claremont

Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine announces boycott victory

Pitzer College Student Senate Approves Budgetary Boycott Amendment

On Sunday April 16, in an important victory at Pitzer College, the Student Senate voted (22 aye, 0 nay, 4 abstentions) to adopt an amendment to the Budget By-Laws which reads in part, “Student Activities Funds shall not be used to make a payment on goods or services from any corporation or organization associated with the unethical occupation of Palestinian territories.”

This is an important step in our fight to build the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in support of the basic rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. The BDS movement was started in 2005 from a call by a range of over 170 Palestinian civil society organizations in order to increase pressure on the state of Israel until it:

Ends its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantles the Wall; recognizes the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and respects, protects and promotes the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194.

Although we live in a country that now gives 3.8 billion dollars in military aid a year to Israel, adopting this amendment is an important first step in reducing our complicity with a country that maintains an illegal military occupation and regularly commits war crimes against an indigenous population.

Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine is committed to standing up against our colleges complicity in supporting companies and organizations that serve to benefit from continued violence on behalf of the state of Israel. We will continue working to build a movement in solidarity with the liberation of Palestinians and all oppressed people in the US and around the world. The final copy of the newly adopted Pitzer College Student Senate Budget Bylaws can be viewed here: http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/…/Pitzer-College-Student-Senate-Bu…

Contact:
Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine
claremontcollegesjp@gmail.com

Claremont SJP overcomes censorship attempts to display mock wall on campus

“Student activists at Pitzer College in southern California are risking administration sanctions this week to bring attention to Israel’s violations of the rights of Palestinians.

Members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had constructed a mock wall on campus on Tuesday as part of their actions marking Israeli Apartheid Week — a global series of events intended to spark discussions on campuses about Israel’s occupation in Palestine and the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

On 27 March, the Pitzer administration warned SJP that their plans to construct the mock wall would be “in blatant defiance” of college policy. The mock wall is a colorful, sixty-foot-long replica of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, emblazoned with artwork, facts and statistics highlighting Israel’s violations of human rights.

By going forward with their creative direct action, Pitzer SJP could face punishment by the administration.

“Not surprising”

The administration seems to have come under pressure by on-campus Israel-aligned students who reportedly sent a letter of complaint in February to the Pitzer College Aesthetics Committee.

The group “anticipat[ed] SJP’s proposal to display the mock separation wall and claim[ed] that the wall is anti-Semitic and would make Jewish students on campus uncomfortable,” according to a letter to Pitzer’s administration sent by Palestine Solidarity Legal Support this week.

Noah Latkin, a member of SJP at Pitzer, told The Electronic Intifada on Tuesday that “it wasn’t necessarily surprising” that the group has been singled out for scrutiny by the university.

“There was opposition to us even becoming a club,” he said. “People in the student senate labeled us as inherently anti-Semitic. We had to meet with the president of the student senate who asked us ‘how can we make sure you don’t offend people on campus?’”

Smears and attacks against Palestinian students and members of SJP are not new to students of the Claremont College consortium, which includes Pitzer.

In 2013, a professor at Pitzer’s sister campus Claremont McKenna College called a Palestinian student “a cockroach” during a mock checkpoint action on campus as part of Israeli Apartheid Week. The student, Najib Hamideh, attended Pitzer College and was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine. The professor, Yaron Raviv, is an Israeli citizen.”

 

Read more at The Electronic Intifada

Below is a letter drafted by several SJPs around the State of California in support of Claremont SJP’s right to display their wall:

To the University Administration:

SJP West, a coalition of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the West Coast, wishes to express its deep concern regarding the recent decision of Pitzer College’s Campus Aesthetics Committee to prohibit the display of a pro-Palestinian exhibit on campus. As part of its annual Israeli Apartheid Week activities, Pitzer College’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine planned to display a mock apartheid wall, similar to the one illegally constructed by the Israeli occupation on Palestinian land. The display of the mock wall is intended to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians who suffer a brutal occupation, which is partially funded by our American tax dollars. The students were not provided with any official justification for the college’s decision but there is ample evidence that the college prefers to suppress SJP’s message because it would make some students uncomfortable.

Banning the display is nothing short of censorship and constitutes a clear infringement on the First Amendment rights of Pitzer students, protected by California law and Pitzer’s own policies. In fact, the presence of a Campus Aesthetics Committee with an authority to disapprove certain forms of free speech on campus in itself raises serious questions about the openness of the campus to harboring a marketplace for the free exchange of ideas. Moreover, students have voiced concern that the display was possibly banned due to its content and after external political pressure. Such concerns are very alarming, providing further evidence for the presence of a chilling effect consequential to such actions, which can suppress the students’ legitimate, constitutionally protected exercise of free speech.

