histories/otherness/otherness2.html
We should also ask if it isn’t it a hate crime for a pro-Israel student group to deface a poster with a swastika and inciteful slogans…much as it would be if the students of SJP had published their poster with a swastika? And we should hasten to add that the SJP students did not use inciteful language or racist symbolism.
UMINN needs to address this matter. As a first step it should issue an apology to SJP, meet with all parties and review policies. Funding a symposium on antisemitism might be another good pedagogical way for the university to use this controversy to enrich the educational experience of UMINN students.
UMINN should not defund or disband SSI: those are hardball Zionist tactics, not in keeping with traditional American educational approaches. Rather it should require the membership of SSI to visit the university’s own Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and study the “Visualizing Otherness II” poster exhibit. They should then write a paper outlining what they learned and publish it at the UMINN website. We all might learn something. The point is that UMINN should see to it that all their students grow from this experience and that real progress against real antisemitism should be the gauge of its usefulness. A quiet return to the status-quo-ante would be a disgrace.
No progress in the fight against real antisemitism can be made until and unless a credible, rationale definition of antisemitism – one that abolishes the spurious conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism – is anchored in mainstream discourse. Our failure to legitimate, use and defend such a definition explains most, if not all, campus-based free-speech-on-Palestine controversies.
Thanks Annie…point well taken. Yes, someone definitely should ask AEN where they got the graphic. I think UMN would be perfectly placed to ask. And given the tortured logic of AEN’s public agenda – “adamantly opposed to BDS” AND embracing “uncompromising support for human rights for Arabs, Jews and others” if AEN refuses to identify the source of the defaced poster they should be barred from campus until they adopt transparency as an operating principle. Opacity and partisanhip have no place on the campuses of “Minnesota’s flagship, land grant university”.
From Haaretz:
“We want to promote a sane middle ground of support for a two-state solution, and embrace uncompromising support for human rights for Arabs, Jews and others,” Waltzer, emeritus professor of Jewish studies at Michigan State University, told Haaretz. “[We] are adamantly opposed to the BDS movement, and want to catalyze campuses in robust debate in matters regarding Israel, Palestine and the Middle East.”
“We’d like to have five to 15 faculty members [affiliated with the AEN] on each of 50 to 100 campuses,” said Mark Yudof, chairman of the organization’s national board of advisers.
“We’re well-connected with the leadership of higher education in America. There are strong relationships,” he said. However, he added, “We don’t delude ourselves. Most faculty don’t want to be involved.”
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/.premium-1.690705