I have always been very positive about the future of a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.
It is one of the reasons I believe in the work I do with Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. But this past summer caused me to question whether I should remain so positive. This summer, when the bombs were dropping on Gaza during Israel’s 50-day-long attack on the Gaza Strip, known as “Operation Protective Edge,” a state of hopelessness began to settle in.
I woke up every morning to the death toll in Gaza increasing to incomprehensible numbers. Hearing reports day and night of the stories – the families that were torn apart by unimaginable deaths, the total devastation and decimation of complete cities in Gaza – was overwhelming for most of us who kept up with the news, but tragic for Palestinians on a level I can never fully understand.
Our University is invested in a number of companies that aid in the ongoing, systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. In February, SJP at UCLA and hundreds of UCLA students asked members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council to end our complicity in this oppression. We brought forth UCLA’s first divestment resolution from companies that profit off violence against Palestinians, but it failed to pass by two votes.
It was with the added knowledge of my own complicity in Palestinian oppression that I watched the news unfold this summer.
Thanks to all my research last year, by this summer I was well acquainted with the weaponry the Israeli military was employing against Palestinians. A significant portion of it came from companies our school invests in: Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin are all responsible for the missiles and Apache helicopters used by the Israeli military on Palestinian civilians.
Over the course of my work with SJP at UCLA, I have become an expert at rattling off facts and figures. So when people approached me seeking to understand better what happened in Gaza this summer, I dutifully reported: over 2,000 Palestinians killed, 500 of whom were children; 18,000 housing units either destroyed or severely damaged, leaving 108,000 people homeless. I told them about the ground invasion that followed the air strikes, and explained to them the massacres in Shejaiya and all across Gaza, where Palestinians sought refuge in U.N. camps, hospitals and schools, which were subsequently blown to pieces.
But these numbers had names and faces. As of late my mind turns repeatedly back to an image I wish I could rid myself of, but cannot: four boys, all sons of fishermen, were playing soccer on the Gazan beach when they were hit by an Israeli strike. They tried to run to safety, but were followed; the lives of Ismail, Zakariya, Ahed and Mohammad Bakr would end at ages 9, 10, 7 or 9, and 11 or 12, respectively. The lives of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers – if they are still alive – changed for the worse and forever, but the attack on Gaza only carried on. Four tiny bodies to add to the death toll.
It would be easy to let these stories add to my hopelessness, as they did over the summer. But to give in to the idea that there is “nothing we can do” about the oppression of Palestinians just because they are thousands of miles away is to contribute to and perpetuate a miserable status quo. Nothing can ever bring back the Bakr boys, but misery, hopelessness and complacency will only allow more deaths to occur in our names.
Education and activism, on the other hand, can help dismantle the structures of violence that lead to their deaths. There is a growing recognition of what we as students have the power to do. Divesting from human rights violations against Palestinians does not only end our complicity, but aids in the Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation.
Our University’s investments in arms manufacturers and other companies that profit off human rights violations were made without our consent. Divestment is a way to reclaim our agency and move from despair about the present to hope for the future. Join me and other students across campus in advocating for a more ethical University and a just peace.
Palma is a graduate student in anthropology and the co-director of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Committee for Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA.
An insistence on sanctions and a refusal to acknowledge both sides of the conflict are the perfect ways to prolong it. You claim you are for peace and dialogue, but your entire editorial does nothing to show it.
And Israeli settlements and ethnic cleansing have nothing to do with the conflict. A conflict Israel has no desire of stopping. Cause after all why stop when you can steal with impunity.
As usual, the only way to defend BDS is to point fingers at Israel and scream lies.
Again, our Palestine denier won’t address the issue of Israeli settlement and ethnic cleansing.
This article is about BDS, so let’s talk about it. Namely, how it seeks to finish what Hitler started. I can see why you are buddies.
Does that mean you are going to address the issue of Israeli settlements and ethnic cleansing ? Oh wait. Never mind.
Write an article about Israeli settlements and we’ll talk about it, troll. This article is about BDS. So let’s talk about how it’s pro-genocide. Thoughts?