Similar mock walls are routinely displayed on campuses in California and across the nation without incident. We urge you to promptly resolve this matter and affirm the students’ right to display the mock wall. We will continue to work with Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitzer College to ensure that the rights of consciousness students advocating for human rights and social justice are not infringed upon on campus. We look forward to working with you to reach a remedy.

Sincerely the undersigned,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Riverside

Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley

Students for Justice in Palestine at LAVC

Students for Justice in Palestine at Occidental College

Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Santa Cruz

Students for Justice in Palestine at UC San Diego

Students for Justice in Palestine at Stanford University

Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Irvine

 

Palestinian Pitzer student called “cockroach” by Claremont professor targeted in hate crimes

Physical threats emerge as SJP investigation continues

By Liz Scherffius and Emma French

On Tuesday March 11th, Najib Hamideh’s (PZ‘15) reserved carrel in the Honnold Mudd Library was found with a graffitied message: “This carrel is reserved for me to fuck N. Hamideh in the skull.” Two days later, a sharpened key was found hammered into one of Hamideh’s car tires.

The physical threats follow an exchange between Hamideh and Claremont McKenna College (CMC) Professor Yaron Raviv that took place during a street theater simulation of an Israeli Defense Force checkpoint organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as a part of Israeli Apartheid Week. According to a statement issued by SJP on March 8th, the event “consisted of passing out fliers, asking passersby for their IDs as part of a checkpoint simulation, and actors (who had given consent prior to the event) being ‘detained’ off to the side of the checkpoint.”

In an interview with The Orange Peel, SJP member Sonia Mehrmand (SC’13) said, “We were recreating something that is a reality for people on the West Bank and Gaza… We weren’t outside with signs [or] having people protest with us. We were playing our roles and people had to pass through. It was street theater with a political theme but it wasn’t a demonstration.”

During a checkpoint simulation outside of Collins Dining Hall, when Hamideh asked repeatedly to see Professor Raviv’s ID, Raviv replied “fuck off, you little cockroach.”

 Read more at Pitzer Orange Peel

Israeli Claremont McKenna professor calls Palestinian SJP student a “cockroach”

Israeli professor working in the US calls Palestinian student a “cockroach”

by Gabriel Schivone and Nora Barrows-Friedman

Students in the five-college Claremont system in southern California are organizing against an act of racial discrimination by an Israeli professor who called a Palestinian student a “cockroach.”

Since the incident became public, the student says he has faced violent threats written on his reserved seat in the campus library, and someone flattened one of the tires of his car with a sharpened key.

The first incident occurred on Monday, 4 March, when the Claremont group of Students for Justice in Palestine launched its series of events marking Israeli Apartheid Weekwith street theater actions simulating mock Israeli military checkpoints at three of the colleges throughout the day. Israeli Apartheid Week is marked at campuses nationwide and internationally to educate the wider public about Israel’s occupation and supremacist rule in Palestine.

At one point that evening, a man who was later identified as a faculty member at Claremont McKenna College aggressively approached the Students for Justice in Palestine members staffing a mock checkpoint which was set up outside an entrance of the Collins Dining Hall on the campus.

The professor, Yaron Raviv, who is an Israeli citizen and teaches economics at Claremont McKenna College, demanded that the dining hall staff, the dean of students and campus security remove the Students for Justice in Palestine members from the area.

But since Students for Justice in Palestine had acquired official permission for its event and had its paperwork in order, neither the school officials nor the dining staff agreed to remove the students. They did request, however, that the students not block the doorway.

The student activists complied with this request, according to a Claremont McKenna College Campus Safety and Security officer’s incident report obtained by The Electronic Intifada.

A Palestinian member of Students for Justice in Palestine, Najib Hamideh, then walked up to the professor and politely asked his reason for being there, requesting that the man identify himself. In an exchange verified and quoted in the officer’s report, the professor then responded, “Fuck off, you cockroach.”

According to Hamideh, Raviv next referred to all the Students for Justice in Palestine members as cockroaches, and then asked him which of the Claremont colleges Hamideh belonged to. When Hamideh replied that he attends Pitzer College, Raviv then responded that “all Pitzer kids are cockroaches,” Hamideh says.

The Electronic Intifada attempted to contact professor Raviv for a comment on 13 March, but he has still not replied to our request.

Read More at Electronic Intifada