Nicole Santa Cruz, L.A. Now, February 4 2011

Photo: Students protest in support of their UC Irvine classmates, who were disciplined by the university after disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

The Orange County district attorney’s office on Friday charged 11 defendants with conspiring to disrupt a meeting and a speech by the Israeli ambassador to the United States at UC Irvine last year.

The move comes after about 50 protesters rallied in front of the Orange County district attorney’s office Tuesday. Though some have criticized the students’ method of protest, many said that university punishment was sufficient enough for the “Irvine 11,” as the students came to be known.

In a statement, Orange County Dist. Atty.Tony Rackauckas said the case was filed because of an “organized attempted to squelch the speaker.” He also said the students “meant to stop this speech and stop anyone else from hearing his ideas, and they did so by disrupting a lawful meeting.”

“We must decide whether we are a country of laws or a country of anarchy,” he said. “We cannot tolerate a pre-planned violation of the law, even if the crime takes place on a school campus and even if the defendants are college students. In our democratic society, we cannot tolerate a deliberate, organized, repetitive and collective effort to significantly disrupt a speaker who hundreds assembled to hear.”

The Muslim Student Union, which denied planning to obstruct the speech, was suspended by the university. It was one of the first instances in recent memory in which the school recommended the ban of a student group for an action other than hazing or alcohol abuse. Individual students were also disciplined by the university.

The Feb. 8, 2010, incident sparked a debate about free speech at the campus after a group of students disrupted a speech by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Oren was shouted down repeatedly, and supporters cheered as students were escorted away by police.

The students are accused of meeting with other members of the Muslim Student Union to discuss options to respond to the speech as far out as six days before the event.

According to prosecutors, students circulated e-mails and held multiple meetings to plan the disruption of the speech. One of the students is accused of sending an e-mail to the MSU-UCI message board announcing that “we will be staging a University of Chicago Style disruption of the Ambassador’s speech.”

Approximately 500 to 700 people had assembled for the meeting, authorities say.

Eight of the defendants are students at UC Irvine and the other three were students at UC Riverside. Each is charged with one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and one misdemeanor count of the disturbance of the meeting. If convicted, they could be fined and/or sentenced to probation with community service or six months in jail.

The students will be arraigned March 11 in Santa Ana.

Aaida Samad, The Daily Californian, February 4 2011

ALYSSE BACHARACH/Senior Staff

Holding posters, banners and flags, around 80 demonstrators staged a “die-in” Thursday afternoon at Sather Gate to raise awareness about violence against Egyptian protesters, to denounce U.S. aid to the Egyptian government and to stand in solidarity with ongoing protests in the country.

At the demonstration hosted by the campus Muslim Students Association political action committee, around 20 protesters wearing black clothes and holding signs and banners blocked Sather Gate, while nearly 40 other protesters lay on the ground, representing those killed in the Egyptian protests.

A crowd of onlookers, including students and concerned community members, gathered around the demonstration as the students lying on the ground got up and stated the reasons for their “deaths.”

“I died for a dictator to step down,” said one student.

According to Sadia Saifuddin, a member of the committee, the purpose of the event was to raise awareness about ongoing protests in Egypt.

“Egyptians are dying at the hands of our tax money,” Nuha Masri, a member of the committee and organizer for the event. “Our money is going into killing people and supporting the regime of a dictator.”

According to Fatima Mekkaoui, a student at the event and member of the committee, students need to be aware of the money going into U.S. foreign aid for Egypt.

“The university and education are looking at budget cuts right now,” Mekkaoui said. “If we have enough money to send aid to the regime in Egypt, but don’t have enough money to aid our own people, that is pure hypocrisy.”

The majority of the protesters left Sather Gate by around 1:30 p.m., but as of press time, some were discussing staying overnight.

Daniel Ming and Aaron Glatz, The New York Times Bay Citizen, February 3 2011

Hundreds of people, mostly Arab-Americans, are expected to gather Saturday in downtown San Francisco to support anti-government protests in Egypt, and a large contingent of Jews representing a Bay Area peace-advocacy group will join them, one of its leaders says.

