A letter to Tufts University and SJP

I had the experience of sitting in on Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP) 2014 national conference at Tufts University. During the open to the public panel, I listened to lectures for about an hour. They were interesting to me and informative, and I agreed with many of the things said there. The Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is a horrible atrocity that has been going on for 47 years and strong statements need to be made by the United States in this regard. Apartheid South Africa was and should have been stopped by a people’s movement, and hopefully a people’s movement will one day stop the occupation of the West Bank — a joint Israeli-Palestinian one.

At the question and answer session, a member of the audience asked a question along the lines of, “Has the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement stopped bullets from flying in Palestine?” Later in that session I made a point of stating my opinion to SJP that Israel needs to be looked at as a complex nation through a dialectic lens, not as a black and white fragment. Israel is everything from the fascist right to the anarchist left, which I consider myself a part of. I stated this opinion, as well as answered the question.

Due to the BDS movement, more bullets are flying in Palestine. Because more of the Israeli right is being agitated and provoked, they become more aggressive towards the Palestinian population both in the army and within the settler movement. That is the sad truth and the true reality in Israel.

I consequently went to take my personal belongings and started walking a bit back, away from the center of the crowd. I was being booed and hissed at, as well as told by several members in the crowd to f–k off. As I was halfway down the hall, a person with a red SJP shirt approached and asked me to leave the building. I do not know if they did this out of concern for my safety or out of their will to not have dissent in the hall. This event was open to the public. I expected in a democratic society that freedom of speech and expression would be upheld. Several of the panel members made comments about me leaving the room. I would have gladly stayed had I not been told by SJP members to leave the hall after leaving my original space, as well as being vastly outnumbered and treated in a childish manner by SJP.

The BDS movement needs to take a stand towards integrity and intellectual honesty. Its use of words such as “apartheid,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” are irrelevant in regard to Israel. They alienate everyone except themselves by taking only an anti-Israel stance. They also take no active position in changing the predicament of Palestinian society today, in regard to the thousands of workers unemployed in the occupied territories right now, and the state of governmental or educational structures inside the territories themselves. They do nothing to support the Palestinian economy, which is what will help them form a state, not bashing Israel. From my experience, this movement restricts freedom of speech and undermines the Palestinian cause instead of supporting it. This applies to BDS treatment of longtime Palestinian supporter and communist journalist Amira Hass, who was recently kicked out of Birzeit University for being Jewish. Hass lived in Ramallah as well as in Gaza for many years, and has been a proponent of the Palestinian cause for decades. According to Ma’an, a Palestinian news source, Ahmed Tibi, a 1948 Palestinian member of the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) remarked that the expulsion was “blind behavior” marked by racism, which “distorts the struggle of the Palestinian people.”

I came to the conference with an open mind in an attempt to learn about the Palestinian struggle from activists, and left it after having found a one-sided demagogic contingent that had no room for dissent.

Restricting freedom of expression and persecuting potential allies is no way to reach a solution to the conflict. I expected a different treatment at a prestigious U.S. university, especially one that honors critical thinking.

I am hoping for a fruitful discussion in regard to Palestinian freedom and rights in the future.