Al-Awda New York, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, issued a statement, “The Way Forward for Palestine Solidarity,” on June 23, 2010, in conjunction with their planned workshop at the US Social Forum.
The issues addressed in the statement below will be discussed more fully at the Al Awda New York workshop at the U.S. Social Forum entitled, “Palestine: Evolution of the movement for Liberation” (Friday, June 25th, 3:30pm — 5:30pm, Wayne State University Student Center, Room 786).
Al-Awda New York is seeking endorsers for the statement. To endorse this statement as an individual or organization, please email info@al-awdany.org.
After years of meaningless “peace negotiations,” the aim of Oslo — a “Jewish state” on 78 percent of historic Palestine and a rump “Palestinian state” on the remaining 22 percent — is rapidly losing whatever credibility it may have once had among Palestinians. Indeed, outside the Palestinian Authority, created by Oslo to serve Israeli interests, it is hard to find any Palestinian voices advocating for such a solution with conviction.
From the ruins of Oslo have emerged new campaigns with holistic goals. The most significant of these has been the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, initiated and overwhelmingly supported by Palestinian civil society.
This campaign seeks to address the entire spectrum of what BDS leader Omar Barghouti describes as Israel’s “three-tiered system of oppression against the Palestinian people”: the 1967 occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem; the denial of Palestinian refugees’ right of return; and the systemic discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel.
These BDS demands present a direct challenge to the Zionist regime of Jewish domination over the Palestinian people. The same goals have generated growing support for the principle of a single, democratic state throughout all of historic Palestine. Even longtime two-state supporter Mustafa Barghouti concedes, “I believe the vast majority of Palestinians would accept equal rights and one person, one vote in one state with alacrity. I certainly would were we to reach such a day.”
Outrage over Israel’s atrocities in and against Gaza — including the recent assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla — has dramatically infused these ideas into the international Palestine solidarity movement, thrusting the Palestinian struggle in the world spotlight as perhaps never before. Despite attempts of its opponents to tar it with the brush of anti-Semitism, BDS is increasingly advocated throughout the world, often by Jewish activists.
Zionist organizations have noted these developments with alarm. The Reut Institute, a leading Israeli think tank, recently warned that support for BDS is based on a “set of ideas that are increasingly sophisticated, ripe, lucid, and coherent,” which, if not aggressively countered, could lead to a “paradigm shift from the Two-State Solution to the One-State Solution as the consensual framework for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
Meanwhile, some in the solidarity movement seek to limit or even oppose BDS. They claim that it is “unrealistic,” or even morally undesirable, to advocate BDS goals that challenge the separate “Jewish state” envisioned by the “Two-State Solution.” Although those who argue this include courageous critics of Israeli policy, their position here is deeply flawed.
First, the principle of self-determination means, above all, that decisions about what is or is not “realistic” belongs to those who live under oppression, rather than their sympathizers — however well meaning. “As in the struggle against South African apartheid,” writes Omar Barghouti, “genuine solidarity movements recognize and follow the lead of the oppressed, who are not passive objects but active, rational subjects that are asserting their aspirations and rights as well as their strategy to realize them.”
Second, is there any social justice movement that has not seemed “unrealistic” or even impossible? Yet, circumstances change rapidly and unpredictably; what was fantasy yesterday often comes true tomorrow. It is enough to remember the long decades that preceded the abolition of slavery, the civil rights victories of the 1960s, or the collapse of colonialism and apartheid in southern Africa.
Third, the “Two-State Solution” is itself realistic only as ratification of a fractured, Israeli-controlled Bantustan; a “Two-Prison” solution, as Palestinian activist Haidar Eid bluntly describes it. This has been the Israeli and U.S. goal since the beginning of the “peace process”; indeed, anyone looking to catch glimpse of a future Palestinian “state” need look no further than the systematic strangulation of Gaza and continued “Judaization” of the land on both sides of the 1948 “Green Line.” In that sense, the most dangerous aspect of this solution is precisely that it is possible.
Finally, “pragmatism” at the expense of justice is always an illusion. As Martin Luther King Jr. famously pointed out, true peace is not merely the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice. An apartheid state built on the notion of Jewish supremacy in an Arab land cannot be part of that vision of justice; on the contrary, it promises unending oppression and conflict.
Now more than ever, it is time for the solidarity movement to align itself with the growing number of Palestinians in the 1967 occupied territories, the refugee communities, and within the 1948 lands calling for a single democratic Palestinian state of all its citizens from the river to the sea.