And to start you may want to ask why there is a BDS. Oh wait, that would mean addressing the issue of Israeli settlements and ethnic cleansing. Never mind.
Nice job getting back on track. The reason why there is a BDS is because the Arabs couldn’t kill all the Jews with bullets, grenades, and tanks, so they are trying to dupe college students like the ones at UCLA to go fight their battles for them. NOW YOU KNOW!
Is that what the Hillel brainwashes its minions with ?
BDS doesn’t deny it seeks the annihilation of Israel. I notice you don’t either. Perhaps there is in fact a limit to your dishonesty?
Equal rights is annihilation ? Any more dishonesty ?
On the street, they claim they want equal rights. Behind closed doors, they admit they want annihilation. It’s called “lying,” and clearly you’re familiar with the concept so you have no excuse not to be aware of it.
So you made it up. Great.
LOL. You’re mistaken. The one who tells lies is you. The one who brings truth is me:
“I am completely and categorically against binationalism because it assumes that there are two nations with equal moral claims to the land.”
-Omar Bargouti,
Founder, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
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“Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself…BDS does mean the end of the Jewish state.”
-Ahmed Moor,
Pro-BDS Author
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“BDS represents three words that will help bring about the defeat of Zionist Israel and victory for Palestine.”
-Ronnie Kasrils
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“[Israel] was Palestine, and there is no reason why it should not be renamed Palestine.”
-Omar Barghouti
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“The real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel….That should be stated as an unambiguous goal. There should not be any equivocation on the subject. Justice and freedom for the Palestinians are incompatible with the existence of the state of Israel.”
-As’ad AbuKhalil
Could you provide actual links to a credible site. After all pro-Israeli shills, like you, are pretty good at making stuff up.
If you Google those quotes you will find their original sources, and I promise you they are not Zionist ones. But since I don’t mind humiliating you even further, I’ll do it myself:
Barghouti: http://electronicintifada.net/content/boycotts-work-interview-omar-barghouti/8263
Moor: http://mondoweiss.net/2010/04/bds-is-a-long-term-project-with-radically-transformative-potential.html
Kasrils: http://palestinechronicle.com/old/view_article_details.php?id=14924
Barghouti: http://books.google.com/books?id=qDO5YrLYGtMC&lpg=PA176&dq=This%20was%20Palestine%2C%20and%20there%20is%20no%20reason%20why%20it%20should%20not%20be%20renamed%20Palestine.&pg=PA176#v=onepage&q&f=false
Khalil: http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/4289
Let’s see you weasel out of that.
“A two-state solution was never moral and it’s no longer working — it’s impossible with all the Israeli settlements and so on” – State in the context of the fraud Israel has committed with settlements. Are you going to address Israeli settlements ?
Ahmed Moor or Naftali Bennett. What is the difference ? One asks for equal rights. The other openly asks for apartheid (Bennett).
Zionist Israel – Is the crowd that steals land.
renamed Palestine – Just like the West Bank is called Judea and Sameria ?
Any more weasel words ?
Deflection, the only defense of BDS.
I’m glad you don’t deny that BDS seeks the destruction of Israel and should therefore be opposed by every moral person at UCLA.
If UCLA’s student council was being asked to endorse the views of Naftali Bennett, I would feel the same way.
Concoctions. The only defense of Israeli apologists.
Am glad you don’t deny that the settlement destroy Palestine.
Wow, Israel randomly dropped bombs on Gaza for 50 days with no reason provided for why they would do that? That sounds like a PR nightmare, I wonder why they would do that… oh wait, that’s right, it’s because Israel was under attack.
This submission speaks nothing to the hundreds of rockets rained down on Israeli cities, fired from Gaza by Hamas, or the terror tunnels dug under the border. Your first sentence says you want “a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis,” but clearly you don’t care about the Israelis at all.
The author’s antisemitic views cloud her ability to see cause and effect. So here, let me break it down.
Cause: Hamas indiscriminately launches rockets at Israeli civilians. Effect: Israel strikes back at Hamas, hoping to prevent rocket fire.
Cause: Hamas builds tunnels used for kidnapping Israeli civilians. Effect: the IDF invades Gaza in order to destroy these tunnels.
