The "Nakba": A Driving Force Behind U.S. Anti-Israel Activity in 2008
College Campuses
Posted: June 3, 2008
Anti-Israel activity related to the "Nakba" has been particularly widespread on college campuses. For example, anti-Israel groups at Harvard University, Columbia University, the University of Washington and the University of California - Irvine, a campus that has an extensive history of anti-Semitic activity, have organized "Nakba" commemorations to memorialize the "Palestinian catastrophe." At Harvard, a week-long series of events called "Nakba 1948: 60 Years of Palestinian Dispossession," held from April 28 to May 2, included a candlelight vigil, panel discussions and several film screenings, as well as speeches by Mazin Qumsiyeh and MIT professor Noam Chomsky.
Columbia's "Palestine Nakba Week" included a panel discussion on "60 Years of Nakba" that featured Joseph Massad. At the discussion, he charged that the mere "presence of Palestinians" is what "provokes Israelis to expel them" and those whom Israel cannot expel are placed "within an apartheid wall."
In response to a question about Massad's desire for Israeli coexistence with Palestinians despite Hamas's charter, Massad countered that although Hamas's charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Israel "does destroy Palestine and continues to destroy Palestinians." He also echoed the moderator's claim that the "Nakba" is a current reality for Palestinians, arguing that "Israel continues to inflict the Nakba on Palestinians because of laws [that discriminate on the basis of race and religion] it established."
At UCLA, the Palestine Coalition, headed by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) hosted Palestine Awareness Week from May 12-18, 2008. The week-long series of events, titled "To Exist Is To Resist: Live Free," included speeches by Anna Baltzer, an author who is highly critical of Israel, Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and a presentation by Craig and Cindy Corrie, the parents of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003.
UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz also had Palestine Awareness Weeks from May 19-22, 2008. At UC Davis, the week-long series of events included an appearance by Ghada Karmi, who spoke about "Israel's Dilemma in Palestine," and culminated with a "Palestinian Remembrance" night that was held in recognition "of those Palestinians that have been murdered, oppressed, made to be refugees and ethnically cleansed by Israeli Occupation in the last 60 years." At UC Santa Cruz, As'ad Abu Khalil, a Political Science professor at California State University at Stanislaus, spoke about "major misconceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian crisis" and anti-Israel cartoonist Khalil Bendib gave a lecture titled "Palestine in our Media."
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