This cannot happen until all those and their descendants who were driven from their villages and cities in 1948 by terror, force and massacre are able to return and live in freedom and equality in all of historic Palestine. For those interested in true peace, that is the only pragmatic option.
If your organization would like to endorse or co-sign this statement, please email us at info@al-awdany.org.
Received from the Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat. Ahmad Sa’adat is a Palestinian political leader who has been held in isolation in Israeli jails since March 16, 2009. On June 22, 2010 an occupation court once again denied him family visits and banned his access to Arabic and English language newspapers.
June 2010
Ramon Prison – Isolation Section
To the US Social Forum:
I greet you from inside the walls of the prisons of the occupation, with the voice of thousands of Palestinian and Arab political prisoners. On behalf of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, the Palestinian national movement, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, I carry our salutes to the US Social Forum, this coming together of movements of oppressed peoples to organize and stand together against racism, colonialism, oppression and imperialism.
The Palestinian struggle for national liberation is part and parcel of the international movement of peoples for national liberation, international racial and economic justice, and an end to occupation, colonialism and imperialism. We salute all of the oppressed groups, nations and communities who have come together to build this social forum, including our sisters and brothers in the Palestinian and Arab community in the US and the indigenous peoples of the Americas on whose land the US empire of today was built, and who have remained a constant presence of resistance for over 400 years.
As we struggle to end apartheid, racism and occupation in Palestine, we recognize that we face not only the enemy immediately before us – Israel – but the full force and muscle of the U.S. government behind it. We view the US Social Forum as an expression of the popular movements inside the United States, working inside the empire to achieve justice for all, and join our hands in solidarity with yours. Our struggle is your struggle, and your struggle is ours.
The power of the U.S. empire in a unipolar world is being shaken by resistance and popular movements, from those inside the U.S., to the rising strength of the Left in Latin America, in Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and elsewhere, to the development of alternative and regional powers around the world who are forming a strong counterweight to the empire. It is a necessity that the US empire and the unipolar world upon which it thrives is upended, and we greet the USSF’s commitment that “another U.S. is necessary” with resounding agreement and solidarity.
A global front of the Left, of popular movements, of those who struggle for liberation and against imperialism and oppression, is necessary today, and the US Social Forum – and the entire Social Forum movement – is integral in building that global Left Front.
As you know, our struggle in Palestine is deeply linked to the struggle in the United States. There are two camps – the camp of empire and its allies, headed by the U.S. and Israel and, in our region, the complicit Arab regimes, and the camp of resistance. We see you as part of the resistance camp. The U.S. government is responsible for the Israeli crimes against our people – the thousands of political prisoners behind bars, the millions of refugees prohibited from returning home, the ethnic cleansing and home demolitions, the ongoing occupation, the apartheid wall tearing through our land, the apartheid and entrenched racism. For over 62 years, the U.S. government has been the sponsor of the racist Israeli state.
Today it is more critical than ever that you escalate your campaigns in solidarity with Palestine, that you internationally isolate Israel and all of its products, that you make it clear that the people of the United States stand alongside the people of Palestine to achieve our full national and human rights – to self determination, return for our refugees, an end to occupation, and national liberation.
We have heard news recently of the massacre of the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, and that the seas have carried a great message of courage and shouldered a great burden of blood; that the prisons that hold our prisoners of freedom have held the prisoners of freedom of the world; and that the international movement for justice has new martyrs who will inspire us all to struggle in their path of courage, strength, indomitable solidarity and commitment to justice in the face of brutal oppression. Their example is an example to us all, and the Flotilla martyrs, prisoners, organizers and participants are part of the long line of heroes of our Palestinian people’s struggle, and all of our global people’s struggles for justice and liberation.
Towards a global left front – for socialism, equality, justice and liberation!
We join in your call: Another World is Possible! Another U.S. is Necessary!
Ahmad Sa’adat
General Secretary
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Sa’adat’s biography, writings and statements are available at the website of the
Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat.
The Campaign to Free Ahmad Sa’adat
http://www.freeahmadsaadat.org/
The following article, by USSF Palestine Program co-coordinator Noura Erakat, was published first by Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, and then by Electronic Intifada. It’s an excellent look at Palestine at the USSF and highly recommended!
Hardly an Arab or Palestinian living in the United States does not desire their fellow Americans to carry the banner of Palestinian justice and shift US policy toward the conflict. Even the revered Columbia Professor Edward Said who commanded respect and attention in a broad spectrum of fields echoed this sentiment. At a 2002 al-Awda rally in New York he called upon the impassioned throng to talk about Palestine everywhere, to everyone: at the supermarket, near the office water cooler, at the playground, with members of the Parent Teacher Association, on the bus, and at the bus stop — everywhere.
Yet despite this yearning to nurture American solidarity, there is a vast divide between the aspiration and the understanding required for its realization — that Palestinians, other nations, and millions of marginalized Americans contend with the same structural impediments standing between them and the full realization of their human dignity. The understanding of a common enemy and the affirmation of a common humanity is the linchpin of genuine solidarity.
Who then might constitute effective allies of Palestinians in the US? Who contends with institutionalized discrimination similar to that which renders Palestinians second-class citizens on their own land? Which communities in the US are racially profiled, systematically incarcerated, and rendered poor by a confluence of institutional factors, lack access to health care and employment and secure housing?
For progressive Arab and Palestinian Americans, these US counterparts are immigrant communities, the working poor, migrant workers, indigenous peoples, racial minorities, and other US communities considered expendable by a neoliberal economic framework that touts itself as colorblind, reveres individualism, disdains social and economic rights, and places corporate profits above people’s welfare. These economic policies have driven poor families out of their homes in the US, have led to the systematic incarceration of African-Americans in prisons for profit, have devastated labor’s ability to negotiate workers’ rights, have accelerated gentrification in urban centers, and have fueled the insidious attack against immigrants.
Like their counterparts, Palestinians and other nations endure the brunt of neoliberal prerogatives — foremost of which is the expansion of labor and consumer markets as well as resource extraction — by way of colonization and/or military domination.
Thousands of Americans opposed to neoliberalism’s manifestation in the US and beyond — what I term the “progressive left” — are organizing the second US Social Forum to take place in Detroit, Michigan from 22-26 June 2010. The Forum is the US-based counterpart to the World Social Forum and according to its architects it “will provide space to build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, and bring renewed insight and inspiration. It will help develop leadership and develop consciousness, vision, and strategy needed to realize another world.”
The US Social Forum reflects the political principles drafted at the World Social Forum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2001. At the heart of those principles is a commitment to a global collaborative process aimed at creating a world wherein nation-states will “rest on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality, and the sovereignty of peoples.”
Left out of the progressive left
The US Social Forum is an opportune space for Palestinians to forge alliances with other progressive forces as well as integrate the cause for Palestinian self-determination more firmly into the progressive left agenda. Arab and Palestinian Americans who consider the crises in the Middle East, and US support for them, a function of unfettered neoliberalism are seeking to do just that. However, even in this space, Palestinians have had to struggle to represent themselves and to push back against a liberal tendency to provide a “balance” of narratives before they could experience genuine solidarity.
At the first Forum held in Atlanta, Georgia in July 2007, no Arabs or Palestinians were invited to participate in the National Planning Committee which functions as the Forum organizing body and is comprised of US-based social justice organizations. Palestinians and their allies urged the Committee to invite Palestinian civil society leader Jamal Juma’ as the plenary speaker to address US militarization in the Middle East. Juma’ is a founding member of Stop the Wall and leading member of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Instead, the Committee invited a liberal Zionist Jewish woman instead. In her speech to nearly 12,000 people, she called for a mutual approach among Palestinians and Israelis to embrace nonviolence and build peace. She thereby “balanced” Israeli and Palestinian narratives and portrayed the institutional discrimination, displacement, dispossession, and occupation endured by Palestinians as a product of civil war as opposed to US-backed foreign colonization. According to Sami Kitmitto, a Palestinian activist who attended the session, “the message to us was that Arabs and Palestinians were not a valued part of the Forum and there was no need for us to represent ourselves. On a panel about US imperialism, here was a speaker advocating against self-determination for Palestinians and speaking in support of imperialist efforts in Palestine.”
News of the controversial speech quickly spread, especially at the Palestine Tent (“Nahr al-Bared,” named after the Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon destroyed by the Lebanese army in 2007) the organizing hub of educational and cultural activities coordinated by Palestinian participants and their allies at the Forum. Kitmitto and the other activists decided to draft a statement to the National Planning Committee expressing their concerns regarding the ill-suited plenary speaker. The Committee responded honestly, saying that it did not know any better and in fact had confused the speaker’s Hebrew name for an Arab one, thus thinking that she was Arab. As a reconciliatory gesture, the NPC invited the Palestinian activists and their supporters to read the statement before a captive audience the following night.