Cause: Hamas uses human shields and hides missiles in UN schools. Effect: Numerous innocent civilians die because they’re caught in the line of fire and UN schools are hit.
Next time, before posting such hateful vitriol full of lies, please take some time to understand the issue at hand. You’re a graduate student at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. The least that you can do is fully comprehend an issue that you try to ram down the student body’s throat.
Cause: And why is there a conflict that led to resistance movements like Hamas. Oh wait you won’t talk about it.
Cause: When you steal land and subject people to apartheid they tend to not like it.
Cause: Israel has targeted civilians and used human shields.
Next time, quit making up one-sided stories.
1. Targeting civilians through terror attacks is never justifiable. Hamas isn’t a “resistance movement,” it’s a terrorist organization.
2. Gaza, the sight of the war this past summer, has had no Israeli presence in it since 2005 when they completely pulled out.
3. 100% false. In actuality, the IDF goes through great lengths to avoid civilian casualties while Hamas uses Gazan civilians as human shields.
1. Ethnic cleansing is never justifiable.
2. And made it a prison.
3. Four kids on a beach shows the “great lengths” lie,
Ethnic cleansing… you mean like how all the Jews who were living in Gaza before 2005 were forced to move out so today there are exactly zero Jews living in Gaza? Or how recently there was outrage that someone sold a house in East Jerusalem to a Jew?
You mean Gaza was in Israel. Or were they residing on stolen lands. Or can you sell land to a Mexican national and make your home a part of Mexico ?
I thought anthropologists were trained to look at situations objectively. I find a complete lack of objectivity in this submission. Ms. Palma’s unwillingness to recognize Hamas’s role in this summer’s bloodshed deprives her editorial submission of the context necessary to determine whether her opinion is worthy of consideration (spoiler: it is not).
I do not know Ms. Palma, so I cannot say whether she is anti-Semitic, but her submission as drafted perpetuates anti-Semitic hatred toward Israel by holding Israel to a double standard and by refusing to acknowledge Palestinian complicity in this summer’s violence.
Finally, the timing of her submission could not be worse, coming a day after Hamas took credit for attacks involving Palestinians purposefully running down civilians in Jerusalem. One can only wonder about Ms. Palma’s motivations.
What does Hamas have do with Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. Nothing. Of course the “anti-semite” crowd uses Hamas as an excuse an red herring.
You’re. Really not worthy of a response, but you seem to be begging for one. Hamas is a terrorist organization whose charter rejects a two state solution and calls for the annihilation of all Jews. There is no “apartheid” or “genocide” being committed by Israel. Israel fought a defensive war this summer in response to constant rocket attacks and terror tunnels.
Your “arguments”, if they can be called that, are the same crap I’ve heard my whole life from antisemites. Perhaps you should stop while you’re behind.
Like you were going to answer it. The Hamas charter is no different than the Likud Charter.
“Defensive war” – Is that what you call when you fight people whom you steal land from and subject them to apartheid ?
You really have no idea what you are talking about. The Palestinians have their own land and their own elected (terrorist) government. Why don’t they stop storing and firing rockets from schools and hospitals? Why don’t they stop running over defenseless women and children in the streets of Jerusalem. You act like the Palestinians are children incapable of self-determination but they continue to embrace jihad instead of peace.
Golly, do tell. Tell us which is their “own land”. Is that the West Bank and all its settlements for terroristic settlers ? Or the prison called Gaza ? Do tell.
Sources for the Likud Charter please? You wouldn’t want to make a claim and not back it up when you demand exactly that of everyone else, lest you be a hypocrite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likud#Charter
I don’t make up fiction tweets like you.
I read it and I couldn’t find the similarity you alleged. Namely, while people have very clearly quoted and linked to the Hamas charter that includes the call to kill Jews, there was nothing in your wikipedia article about killing anyone. I even did a command-F search for the word “kill” and got zero hits. But I didn’t expect to. Why? Because Likud is a political party and Hamas is an (albeit governing) terrorist organization
Don’t read ’em. Oh wait, the Hillel and its minions are aware that plenty of people read ’em and have to respond with the usual “victim” spiel.