“We are deeply inspired by their push for democracy and freedom,” said Cecilie Surasky, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, based in Oakland.

Ms. Surasky said she hoped a new political order in Egypt would help speed the end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which her group opposes. The group’s views differ markedly from statements about the Egyptian protests coming from the Israeli government and many other Jewish-American organizations, which caution that the demonstrations in Cairo could ultimately threaten Israel.

The unrest in Egypt is merely the latest issue to pit a number of Bay Area activists against prominent Jewish organizations, as well as against some Israelis who have come to see the Bay Area as a locus for Jewish opposition to Israel’s government.

One prominent Israeli research organization, the Reut Institute, recently described the Bay Area as “one of the very few geographic locations that drive a global assault on Israel’s right to exist.” In October, the Anti-Defamation League placed Jewish Voice for Peace — which has called for an international boycott of companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories — among “the top 10 anti-Israel groups in America.”

The divisions have heightened tensions among Bay Area Jews. During one altercation last year, a pro-Israel activist attacked two representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace with pepper spray. Last March, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, a bimonthly Jewish magazine based in Berkeley, received death threats, and his home was plastered with signs accusing him of “Islamo-Fascism,” after he announced that he planned to give an award to a United Nations official who led an investigation into Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza.

“What’s happening is outlandish; the era of civil discourse has disappeared,” said Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce of Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco’s largest synagogue.

The activists say they are not working against Israel, but against Israeli government policies they believe are discriminatory. In the past week, many of these activists have cast the Egyptian demonstrations as an opportunity to alter the Middle East, including Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

“When you look at the Middle East, in one way or another it’s all about what’s happening in Palestine,” said Barbara Lubin, co-founder of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a group in Berkeley that organizes aid missions to Gaza, which remains under an Israeli blockade.

Ms. Lubin said she hoped that if President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was removed, Israeli policies toward Gaza “would become more lax” and allow her organization to carry out its work in support of the Palestinians.

Rabbi Lerner has been an outspoken supporter of the demonstrators in Egypt. His recent editorial, headlined “Jewish Prayers for Egypt’s Uprising,” was the lead opinion article on the Web site of the television network Al Jazeera on Tuesday. He said in an interview that American Jews had an interest in letting “the people of the Arab world know that a very large section of the Jewish people support the liberation of the Egyptian people and of all Arab people.”

Such views concern Israel’s defenders locally and abroad.

“Nobody defends Mubarak,” said John Rothmann, a talk show host for KGO radio in San Francisco and the former President of the Zionist Organization of America in San Francisco.

Mr. Rothmann added, however, that it was important to remember that Mr. Mubarak had maintained peace between Egypt and Israel for nearly three decades.

“He may be a barbarian, but he’s our barbarian,” Mr. Rothmann continued. “You need to have an alternative, and we have never been able to create one.”

Eran Shayshon, a Reut Institute senior analyst, said in an e-mail that Israelis were watching Bay Area Jewish activists closely because “campus dynamics and consumer trends originating in California often reverberate throughout North America and beyond.”

In fact, Jewish Voice for Peace has grown significantly since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its leaders say.

The 23-day operation in December 2008 and January 2009, named Operation Cast Lead by the Israel Defense Forces, left 13 Israelis and at least 1,300 Palestinians dead. It drew strong criticism that Israel used excessive force against civilians.

“Cast Lead was a radicalizing moment for a lot of Jews,” said Sydney Levy, director of campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace. Mr. Levy said Jewish discontent with Israel typically subsided after a conflict ended. That did not happen after the most recent Israeli incursion, he said, “mostly because the siege of Gaza continues today.”

Jewish Voice for Peace’s mailing list has risen to 100,000 from 35,000 since the start of the Gaza conflict, according to the organization; the number of chapters has grown to 27 from 7. From 2008 to 2009, the group’s operating budget, fueled by donations, grew 44 percent.

“We, as Jews, have a unique responsibility to change the viewpoint of the people who are in our community,” said Rae Abileah, a San Francisco resident and advocate for Jewish Voice for Peace’s youth wing.