Since 2007, there has been consistent follow-up with the Forum organizers. Sara Kershnar, a founding member of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network who attended the 2007 Forum, said that the follow-up coupled with the speaker controversy strengthened NPC commitment to prioritize Palestinian participation in the organizing of the 2010 Forum. In June 2009, a Forum representative asked the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), a loose coalition of Palestinian individuals and institutions dedicated to building a participatory and inclusive network for the US-based Diaspora, to submit an application for membership in the National Planning Committee. The USPCN includes Palestinian individuals, organizations, and village/town-based clubs throughout the US, who share the aim of addressing and overcoming the fragmentation afflicting the Palestinian nation, affirming Palestinian national unity, and encouraging collaborative initiatives in furtherance of Palestinian self-determination. [1] After an interview process, the USPCN’s application was approved and it has been a leading organizing member of the Forum since October 2009.
Building solidarity at the US Social Forum
The USPCN has managed to corral multiple efforts into an impressive force for the 2010 US Social Forum, including the:
- Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions People’s Movement Assembly;
- Palestine Tent featuring cultural performances, speakers, and a bazaar;
- Palestine Track of 48 workshops; and
- Students for Justice in Palestine summit;
In addition, Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, will be a keynote speaker on the international plenary panel. Juma’ will address the Forum by videoconference due to the travel restrictions that Israel has imposed on him in the aftermath of a 25-day detention for his political activities against Israel’s Apartheid Wall in the West Bank. According to Rama Kased, a leading USPCN organizer, “Jamal’s inability to physically address the Forum is not an impediment — on the contrary, this highlights the arbitrary and capricious nature of Israel’s apartheid regime.”
Among the planned workshops is one called, “United Against Racism & War: From New Orleans to Palestine,” which, in Kershnar’s words, intends to strengthen an anti-racism movement by “discussing implications for building joint struggles against racism experienced by communities in the US and those impacted by US policies abroad, with a specific focus on US support for Israel.” United Against Racism is a multi-racial, multi-national alliance that emerged in the wake of rising Arab and Muslim profiling after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the neglect of minority communities during and following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the mounting violence against Palestinians since the second intifada and especially since Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006. The alliance formally established itself in 2008 in preparation for the USPCN Popular Conference.
According to Kali Akuno, a Malcolm X Movement national organizer and co-founder of the alliance, United Against Racism chose to centralize Palestine in its anti-racist analysis because the alliance’s core activists and organizations “hold a common view that Palestine represents the barometer of the extent to which imperialism is willing to go to ensure that the capitalist system of oppression and exploitation continue unabated. There is a general understanding that the liberation of Palestine is a critical linchpin in the transformation of this system and the creation of a more humane global system.”
Challenges ahead
Establishing firm alliances with those communities and persons who, like Kali, identify a common foe and affirm a common fate, represents only half the battle in solidifying genuine solidarity. The other half depends on the Arab and Palestinian community itself and specifically in its ability to commit to other struggles. As the USPCN has found in its outreach efforts for the US Social Forum, although Arabs and Palestinians can identify the structural injustice inherent to Israeli colonization and apartheid, they are not as aware of similar injustices endured by marginalized communities in the United States.
Here is just one example from personal experience with a national Arab-American organization. During my last year of law school some years ago, I was seeking opportunities to practice law creatively in the advancement of social justice. After an initial conversation, this national organization encouraged me to submit a project proposal for a fellowship that it would sponsor. Excited by the positive response, I drafted a plan aimed at ameliorating Arab-Black tensions in Detroit by crafting joint campaigns against environmental injustice harming both communities and by nurturing dialogue between community leaders regarding the resentment bred between Arab-American liquor store owners and African-American patrons suffering from alcohol addiction. My rejection phone call was quite curt — I was told that my proposal was too “Bay Area-esque,” a euphemism for “too controversial. [2]
I suppose criticizing a targeted and minority community like the Arab-American one is a bit controversial but this is precisely emblematic of our condition. While we bemoan the lack of support for the Palestinian struggle for justice, we do too little to treat the racism in which our own communities engage, whether wittingly or not. If we want to achieve and benefit from genuine solidarity, then not only must we speak about Palestine to everyone, everywhere, as Edward Said advocated, but we must also speak to our own Arab and Palestinian communities about everyone else.
