Only a few weeks have passed since Amnesty International joined Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem and many other international bodies in calling Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people what it is: apartheid.
Palestinians have been calling for the international community to recognize Israel’s structure of oppression as apartheid for years – and students have consistently stood in solidarity with them. The first Israeli Apartheid Week was held at the University of Toronto in 2005, and the event has spread now to include organizing by universities and other solidarity groups across the world. Students have organized divestment campaigns and solidarity marches, have protested visits by Israeli officials and pushed academic discourse forward, centering Palestine solidarity at the core of the movement for decolonization. Students at nearly every university and college in Britain during the 1980s organized protests, boycotts and occupations against South African apartheid; in recent UCU strikes, students at SOAS University occupied university buildings in solidarity with striking lecturers, but also with the demand that SOAS take seriously its complicity with Israeli apartheid and end its links with Haifa University, a university built on colonized Palestinian land, linking their protest with the international call from Palestine for BDS as a tactic in the fight against apartheid.
These students recognize that the fight against the marketization of education is entwined with the fight for an ethical university, that the divestment of our institutions from apartheid must take place as part of our fight for a liberated education.
This year’s Israeli Apartheid Week is taking place from March 21-27 in the context of increased repression from the UK government, increasingly draconian laws surrounding protest and boycotts, but students continue to pave the way for a positive, powerful and collective resistance. Palestine Solidarity Campaign is proud to support students across the UK to organize, and to effectively campaign for real change on campus.
Israeli Apartheid Week 2022 highlights from students:
Leanne
Leanne Mohamad is the current President of the Students For Justice For Palestine Society at King’s College London.
Our UK universities remain deeply complicit with Israel’s apartheid practices through their investments and institutional links and therefore it is incredibly important for us as students to organize around Israeli Apartheid Week. We are very excited for opportunity to organize united alongside many other universities, solidarity groups and grassroots organizations.
We will be kick starting the week – alongside twenty Palestine Societies in the UK – with an online conversation with Mohammed el-Kurd, the poet and activist from Sheikh Jarrah, on resisting apartheid.
The theme for Israeli Apartheid Week 2022 is Art Against Apartheid, so we have organized a very special Tatreez (Palestinian Embroidery) workshop on Wednesday 23rd March at KCL Strand Campus in collaboration with other London Palestine Societies including LSE, QM, City, Brunel, SOAS and Westminster. This will be followed by talks, a film screening a day of action.
We are demanding our university bring an end to all links with institutions and organizations that play an active role in upholding Israeli apartheid. We will continue to hold our university accountable to let them know that our education can no longer be at the expense of Palestinian human rights.
Safiya
Safiya is a member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Youth and Student Committee.
By getting involved in Israeli Apartheid Week, students have the opportunity to educate their peers and encourage them to take action by joining in activities hosted by their campus’ Palestine Societies.
Israeli Apartheid Week’s essential purpose is to demonstrate students’ connection with struggles for justice within the UK and internationally. Israeli Apartheid Week events on campuses across the UK include poetry nights, film screenings, guest speaker talks, panels and workshops frequented by many students – both those already involved in Palestine solidarity as well as those wishing to learn and be involved more.
In London this Israeli Apartheid Week, students are coming together to protest against their universities’ continued investment in Israel neo-colonialism and racial subjugation: on Thursday 24th Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Youth and Student Committee will lead a march through Kings and LSE campuses to demand that all universities cease their investments in companies that are complicit in violence and repression of Palestinians.
This year will once again see IAW providing the opportunity for students to network and collaborate against Palestinian oppression, as well as other forms of oppression and discrimination. The focus on culture and art in particular, allows us to shed light on our collective struggles against discrimination, cultural appropriation and oppression. From Palestine solidarity to #BlackLivesMatter, campaigns for justice and against racism in any form must go on!