Jewish Voice for Peace has been at the center of several attention-grabbing episodes.

In November, during a convention of Jewish philanthropic organizations in New Orleans, Ms. Abileah and others drew international attention when they heckled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a speech.

“I’m a 28-year-old young Jewish woman, and the settlements betray Jewish values!” Ms. Abileah shouted. One man grabbed her in a chokehold while another tried to gag her by stuffing a seat cover in her mouth.

Much of the recent scrutiny of Bay Area Jewish activists has focused on efforts to impose an international boycott on Israel. The campaign is modeled after the boycott of South Africa in the 1980s over apartheid.

Last spring, students at the University of California, Berkeley, with the backing of Jewish Voice for Peace, mounted a divestment campaign singling out companies that provide “military support for the occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The effort ended after Akiva Tor, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco, came to the campus and held a private meeting with student senators.

By supporting the boycott, Jewish Voice for Peace “puts themselves beyond the pale,” wrote Mr. Shayshon of the Reut Institute, because some leaders of the boycott movement “have explicitly talked about the goal of dismantling Israel.”

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace say they are simply concerned about human rights of all peoples in the Middle East — whether in Israel, the Palestinian territories or the streets of Cairo.

“Egyptians deserve a democracy just as Americans do, just as Israelis do, just as Palestinians do,” Ms. Surasky said.

Jonathan Lis, Haaretz, January 26 2011

Right-wing lawmaker Michael Ben Ari is expected to be appointed head of a parliamentary panel of inquiry investigating the sources of funding for left-wing Israeli human rights groups.

The National Union MK, who was informed of the decision on Wednesday by coalition whip Ze’ev Elkin, welcomed the news as a chance to ensure that the investigation be carried out as justly as possible.

“The MKs from Balad and United Arab List know that I will deal with them and their friends just as I promised,” Ben-Ari said, referring to the two major Israeli Arab factions. “I will protect the State of Israel from all sorts of haters, both at home and away, who wish to see it destroyed.”

Lawmakers from the Israeli Arab factions and from the Labor Party are planning to boycott the two panels of inquiry approved by the Knesset plenum. One of the panels will investigate where Leftist NGOs have been acquiring their funding and the second will deal with enforcement of land laws.

However paradoxically, Ben-Ari can consider himself the pick of the Israeli Arab factions, since when they announced their boycott of the committees, they recommended Ben-Ari for the job, saying “the position suits him.”

The initiative regarding the Leftist NGOs, brought forth by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu faction, will focus its assessments particularly on whether the money in question is coming from foreign states or even organizations deemed to be involved in terrorist activities.

The move has been opposed by politicians, activists and intellectuals alike, including President Shimon Peres, called on the Knesset to reject the proposal on the grounds that the matter should be dealt with by law enforcement officials and not lawmakers.

“The investigation of organizations, from the left or the right, must be left to law enforcement, which is the expert, objective system and has all the proper investigative tools,” Peres said last week, in response to a question from Haaretz.

More than 60 Israeli law professors signed a petition prior to that and thousands took to the streets of Tel Aviv in a mass protest over the proposal.

The commission questioned several high-ranking Israeli officials, but was not given access to individual soldiers  [EPA]

An Israeli inquiry commission has defended the actions of the country’s troops during a deadly raid on a Turkish-led flotilla of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip last year.

The core findings were issued in a 300-page report released on Sunday by an Israeli government-appointed panel.

Made up of four Israelis and two foreign observers, the panel said Israel did not violate international law.

However, it did criticise the military planners of the mission for not taking into account the possibility of serious violence in the May raid.

“The soldiers were placed in a situation they were not completely prepared for and had not anticipated,” the commission said.

The report, which was was widely expected to exonerate the country’s military of any wrongdoing, contradicts a UN-backed report issued last year.

UN report contradictions

In September, a UN-appointed panel concluded that Israeli forces showed “incredible violence” during and after the raid on the flotilla that left eight Turkish activists and one Turkish-American dead.

