By Andrew Newton
Two recent opinion submissions published in the Daily Bruin, Tammy Rubin’s “Apartheid wall does not facilitate healthy dialogue on Arab-Israeli conflict” and Emily Resnick’s “Bruins must promote peace, understanding”, were intended to admonish Students for Justice in Palestine and their allies for actions during last week’s Palestine Awareness Week. Both submissions were rife with factual errors and rhetorical fallacies, only a few of which I can properly illuminate within this response.
First I shall address Rubin’s piece, which suggests that SJP’s display of the apartheid wall in Bruin Plaza was a burden to those who “simply hope to get to class on time.” This is a rather absurd comment, as the wall did not obstruct pedestrian traffic or preclude students from proceeding to their classes.
Rubin then goes on to say that Bruin Plaza was not an appropriate venue for SJP’s permitted political speech. This perplexes me, as the same space is unquestioningly deemed appropriate for the political speech of pro-Israel organizations. What of Bruins for Israel’s yearly celebration of “Israeli Independence Day,” known to Palestinians as “al-Nakba” (the catastrophe) in that same venue? Is it appropriate to celebrate the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from their land, or is it an event that, to borrow Rubin’s words, “severely marginalizes thousands of students on campus”?
She closes by referring to SJP’s mock wall as an “intimidating, one-sided presentation.” Many of the students I spoke with feel as though the actual wall that carves through the West Bank, separating farmers from their farmland and limiting Palestinians’ access to health care, work and education, can be described using those same words.
Next we have Resnick’s piece, which constitutes a similar attempt to dissuade the reader from critical thought. The submission condemned SJP’s silent protest against an event organized by StandWithUs, wherein two Israeli soldiers were invited to campus to whitewash the crimes of the Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead, a military offensive in 2008-2009 that took the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
Over 50 students silently stood up during this event and filed out the door, only to have hate speech leveled at them during a subsequent rally outside the building. At that point, a pro-Israel student shouted to us, a crowd of largely people of color, “You all look like terrorists!” and yelled derogatory remarks about Muslim women’s hijabs, evoking the all-too-recent image of racist and sexist slurs scrawled on an apartment door in Westwood. Instead of using her position of power to show support for these marginalized populations facing the very real concerns of racism and Islamophobia, Resnick glibly equivocates our criticisms of the Israeli state with accusing all Israelis of genocide.
To the contrary, SJP is delighted to work with Israelis and Jews who denounce the occupation and support equal rights for Palestinians. Among us in this walkout was Jewish Voice for Peace activist Estee Chandler, who recently had a poster put up on the front porch of her home featuring a picture of her and reading, “WANTED for treason and incitement against Jews.” The poster included the names of children in her family. Also among us was a young Jewish woman who cannot be named because of the threat of being disowned by her family and community for supporting the Palestinian people. It is not our intention to tokenize them, but merely to show that the plight of Jewish anti-Zionists is indeed very real and not unlike the struggle of young whites who sympathized with the movement for the equal rights of blacks in the segregated South.
Resnick uses her position of power in the Undergraduate Students Association Council to determine that “campus climate” is something that can be somehow defiled by non-violent protest, but she refuses to denounce the acts of hatred on the part of counter-protesters. Should we defer to her opinion or look to the long-standing history of social justice struggles and third world solidarity on this campus as integral to the fabric of student life?
The incident itself was documented in a recent YouTube video titled “”˜Why Don’t We Dialogue?’ SJP-UCLA’s IDF Walkout.” I invite readers to watch this video and decide for themselves whether or not SJP’s action was inappropriate conduct.
Newton is a fourth-year international development studies student and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA.