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 23^rd, 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. 

Local Media Scrutinizes Students for Justice in Palestine

WTAE aired a piece today on Students for Justice in Palestine and their involvement with the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project. Local and national media has picked up the story since my first column was published in The Pitt News. The University must realize that no student's activities fee should go to fund this organization.

This Week's Pitt News Column

The summer is over and that means that I'm back to writing weekly columns for The Pitt News. This week's is about Students for Justice in Palestine and their involvement in the G-20. Below is the full text.

Tens of thousands of protesters are planning to descend on Pittsburgh in late September in order to oppose the G-20 summit being held at the David Lawrence Convention Center. Environmental groups, human rights organizations and advocates for the poor all plan on protesting the G-20 Summit and, although I disagree with many of them, I fully support their right to nonviolently express their opinions in public.

That being said, a small minority of protesters promises to physically disrupt the G-20 through illegal means. Organizing on the Internet, this minority has released countless statements denouncing capitalism as a brutal economic system responsible for the world’s ills.

One such group, the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project, calls the G-20 “the managers of our oppression” and is calling on people to “confront and disrupt the G-20 and its political, corporate and institutional enablers throughout the city” according to a proclamation on its website.

Toward this end, the Resistance Project is planning an unpermitted march in violation of city ordinance on Sept. 24.

According to plans detailed on its website, the march will involve unspecified “direct actions,” a term that has, at past international conferences in London and Seattle, served as code for violently disruptive protests and vandalism by other groups.

Most notably, the anarchist Direct Action Network planned protests against the World Trade Organization meeting in 1999 in Seattle that included the vandalism of storefronts, the smashing of windows and violent confrontations with police.

The Resistance Project has even posted a list of targets for unpermitted protests, including Starbucks, the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute and the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation on Atwood Street.

The Resistance Project also issued an online statement calling for supporters who cannot come to Pittsburgh to “plan local actions” and to “disrupt schools and financial institutions” as a form of protest against the G-20 Summit.”

But this vague language is a clear threat against educational institutions around this country and their ability to function free from the interference of extremists. What really piqued my interest was that a Pitt student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, is listed on the site as having endorsed the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project.

Wondering why a student organization would support the disruption of educational activities, I spoke to Jonas Moffat, the group’s president. During our conversation, Moffat listed a series of grievances that, he said, justified his organization’s opposition to the G-20 Summit.

From President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan to the state of health care in the United States, Moffat’s grievances had absolutely nothing to do with the policies of the G-20 but instead focused on the policies of the United States as an individual nation.

Moffat’s sole criticism of the G-20 was that it had excluded Iran and Venezuela from membership in the group even though both states possessed large international economies. Our conversation became more confrontational when I asked Moffat if he believed that Iran, as a state sponsor of terrorism, and Venezuela, as a socialist state opposed to international capitalism, should be allowed into an international body designed to promote economic cooperation.
He refused to answer the question, saying simply that some people (he didn’t specify who) believed it and then said that some people also believe that the United States is a sponsor of international terrorism. When asked to provide a yes-or-no answer as to whether the United States is an international sponsor of terrorism, Moffat said that my questioning was too aggressive and ended the interview.

In a later interview with The Pitt News, Moffat said that he declined to answer the questions because the members of Students for Justice in Palestine have many conflicting opinions and he didn’t think it would be right to give an opinion on behalf of his group or inject his own opinion. Moffat did say, however, that his group’s leaders and more active members voted on whether to endorse the proclamation, and the decision was unanimous.

I respect individuals who defend their convictions reasonably and factually, but for the leader of a student organization to defend his group’s actions through innuendo and suggestions is simply irresponsible. Moffat owes us an explanation of his reasoning because his organization is calling on students to take action against their schools.

Moffat’s group has endorsed a proclamation calling on students to disrupt schools, and his only justification for this is that the G-20 hasn’t allowed Venezuela and Iran, two nations ruled by dictators, to participate in the Summit.

This is ridiculous, and what’s even more disgusting is that every student on campus is funding this group’s activities through the student activities fee. According to Moffat, Students for Justice in Palestine received about $5,000 in funding from SGB last year and he expects to receive even more financial support from the University this year.

Certainly, the student activities fee is used to support a broad range of activist organizations with goals not every student agrees with.

But Students for Justice in Palestine has called on students to disrupt educational activities, and it is unconscionable that we should all be monetarily supporting its existence on campus. Academic funds should not go to those who do not respect the academic process and instead encourage its disruption.

Indeed, Pitt’s “Guidelines for Student Organization Certification” says that student organizations must “refrain from advocating, inciting or participating in any material interference or physical disruption of the University” and by calling on students to “disrupt schools,” Students for Justice in Palestine is employing language that has led to such violations in the past.

It is inappropriate that such a group be affiliated with or supported by this University, its administration or student body. At minimum, this organization’s certification should be suspended and their conduct reviewed by the Student Organization Resource Center.