The UN probe added that there was “clear evidence to support prosecutions” against Israel for “wilful killing” and torture committed when its troops stormed the aid flotilla

Israel’s military response to the flotilla “betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality” and violated international law “including international humanitarian and human rights law”, the three-member panel said.

“The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence.”

The commando raid on the group of aid ships prompting international criticism of Israel’s actions and soured relations with several countries, particularly Turkey.

High-ranking testimony

Israel established its own commission of inquiry after rejecting criticism that its troops had acted with excessive force in the raid.

The inquiry commission, headed by Yaakov Turkel, a former supreme court judge, is reportedly also examining several other aspects of the raid, and is expected to release a second report at an as yet unspecified date.

That report is expected to look at the mechanisms available for complaints about the raid.

The commission has heard testimony from high-ranking Israeli officials, including Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, the defence minister, and General Gabi Ashkenazi, the army chief.

Giving testimony last year, Barak termed the flotilla a “planned provocation”. He said that top officials had suspected that the aid convoy’s organisers were “preparing for an armed conflict to embarrass Israel”.

“We regret any loss of life,” he said, “but we would have lost more lives if we had behaved differently.”

None of the soldiers who carried out the raid were authorised to provide their testimony. The commission was only authorised to speak to the army chief or Major-General Giora Eiland, who carried out the military’s own investigation into the incident, on matters relating to the military’s response.

Commission members were authorised to submit questions to individual soldiers who participated in the raid only through a military committee.

Turkish reaction

The raid on the flotilla severely damaged Israel’s relations with Turkey, which had been one of the few Muslim countries to enjoy friendly relations with it.

Recep Tayyib Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, dismissed the inquiry’s findings. He told reporters on Sunday in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, that the Israeli report had “no value or credibility”.

Cengiz Aktar, a journalist with the Turkish Daily News, told Al Jazeera that this latest report is unlikely to change their relations for the better.

“The relationship between the two countries is slowing down at a tremendous pace, and this report won’t help. There were some attempts by some members of the Israeli cabinet, but it totally failed, and this report will be yet another blow.

The Guardian, January 23 2011

The Palestine papers reveal the offer of concessions by Palestinian peace negotiators on areas such as the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem. Photograph: Awad Awad/AFP/Getty Images

The biggest leak of confidential documents in the history of the Middle East conflict has revealed that Palestinian negotiators secretly agreed to accept Israel‘s annexation of all but one of the settlements built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem. This unprecedented proposal was one of a string of concessions that will cause shockwaves among Palestinians and in the wider Arab world.

A cache of thousands of pages of confidential Palestinian records covering more than a decade of negotiations with Israel and the US has been obtained by al-Jazeera TV and shared exclusively with the Guardian. The papers provide an extraordinary and vivid insight into the disintegration of the 20-year peace process, which is now regarded as all but dead.

The documents – many of which will be published by the Guardian over the coming days – also reveal:

• The scale of confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

• How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.

• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.

• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel’s 2008-9 war in Gaza.

As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.

Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City – the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.

The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of George Bush’s Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history” in order to resolve the world’s most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate.

Intensive efforts to revive talks by the Obama administration foundered last year over Israel’s refusal to extend a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction. Prospects are now uncertain amid increasing speculation that a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict is no longer attainable – and fears of a new war.

Many of the 1,600 leaked documents – drawn up by PA officials and lawyers working for the British-funded PLO negotiations support unit and include extensive verbatim transcripts of private meetings – have been independently authenticated by the Guardian and corroborated by former participants in the talks and intelligence and diplomatic sources. The Guardian’s coverage is supplemented by WikiLeaks cables, emanating from the US consulate in Jerusalem and embassy in Tel Aviv. Israeli officials also kept their own records of the talks, which may differ from the confidential Palestinian accounts.

The concession in May 2008 by Palestinian leaders to allow Israel to annex the settlements in East Jerusalem – including Gilo, a focus of controversy after Israel gave the go-ahead for 1,400 new homes – has never been made public.

