Visit the Students for Statehood (SFS) website powered by WordPress, to view pixilated flyers for some twelve calendared rallies in support of the PA statehood bid to the UN. They look as though designed by students. They use basic logos, and there is an embedded hip-hop video.
The organization gained attention last August for their email solicitation to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), self-identifying on their website as “college and university students.” While Palestinian organizations released statements against the UN Statehood bid, SFS took a different approach, advocating to Obama that “we want to get the United Nations to be our referee rather than, rather than the United States.” (sic).
The initial email sent to SJPs across the U.S. was from Diana Shuman, editor at the Palestine Daily Telegraph. Shuman identified SFS as “student run,” to Oday Shahin, an organizer with SJP at Arizona State University. However, after phone calls to students who organize in SJPs at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, Yale and Hampshire College–all of whom had never heard of SFS–and a quick domain search for www.StudentsForStatehood.com, no student organizers could be found.
The SFS website is registered to Rasha Uthman, the then Public Affairs Officer of the PLO Mission, and the PLO affiliation was not disclosed, “the PLO was almost running the entire organization,” Shahin notes, adding “she also refused to disclose the members of the board.” Shuman contends, that concealing this was a “fiasco,” and made SFS “a shamed entity” continuing, “especially for the one-state-ers such as myself.” According to Shahin, the PLO Mission was already unsuccessful with students based on a previous campus visit by a PLO representative.
As for the September 4 rallies organized by former PLO Mission intern Yazan Mustafa, Shuman notes, “some of the rally’s had zero attendees,” and in Chicago, a campus group cancelled the rally and retracted support to SFS.
Following the outing of the PLO Mission affiliation of SFS, Shuman has publically spoken out against the PA bid at a Maen Areikat event, and Uthman has resigned from her post, leaving the PLO without support–from the PLO.
What have US based students done recently for Palestinian rights on the ground in the Middle East ?
thanks
a lot of times so called “pro-Israel” students assume their pro-Palestine equivalents are their mirror image – as if people get their talking points from the PA or Arab governments, or act as their spokespersons. It’s good to demonstrate the independence of these grassroots organizations from the unelected PA.
Ah, that explains a lot.
Good investigate work, Allison. I helped organize the September 15th rally at the UN for Palestine rights (not for a bantustan “state”), and me and other organizers kept wondering where these SFSs and similar bogus projects were coming from.
Now we know — and from a well-written article to boot!
Andy Pollack
Thank you Allison!
I think it is all pathetic and sad. A public and open appeal from the PA calling for grassroots support for their UN bid would have been much more successful for them. It shows that when it comes to understanding popular organizing, the PA is no better than other government bodies who think they can manipulate and control everything.