NOVANEWS
- Young activist disrupts AIPAC panel about ‘Israel on Campus’
- The counter lobby: Occupy AIPAC to press Congress on war with Iran, US military aid to Israel
Young activist disrupts AIPAC panel about ‘Israel on Campus’
Mar 04, 2012 09:04 pm | Adam Horowitz
From Young, Jewish and Proud:
Liza Behrendt, 22 year old member of Young Jewish and Proud, the youth wing of Jewish Voice for Peace, stood up during a breakout session called “The Struggle to Secure Israel on Campus” to call attention to the silencing of Palestinians— and young Jews who support them — on U.S. campuses. Liza stood on stage and unfurled a banner that read, “Settlements Betray Jewish Values” and “Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof,” the Jewish text from Deuteronomy meaning “Justice, Justice, You Shall Pursue.”
The panel included representatives from AIPAC, Stand With Us, The David Project, and Hillel, who discussed tactics for opposing human rights groups on campus, an in particular those that promote the use of Boycott, Divestment or Sanctions (BDS) to pressure Israel to be accountable to international law. Panelist Wayne Firestone, CEO of Hillel, last year issued controversial guidelines barring Hillel groups from partnering with organizations that support any facet of the BDS movement or that lack a specifically Zionist stance. “I felt it was necessary to confront Wayne Firestone, whose condescending guidelines barred my Brandeis University chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace from joining Hillel last spring. Hillel’s guidelines are part of organized efforts to enforce an ideological status quo among young Jews on Israel, but they are completely out of touch with what’s happening among young people,” said Liza Behrendt.
AIPAC enticed over 1,000 students to attend this year’s policy summit, including over 200 student body presidents, mostly by subsidizing their trips to DC. This morning student activists distributed hundreds of copies of an open letter (link to bit.ly) from members of Students for Justice in Palestine and Young Jewish Proud to AIPAC student delegates that highlights the myths and realities of AIPAC.
This effort to draw attention to the silencing of Palestinians and young Jewish activists is part of a weekend long series of activities to highlight the destructive practices of AIPAC. A separate group of Jewish activists from Jews Say No and Just Foreign Policy went inside the AIPAC conference and gave interviews to journalists, in which they stressed that AIPAC doesn’t represent the majority of American Jews who oppose war with Iran and who want the US to oppose settlement expansion in the West Bank. Activists held daylong protests outside the AIPAC conference.
Timed to coincide with the AIPAC policy conference, Occupy AIPAC (www.occupyaipac.org) is a coalition effort initiated by CODEPINK: Women for Peace and endorsed by Occupy Wall Street, Occupy DC, and over 130 organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, Interfaith Peace Builders, Jews Say No, Just Foreign Policy, US Palestinian Community Network and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The purpose of the week of actions is to urge Obama to reject the Israeli administration’s push for war on Iran, insist on respect for Palestinian rights, and draw attention to the role of AIPAC as a special interest lobby that maintains a stranglehold over US policies.
The counter lobby: Occupy AIPAC to press Congress on war with Iran, US military aid to Israel
Mar 04, 2012
Alex Kane
Hundreds of protesters from Occupy AIPAC massed outside the Washington Convention Center, where the AIPAC conference is held (Photo: Alex Kane)
Washington, D.C.–Before this year’s American-Israel Public Affairs Committee conference ends, thousands of Israel lobbyists will blanket Capitol Hill, pressuring elected officials to sign onto ahawkish Senate resolution on Iran. But they won’t be the only group lobbying on Israel and Iran.
Occupy AIPAC, the Code Pink-organized counter summit challenging the Israel lobby, will have their own legislative asks. On Tuesday, activists plan to bring their anti-war message to meetings with Congressional members of the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees.
I picked up a copy of Occupy AIPAC’s legislative agenda yesterday. Number one on the agenda is opposing the Lieberman-Graham resolution in the Senate that “confuses U.S. ‘red lines’ and significantly lowers the threshold for going to war,” according to the National Iranian-American Council. Occupy AIPAC is also urging support for the Ellison-Jones letter on Iran urging diplomacy (J Street is also promoting the letter).
“The [Lieberman-Graham] resolution is a blank check for war,” Occupy AIPAC states. “By moving the goalposts for war, and ruling out diplomatic alternatives to war, this resolution could be used by the current or future president as justification for war without further Congressional authorization.”
Tensions with Iran aren’t the only issue on activists’ minds. US military aid to Israel is also criticized in the legislative agenda packet because the aid has been used to “commit grave and systemic human rights abuses against Palestinians, a direct violation of the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act.”
Specifically, Occupy AIPAC will push for the following amendments to the 2013 budget: restricting the use of US weapons to Israel’s sovereign territory; promoting a freeze on the expansion of Israeli settlements; ending the blockade of Gaza and more.
Fat chance any of those asks will be taken seriously. Still, they’re laudable goals.
I asked Rae Abileah, the Code Pink activist who disrupted Benjamin Netanyahu last year and was assaulted as a result, about Occupy AIPAC’s legislative agenda.
“AIPAC is bringing 13,000 people to lobby the hill, and over 1,000 of those are students, and 200 of them are student body presidents. So they’re really a well-fund, well-oiled operation,” said Abileah, as protesters near her chanted against a potential war with Iran. “We’re seeking to kind of put a cog in the wheel, disrupt business as usual, by trying to get reality inserted in that discussion on the Hill…In terms of legislation, we’re in a really dire spot. We don’t have any illusions that we’re going to shift Congress this weekend. We just have the hope that we’ll change public opinion about the threat of a war with Iran.”