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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Activism Home page  back Print  Send To friend President of University of Pennsylvania under pressure to cancel BDS conference Mail message from Cy Swartz, phillyjewishpeace@gmail.com Please respond to this request to write to President Gutmann at the University of Pennsylvania who is under great pressure. Dear JVP Supporters, We who live in the NY metropolitan area are not surprised to hear that forces that will countenance no criticism of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians are attempting to shut down a conference on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions sceduled to take place in February at the University of Pennsylvania. Such an attack on free expression, academic freedom, and open discussion of Israel and Palestine can not go unanswered. Last year concerted action was able to defeat similar efforts within the CUNY system to silence a graduate student who was teaching a course at Baruch College and to undercut the nomination of Tony Kushner for an hornorary doctorate at John Jay. For too long die-hard pro-Israel forces have dictated what is acceptable discourse. They can no longer do this with impunity. We urge members of academic communities and other concerned JVP supporters to consult the attached letter to President Amy Guttman of U-Penn written by the Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism. Please use the information that it provides to address to her your own letters calling upon her to stand up against this attack on academic freedom. Regards, Organizing Committee, JVP-Westchester Church St. Station, P.O. Box 3158, New York, N.Y. 10008-3158 – http://www.codz.org Honorary Co-Chairs: James Abourezk - Kathleen Chalfant - Richard Falk - Ghada Karmi - Michael Ratner - Howard Zinn (in memorium) January 24, 2012 ======================================================================= To: President Amy Gutmann Office of the President University of Pennsylvania 1 College Hall, Room 100 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6380 presweb@pobox.upenn.edu Dear President Gutmann: The Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism (CODZ) expresses its consternation and disapproval over recent attempts by Zionist organizations to persuade the University to bar a student organization, PennBDS, from hosting the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions [BDS] Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. Heavy-handed efforts to suppress discussion of Palestinian perspectives have proliferated since the October 2010 announcement of a $6 million, 3-year campaign by the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Public Affairs Council, and other allied organizations to suppress BDS organizing in the U.S.1 We are especially dismayed to learn that suchorganizations, funded substantially by AIPAC, are placing unwarranted pressure on Penn administrators, faculty, and alumni/ae to have the conference canceled, and that, as a result, four Penn professors have already pulled out of the conference. This pressure from outside groups with ready access to local media has no place in either the administration of campus speech or the adjudication of the political views of faculty or students engaging in usual and customary campus activities. Such interference can serve no real purpose but to exacerbate already existing campus tensions over a politically charged yet highly relevant topic that instead deserves reasoned analysis and structured debate. CODZ is a group of lawyers, professors, physicians, writers and others who came together in 2007 to counter our society’s pervasive suppression of criticism of Israel, often in a manner that reminds us of McCarthyism. Among numerous false claims being made against the National BDS conference is one which argues that it and Penn BDS are anti-Semitic because of their allegedly unjustified criticisms of Israeli policy against Palestinians. As a political scientist as well as the president of an Ivy League school with an historically open policy of admitting Jewish students and developing curriculum for analyzing issues of significance to Jewish communities, you surely know that criticism of, much less non-violent direct action against, a particular government, in this instance the state of Israel, does not equate with criticism of its individual citizens, much less of their varied religious beliefs and practices. In fact numerous academics,including Israelis, have argued recently in widely read scholarly works that it may instead really be anti-Semitic not to criticize the Jewish State for its thoroughly documented violations of Palestinian human rights, rather than turning the other cheek and, by silencing such criticism, allowing those brutal policies to continue unabated. To deny students and faculty their right to explore these issues on a university campus that prides itself on tolerance and diversity would dishonor Penn’s historical mission, violate fundamental academic freedoms, and needlessly incite unreason and disunity on the Penn campus and beyond. Increasingly, the American people, including a growing number of Jews, are rejecting the injustice of such censorial campaigns. We therefore add our voices to those of PennBDS and others on the Penn campus to demand that you stand up to the bullying of fear-minded ideologues by resisting wrong-headed decisions and stand by your decision to allow the 2012 National BDS Conference to proceed as planned at the University of Pennsylvania in February. ============================================================================ Open Letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia signed a statement condemning the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference at the University of Pennsylvania. The statement claims the BDS movement is an effort to undermine the self-determination of the Jewish people. Sign this open letter to Adam Kessler and help us set the record straight. The BDS movement is about equal rights for Palestinians and Israeli Jews. See the original statement here: http://bit.ly/JCRCStatement Dear Mr. Kessler: You recently signed a statement condemning the National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Conference being held this February at the University of Pennsylvania, in your role as the Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia. We, as members of the Jewish community and as people of conscience, believe you have made irresponsible and groundless claims against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Conference, as well as the BDS movement as a whole. This non-violent BDS movement has one purpose: the full expression of Palestinian rights as recognized by international law. To further this purpose, it aims to end the Israeli Occupation, achieve full equality for Palestinians now living in Israel, and recognize Palestinian refugees’ right of return. The Call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was issued in 2005 by more than 170 Palestinian civil society groups, including all major political parties, refugee rights associations, trade union federations, women’s unions, NGO networks, and a broad spectrum of grassroots organizations. The Call invites people of conscience all over the world to join in boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. It explicitly “invite[s] conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.” We, as Jews and people of conscience, recognize that a just and lasting peace will only be possible with full equality for Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation, and Palestinian citizens of Israel. As Jews and fellow travelers, we are passionately committed to peace and justice in the Middle East. Supporting BDS is an important step towards that outcome. We call upon Jewish community organizations to recognize the non-violent, coalition BDS movement as entirely consistent with Jewish values, and a legitimate expression of the Jewish principle of b’tselem elohim, treating all people as the image of G-d by doing what G-d does: `To unlock the fetters of wickedness/ And untie the cords of the yoke/ To let the oppressed go free.` While we think you have erred, we applaud your stated commitment to sophisticated civil discourse. For too long, Jewish organizations have acted as gatekeepers, and discussion of BDS has been actively suppressed by Jewish institutions, both within Jewish spaces and in wider society. We would like to speak with you directly to address these errors, both about the BDS movement as a whole and the conference specifically. We hope you’ll meet with us because, in your role as Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Philadelphia, you serve the entire Jewish community, not only those with whom you agree. B’shalom, A.K. Links to the latest articles in this section Refusing the war! Demonstration today, Thur. Apris 24, at 7.30 pm, Habima Square, Tel Aviv Refusing the war! Demonstration today, Thur. Apris 24, at 7.30 pm, Habima Square, Tel Aviv Saturday night protests: No to Netanyahu`s war!