Monday, October 12, 2009

Students for Justice in Palestine Seek $4,000 to Hold Anti-Israel Conference at Pitt

Displaying a profound disrespect for the educational process, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) joined local anarchists in calling for students to “disrupt schools” in response to the G-20 Summit and now they’re asking SGB for $4,077.51 to fund an anti-Israel conference at Pitt.
            
Scheduled to begin October 23rd, the “BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) conference” is a collection of workshops including “How to research corporations profiting from occupation and apartheid” and “Academic and Cultural Boycotts.”
            
Organized with the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, the conference will host the usual speakers condemning Israel as an apartheid state and a general force for evil in the Middle East. 
            
I’m not writing to discuss the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa nor do I think that that is the most pressing issue raised by the upcoming conference.
            
Putting aside our different positions on Israel, I think we should all be outraged that a student group that called for the disruption of schools around the country three weeks ago is attempting to appropriate more than $4,000 of our money in order to further its fringe agenda on campus.
            
Now, I fully support SJP’s decision to have this conference at Pitt. In fact, I’d encourage people to attend it and witness the farcical logic that underpins the divestment movement.
            
However, it would be unconscionable for Pitt’s diverse student body to have to pay for such a conference. The student activities fee is levied against every student and it would be wrong for anyone but SJP and its supporters to fund a conference that hosts speakers who support terrorist organizations.
            
For instance, the conference is scheduled to include poet Remi Kanazi as a speaker. A man who claims that Hamas is not a terrorist organization, Kanazi wrote in his Twitter feed, “Wow, a marine recruiter just called me! [I] told him, ‘You probably don’t want me with a gun in the Middle East.’”
            
Kanazi’s suggestion that he would be some sort of danger to the United States or its interests if he were armed and in the Middle East is troubling and particularly revealing of his character and politics; both of which no student at the University of Pittsburgh should be forced to fund.
            
His support of Hamas demonstrates a callous disregard for the facts. Objectively, Hamas is an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying terrorist organization with a history of carrying out suicide bombings.
            
Kanazi has a right to defend them if he wants but no student at Pitt should have to subsidize a conference that includes a man such as this among its speakers.
            
The allocations committee recommended that SJP receive $1,748 but neither the University nor SGB should spend a single cent to bring friends of Hamas such as Remi Kanazi to our campus.
            
SGB will make the final decision Tuesday night at 8:45 in room 837 of the William Pitt Union. Students should attend this meeting and make it clear to SGB that no student group that calls for the disruption of schools should receive student activities fee dollars nor should any conference that hosts the like of Remi Kanazi be paid for by students.
            
Make your voices heard; attend Tuesday’s SGB meeting. 

1 comment:

  1. "I'm not writing to discuss the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa nor do I think that that is the most pressing issue raised by the upcoming conference."-Giles Howrad

    I couldn't disagree with you more, Giles. I think the comparison between Israel and apartheid South Africa should be enough incentive for any conscionable student with one iota of regard for humanity to question what Israel does to warrant such a comparison. A comparison that countless respective individuals have made including Desmond Tutu.

    I would think someone like yourself who is so fixated on the disruption of schools, would put just as much effort into the disruption of basic human rights and the disruption of international law. How can you put aside your position on Israel who has been oppressing, colonizing, dehumanizing, and ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people for over 60 years. DISRUPTION OF AN ENTIRE PEOPLE.

    I think it would behoove you to check out the conference, maybe then you could write articles that actually quote facts and not tweets.

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