Hello everybody!
It's been quite long time since the last time I posted an original article in my blog. The reason is that once the academic year starts I get a very long list of events, duties and politics to take care of. On the 2nd of November the Palestinian Solidarity Group (PSG) had a stall in the University commemorating the shameful Balfour Declaration in 1917 which promised to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine. We hanged a big banner behind the stall. As always, the Jewish Society (JSoc) members surrounded the stall trying to hinder the event and block other students from approaching the stall and learning about the Balfour Declaration and the true history of Palestine. They complained to to the Student Union Executive that they felt offended by the banner and they wanted the banner to be brought down! Here is the banner; it's offensive, isn't it?
I had, with two other members of PSG, to waste about an hour negotiating with the Student Union executives instead of being outside educating people about Palestine. I refuse to speak to Zionists as long as they keep advocating and defending the butcher and making lies about all aspects of the occupation, so I was always directing my speech to the Executive and she had to ask the Zionists on my behalf. At the end we agreed to make the compromise of removing the word "Jews" from "Zionist Jews" on the banner and replace it with "Zionists". The moment I went outside to cover the word "Jews" I found one of JSoc members who attended the negotiations shouting outside and complaining that we were delaying the covering of the word in purpose although I was actually waiting the Union to provide me with an orange marker to fit with the colours of the printed text. Then he started complaining that one sheet of paper wasn't enough to hide the word and he wanted to cover it with more sheets (how finicky!) I told him "Don't even dream I'm going to listen to you. This is what I agreed on with the Union. If you don't like it go and complain to the Union again!"
This is what the Student's newspaper wrote about it
Oh by the way, I used the same banner many times since last year and they never complained about it because they always found something else to make fuss about. They do it every time to hinder our events and stop us from exposing the Zionist crimes. They complain only for the sake of complaining and they never made a sensible complain. They just start shouting "Offensive, Offensive" about anything. I'm sure if I stand by myself behind an empty stall they will still consider me offensive!
Students and members of staff wrote words of support on our symbolic refugee tent
A narrator of the story of Palestine from 1800s up to date
And the banner with the word "Jews" veiled!
The problem isn't only with JSoc, but rather with the University administration who show a clear bias to Zionism and Zionist students. Even if the student union executives try to be reasonable in handling Zionists' complaints, they still get pressured by the University Secretary (Head of University). Roger Gair, the University Secretary, proved day after day that he is extremely pro-Zionist -if not Zionist himself-.
A couple of years ago my friend and I built a mock wall symbolising the Apartheid Wall being built by the Zionist state in the West Bank in Palestine. The first time it was erected on campus the University security forced PSG members to move the wall outside the campus and in few minutes a police force arrived to the scene and ordered the removal of the wall from the street. Last year we were stubborn enough to erect the wall regardless the fact that JSoc members caused a real chaos and got all the student union executives to come down and try to convince us to remove the wall (by the way the Balfour declaration banner was there and no one uttered a single word about it). None of the executives had a valid point in their argument because they themselves didn't believe in what they were doing but rather had no other option but to satisfy the Zionist Jewish Society. We made them utterly speechless because there was nothing offensive or insulting on the wall. The whole story was that Zionists wanted to continue building the Wall quietly and didn't want the rest of the world to know about the most brutal apartheid regime on earth; The mock wall doesn't help that agenda at all. When JSoc didn't find any legal way to stop us from using the wall in our event, they escalated the issue to their saviour, the University Secretary. After weeks of negotiations the University secretary threatened to restrict us from erecting the mock wall unless we remove all words that sounded "inflammatory" from the wall. These words included "Zionist", "Racist", "Apartheid", and "Illegal". When we argued that the the International Court of Justice had ruled that the Wall was illegal and should be demolished the only answer we got -via his representative in the Student Union- was "In the University we only deal with the University law not International law!" We had to spend £150 and two days of work to repaint the wall and remove the "inflammatory" wording. This is how it ended:
Last Wednesday was another proof that the University administration is definitely pro-Zionist. We planned to organise a whole-day activity as part of the International Week Against the wall which was supposed to include the "lovely" mock wall, an information stall, and a checkpoint theatre with drama scenes on the suffering of Palestinians under occupation. The day was supposed to be closed with a talk given by the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Ahron Cohen of Neturei Karta on the difference between Judaism as a faith an Zionist as a racist secular ideology; it was titled "Anti-Zionism IS NOT Antisemitism". We booked the Conference Auditorium five weeks in advance (but very unusually we had to wait three weeks before getting a booking confirmation). We informed the Societies Executive and started publicising the talk through posters, leaflets and the student newspaper. Just four days before the planned day of the talk the University Secretary contacted us and requested an urgent meeting with PSG to discuss the talk and stated that we had to work hard to persuade him not to cancel the talk using his capacity as a University Secretary. He claimed that we proke regulations by not informing him about it as the talk was found to be controversial. Such a claim could easily be refuted because the union regulations state clearly that it wasn't our duty -but rather the Societies executive- to decide on what is controversial and what is not. The Executive knew about it few weeks in advance and never approached us with her conclusion that the topic was controversial. It was very obvious that JSoc realised that they would sound foolish to request the Student Union to cancel the event for no reason and hence found their last resort in their saviour, Roger Gair.