All settlements built on territory occupied by Israel in the 1967 war are illegal under international law, but the Jerusalem homes are routinely described, and perceived, by Israel as municipal “neighbourhoods”. Israeli governments have consistently sought to annex the largest settlements as part of a peace deal – and came close to doing so at Camp David.

Erekat told Israeli leaders in 2008: “This is the first time in Palestinian-Israeli history in which such a suggestion is officially made.” No such concession had been made at Camp David.

But the offer was rejected out of hand by Israel because it did not include a big settlement near the city Ma’ale Adumim as well as Har Homa and several others deeper in the West Bank, including Ariel. “We do not like this suggestion because it does not meet our demands,” Israel’s then foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, told the Palestinians, “and probably it was not easy for you to think about it, but I really appreciate it”.

The overall impression that emerges from the documents, which stretch from 1999 to 2010, is of the weakness and growing desperation of PA leaders as failure to reach agreement or even halt all settlement temporarily undermines their credibility in relation to their Hamas rivals; the papers also reveal the unyielding confidence of Israeli negotiators and the often dismissive attitude of US politicians towards Palestinian representatives.

Last night Erekat said the minutes of the meetings were “a bunch of lies and half truths”. Qureia told AP that “many parts of the documents were fabricated, as part of the incitement against the … Palestinian leadership”.

However Palestinian former negotiator, Diana Buttu, called on Erekat to resign following the revelations. “Saeb must step down and if he doesn’t it will only serve to show just how out of touch and unrepresentative the negotiators are,” she said.

Palestinian and Israeli officials both point out that any position in negotiations is subject to the principle that “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed” and therefore is invalid without a overarching deal.

Al Jazeera, January 8 2011

Palestinian authorities have travelled extensively to convince nations to recognise it as a state [EPA]

Chile has become the latest South American country to officially recognise Palestine as an independent state.

“The government of Chile has adopted the resolution today recognising the existence of the state of Palestine as a free, independent and sovereign state,” Alfredo Moreno, the foreign minister, said on Friday.

“Chile has permanently and consistently supported the right of the Palestinian people to constitute themselves as an independent state, in peaceful coexistence with the state of Israel,” Moreno said.

Chile’s decision follows a meeting in Brazil between Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador last month recognised Palestine within its borders prior to 1967, and Uruguay and Paraguay are expected to join them in the coming weeks.

Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Costa Rica also recognise the Palestinian state.

‘Support for peace’

Moreno said that Pinera is to travel in March to the Middle East to express his support for peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel and to reinforce Chile’s friendship and cooperation with both states.

The government’s resolution also noted that both Jewish and Palestinian communities have been key to Chile’s social, cultural, political and economic development for many years, working in harmony that should serve as a model for their both the Israeli and Palestinian states. It’s a message that Pinera plans to make personally during a visit to the Middle East in March.

Chile has a community of more than 300,000 Palestinian immigrants and their descendants.

The borders of a final Palestinian state have been one of the thorniest issues in peace negotiations with Israel.

Direct talks between the two sides, the first for nearly two years, began on September 2 but stalled after a 10-month Israeli settlement-building freeze expired three weeks later.

In a New Year’s Eve address, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas urged the international community to come up with a new peace plan after months of US diplomacy failed to secure a settlement freeze.

(Attachment – Image of vandalized signboard)

BERKELEY, CA – A student group signboard belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley was defaced with anti-Islamic, anti-Palestinian, and anti-ally stickers, the latest in a  pattern of continuing anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim acts on UC campuses.  Among the stickers was one which read “Fight Islamic Terrorism” and another stating “Celebrating 62 Years of Israel”, placed directly on top of the sign’s image of a small boy holding a teddy bear.  Another sticker bears the faces of Osama Bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Fidel Castro, each with a target symbol superimposed over their faces.  The message of the vandalism is clear— a direct threat to Palestinians and their supporters.

