'A Painful Price': The escalating war on Palestine solidarity at U of Michigan and beyond
Following a week-long sit-in by the University of Michigan Students Allied For Equality (SAFE), an obstinate Central Student Government (CSG) council agreed to bring the group’s resolution on divesting from corporations involved in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories to a vote. I appeared as
SAFE’s guest speaker for the March 25 debate, addressing as many as 600 students packed into an auditorium while hundreds more waited outside. In an electric atmosphere, SAFE members and supporters rose to defend the resolution against a parade of pro-Israel students and professors rattling off well-worn talking points.
From Suha Najjar’s blistering
indictment of institutional anti-Palestinian racism to Angela Folasade’s impassioned
repudiation of cynical pro-Israel attempts to co-opt African-American narratives [at 4:30] to Andrew Dallack’s impromptu
clinic on international law [at 3:30], SAFE orchestrated one of the most powerful displays of student activism I have witnessed on any American campus. Their work should be a model for all future divestment initiatives.
While in Ann Arbor, I was also able to witness the escalating tactics of pro-Israel forces engaged in a desperate but determined fighting retreat. Under the influence of a zealous cast of communal elders and with a powerful, astroturfed political apparatus at their disposal, pro-Israel forces on campus initiated a campaign of subterfuge and manufactured persecution designed to intimidate and silence students inclined toward Palestine solidarity activism. It was a disturbing spectacle to behold, especially at such an intimate distance.
During SAFE’s week-long sit-in, a close-knit group of pro-Israel students filed a series of incendiary accusations against SAFE members, accusing them in formal reports to university administrators of delivering anti-Semitic tirades laced with antiquated terms like “kike” and “dirty Jew.” At the same time, Facebook profiles belonging to SAFE members were invaded by a mysterious account named
“ZPC Viper Matrix.” Personal information of SAFE members, their families, and Palestine rights supporters across the country including American Studies Association President-elect Lisa Duggan have appeared on the Viper Matrix Facebook page, often in distorted form alongside derogatory comments, prompting several students to cancel their accounts.
Among those who told me their profile photos and personal information were uploaded at the Viper Matrix page was Sharifah Abdallah, a Palestinian member of Loyola University’s Student Government Association who has actively supported Loyola SJP’s divestment campaign. “People are scared in my community,” Abdallah remarked to me. “Unlike other Palestinians from the diaspora, we return frequently to our land. So these tactics are designed to silence us by making us afraid that we won’t be allowed back in to Palestine.”
Anti-Arab and Islamophobic incitement directed at SAFE grew so intense its members felt compelled to catalog the unsolicited messages on a Tumblr site called #UMDivest Fan Mail.
“Z Zidan,” a U of Michigan SAFE member who claims to have been targeted with baseless allegations of anti-Semitism, and who would not allow me to identify them by their real name, told me that the intimidation campaign represents a new phase of anti-Palestinian repression. “We know that we will be questioned, deeply scrutinized, and dismissed for the work we do on campus. But this slander, these completely fabricated allegations, are intimidating tactics on a whole different level,” Zidan said. “They are meant to scare us into silence, to serve as a reminder or warning to those who dare think of getting involved in divestment work, that this will be your fate, that this is what’s on the line.”
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More calls for repression
The suppression campaign against the students leading the divestment resolution at U of Michigan is part of the escalating war on Palestine solidarity activism on campus.
Following sustained
pressure from outside pro-Israel organizations, Northeastern University’s SJP chapter was suspended, and two of its members now face expulsion for the crime of leafleting on campus. Its members have since been
tarred as “terrorist groupies” and falsely accused of training with military-grade weaponry in the West Bank.
Last week, after Loyola University’s Student Government Association passed a resolution calling for the divestment from companies involved in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories, the Islamophobic blogger and activist Pamela Geller
accused the university of “serv[ing] themselves up as a willing sacrifice to Islamic supremacism.” Days later, the resolution was vetoed by SGA President Pedro Guerrero after intense pressure from outside pro-Israel groups and a closed-door meeting between Guerrero and Jewish Federations representatives.
As divestment resolutions are introduced at new campuses each month, pro-Israel partisans appear determined to introduce more counter-measures. In a recent editorial for the Jerusalem Post, former advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Caroline Glick
demanded that universities that allow Palestine solidarity activism on campus “pay a painful price.”
“Only the threat of civil lawsuits, federal investigations of civil rights violations, and alumni threats to withhold gifts will force university administrations to take action against the anti-Semitic thugs that are instituting a reign of terror at university after university,” Glick wrote.
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Unreal fascists....