I couldn't attend the meeting with the University Secretary, but those who did quoted him stating that he want our voice to be heard and he didn't want us to feel that we were silenced. That wasn't really reflected in the way how the meeting was going. PSG representatives had to be very hard-minded to make him convinced not to cancel or postpone the talk. However he started making impossible requests as conditions for the event to go ahead. He first asked if we could provide our own security guards as the University wouldn't be able to provide enough security for the talk. He then requested us to fill a very lengthy Risk assessment form in a couple of hours (The standard risk assessment form is less than half a page). But we overcame all obstacles and got all conditions satisfied on time.
On the day itself I was the first to arrive to the location where we usually erect the Wall to find that JSoc had already erected what they called "Wall 4 Peace" (They knew about our stall because we sent few emails about it to our mailing list). Half an hour later our wall and drama theatre were erected and installed and everything was going smoothly until we were approached by the the University's Head of Security ordering us not to act any drama scene as JSoc found it offensive (Oh yeah!)
This fake IOF soldier scared even the Palestinians!
This is JSoc's "Wall 4 Peace". Cool, isn't it?!
At about 5:00 PM i.e. one hour before the talk was supposed to start, Al-Jazeera English Channel team arrived to the university as they requested the night before to attend and film the talk. Rabbi Cohen arrived just few minutes after them. I welcomed them and left them together with another member of PSG and went to the talk venue to ensure that all arrangements were fine there. I had my personal video camera hanged on my shoulder and the moment the University Secretary saw me entering the Conference Auditorium with my camera he rushed toward me and said "If you think you will film inside you are mistaken", "Why? We always film our events" I questioned. He replied "This is not we agreed on; you didn't tell me about the filming" I answered "Why do we have to tell you about it. It's our event," and the only answer I got "And it's my venue!" Then he continued "You have two options: the first is keep this camera in your hand, and the second is to let this event go ahead." We had no option but to allow the talk to take place. Later on, Al-Jazeera team were not allowed to enter the Conference auditorium and they had to stay outside for two hours. When I questioned the head of security about it he went "for the last few years the university has been covered with a bad image in the media, and thus we placed a restricted policy on dealing with the media" (What an intelligent idea to improve the University's image in the media!)
The audience were half Zionists and half non-Zionists (not necessarily pro-Palestinians). Many students had their own cameras and when we complained about it we were told by the head of security that he couldn't seize everyone's digital camera or mobile phone. Thanks God it all worked to our benefit at the end as I managed so far to collect 1 Gigabyte of video footages and send them to Al-Jazeera (I should probably send a copy of the footages to Roger Gair to show him that dictatorship always goes wrong.)
We knew that the Zionists were attending the talk for no reason but to cause disorder and jeopardise the progress of the event. This was proved two seconds after the speaker walked into the conference room; two Zionist rabbis stood up and started shouting and heckling. they refused to shut up after several requests from the chair of the talk. They had the University Secretary standing literally two steps from them but he didn't utter a single word to stop their barbarism, but the moment a frustrated man from the audience requested the two vulgar Zionists to shut up the University secretary walked to him along with the Head of security and warned him that he would throw him out of the room if he repeats it again.
The Zionists continued this heckling throughout the talk and the Q&A session. When the President of the University's Islamic Society commenting on their uncivilised behaviour one Zionist student shouted "Do suicide members have manners?" No one from the University officials took any action against that coward.
One non-Zionist Jewish student who attended the talk commented on JSoc's savagery:
Yesterday I went to the meeting entitled "Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism" and thought that maybe we could have a productive debate, but no. The little old Rabbi Ahron Cohen who was giving the lecture was calm as he took abuse from so many JSoc members, despite the fact, as far as I can see his arguments were well thought out and more importantly scripturally valid. Orthodox gentlemen booed him and a number of terrible racist comments were made. When a student was asked to show politeness, he retorted by saying that, "suicide-bombers are not polite". Any criticism made of Israel was immediately shouted down or ignored. The rabbi, through it all was trying to argue his point and I think we should have listened to him. What I could see in eyes of people was fanatical nationalism, not in the spirit of Judaism.
I saw no compassion, just a desire to have their own victory. It wasn't about listening; it was about bashing the opinions of others. I hated the way many JSoc members paid lip-service to the idea of peace in the Middle-East when there attitudes spoke of a self-centeredness of "we are the only victims". Secondly, I hated the way that the JSoc members tried to speak for all Jews and tar me with their brush. I want nothing to do with Israel but I won't everything to do with Judaism, both peoples are hurting and I think it is Israel that causes the hurt in many ways.
In my next post I'll tell you about a battle of a different type which we'll be undergoing in the next couple of weeks to gain our right as PSG to speak freely on campus. For the time being I'll leave you with some excerpts from the rabbi's talk.