Days earlier, a similar act of hate-fueled vandalism occurred on the UC Davis campus, where the campus’s historic Third World mural was defaced to cover a Palestinian flag and peace dove.  Additional anti-Mexican graffiti was also discovered on the UC Berkeley campus during the week.  The UC Berkeley anti-Palestinian vandalism targeted the second signboard the group has displayed; the first was smashed to pieces and destroyed in a similar hate-fueled attack in 2007.  The latest two incidents are only the most recent in a pattern of hate actions against Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, as well as their supporters, including:

- a 2008 occurrence anti-Palestinian hate graffiti in Dwinelle Hall, one of the major lecture halls on campus
- an attack on three Palestinian students during a silent protest in 2008
- an attack on a student senator during SJP’s divestment drive in Spring 2010
- a 2004 hate crime assault against eight Muslim women near the UC Berkeley campus
- Jewish SJP members receiving anonymous harassing phone calls and emails

and several other incidents.

SJP is co-sponsoring a panel discussion titled “‘Ground Zero Mosque’ or Zero Mosques in America: Islamophobia and Critical Race Theory” on October 12 2010 at 7pm as part of its response to these crimes.  The event will take place at 155 Dwinelle Hall on UC Berkeley campus.

Students for Justice in Palestine calls on the University of California and UC Berkeley administrations to investigate these hate crimes fully and to take immediate action to stop the anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic atmosphere on campus, including issuing statements condemning these attacks from both the UC Berkeley Chancellor’s office as well as the UC Office of the President.  In addition, SJP calls on the UC Office of the President to ensure the safety of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and allied students in the face of these hate crimes.

A project by Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley, Facing Apartheid is part of an effort to educate the campus community on its connection to and responsibility for illegal military occupation and apartheid policies which directly and systematically impede access to higher education for Palestinian students in the West Bank, Gaza and 1948 Palestine. Click here to see the whole display.

“Pessimism comes from reality, because reality is tragic. Optimism comes from action, because action changes reality.”
~Jose Mariategui

We Students for Justice in Palestine stand in solidarity and support the actions of the UC Berkeley Hunger Strikers. We find their stand against the racist and violent Arizona law SB 1070 to be courageous, demonstrating a commitment to human welfare and social justice. We recognize that it is not enough to denounce this particular law. We must instead condemn the rules and norms that criminalize and dehumanize migrants especially the Latino people in this country and on this campus.

Our intimacy with the situation of the Palestinian people, who face similar racist laws geared at preserving the ethnic purity of Israeli space and government, moves us to note the similarities of oppression here and there. Since 1948, the return of Palestinian refugees to their land in what became Israel has been criminalized. In their own homes Palestinians have been called “infiltrators.” Like Latino people here, Palestinians did not cross the border: it crossed them. The situation has endured to the present, where a recent Israeli military order has authorized the occupying military to detain and deport any person defined as an “infiltrator” – even on their own lands.

Last month the Israeli government issued two military orders, like SB 1070, which legalizes human transfer. The Israeli military orders are in grave violation of the 4th Geneva Convention as it alters the law and allows an occupying power to prosecute, detain and deport any Palestinian defined as “infiltrator.” The Israeli military and Arizona police can use the law to abuse power secretly without public debate or judicial review. Such laws legalize, mandates even, racial profiling, and necessitates the dehumanization of migrants. Like the Latino and indigenous peoples in the America’s the Palestinians have been oppressed legally. The paradox is law is ideally supposed to the mechanism that protects people from injustice. What then are we to do when law is used to facilitate racist agendas?

We believe that this system of control on movement, whether by Israel, Arizona, or the United States government, is inhumane and invasive. That SB1070 legalizes the use of racial profiling points to the motivations of this bill. Egregious ramifications of such racist laws are already apparent and are part of a larger pattern of legalizing oppression. We believe that both policies insidiously mask their unjust core because they are laws—laws that create double standards, laws that facilitate injustice, laws that break up families, laws that advance the powerful over the powerless even as the laws claim all persons should be equal under the law.

Inspired by the energy and sacrifice of our brother and sister hunger strikers, we remain optimistic and steadfast in our solidarity with the Raza students who have acted with great courage to change and challenge power with what little they have, the truth and the righteousness of their cause. During our campaign urging the university to divest our efforts were actualized at the expense of what little we had, like the hunger strikers, we understand that confronting power requires sacrifice.