Noura Erakat is a Palestinian attorney and human rights advocate. She is currently an adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University. This article was originally published by Al-Shabaka, The Palestinian Policy Network and is republished with permission.
Endnotes
[1] After a two-year grassroots outreach and base-building process, the USPCN held a national Popular Conference in Chicago, Illinois in August 2008. Since then, in addition to assuming a national leadership role in the US Social Forum, the USPCN has organized several national cultural and speaking tours targeting the US-based Diaspora, is planning its second national popular conference.
[2] Since the emergence of the American anti-war movement in the late 1960s, the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, with the University of Berkeley at its heart, is often stereotyped by political commentators as the home of idealistic radicals and dismissed as out of touch with “the real world” (i.e. the rest of America). That California has often led the way in social, political, economic, technological, and educational trends for the rest of the America is typically and wilfully ignored in this discourse, as is Berkeley’s reputation as a world-class research and teaching university with an international student body, faculty, and alumni.
June 23, 2010
Dear Sisters and brothers:
In a historic accomplishment, the leadership of the US Social Forum voted this morning to cancel a workshop proposed by “Stand With US”, a Zionist organization <http://www.standwithus.com/> that sought to represent Israel as a safe haven for LGBTQI communities and undermine the broadening support for the cause of justice in/for Palestine. As the National Planning Committee (NPC) put it in its announcement, “the workshop ‘LGBTQI Liberation in the Middle East’ (Thursday, June 24 10:00am to 12:00pm) has been canceled for violating the submission procedure and transparency requirements for all workshops, and for being in violation of the anti-racist principles central to the U.S. Social Forum”.
We, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim activists, gathered at the US Social Forum, came together in a solid coalition with our allies from other marginalized communities of color, poor people’s movements, and anti-Zionist activists, to respond to the urgent call issued by our sisters and brother in Palestine and Lebanon http://queersagainstapartheid.org/2010/06/17/arab-queers-say-no-to-pinkwashing/ to cancel the Zionist workshop. The call was supported by Arab queer groups, such as SWANABAQ http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SWANABAQ and by Palestinian and Arab community groups, such as the USPCN (US Palestinian Community Network) http://palestineconference.org/wp/, a group member of the National Planning Committee (NPC) of the US Social Forum.
As our sisters and brothers (Helem www.helem.net ASWAT www.aswatgroup.org, Al-Qaws www.alqaws.org, and Palestinian Queers for BDS www.pqbds.wordpress.com) made it clear in their statement that racist, Zionist, colonialist and Islamophobic politics and actions are as abhorrent as the politics and practices of homophobia and therefore have no place within movements for justice. We agree with this position and stand steadfastly and with unwavering commitment with this just struggle. Likewise, we stand steadfastly and with unwavering commitment to struggles against US and Israeli policies of war against poor and marginalized communities here in the US and that seek to undermine our unity and solidarity.
This is a victory for our struggle and indeed the struggle for justice for all. This victory makes it clear that the struggle for justice in/for Palestine is an integral part of the worldwide movement for freedom, dignity, justice and peace.
We call on all of you to participate in the US Social Forum process www.ussf2010.org by:
* Attending workshops and sessions in Detroit for the next 4 days
* Writing to thank the National Planning Committee (NPC) of USSF
* Working with the broad and diverse forces of justice and peace in your area.
Congratulations to all of us! Together, united for justice, another world is possible!
Al-Awda, NY; Arab American Action Network (AAAN); Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC); Arab American Union Members Council; Arab Youth Organization (AYO); Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid; Desis Rising and Moving (DRUM); Palestine Youth Network (PYN); US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN); Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA); South West Asia North Africa Bay Area Queers (SWANABAQ); General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS); Committee for Justice in Palestine (SJP)-UC Berkeley; Youngstown Arab Community Center.
Welcome to the blog for the US Social Forum Palestine Program. The coming days in Detroit will be full of activities, workshops, People’s Movement Assemblies, actions, discussions, and movement-building. We look forward to sharing our experiences and visions in writing, video and photographs over our time in Detroit. We welcome your participation and contributions of blogs, videos and other content to the Palestine Program Blog. Please email us at ussfblog@palestineconference.org to add your content to the blog here!
We look forward to meeting you, seeing you, and building a future relationship of struggle for justice and liberation with you in Detroit!