Association for Asian American Studies Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

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May 22, 2013 Palestine-Israel
Association for Asian American Studies Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

Association for Asian American Studies Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following resolution was issued by the General Membership of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) on 20 April 2013. Below the text of the resolution is a letter issued by the President of the AAAS on 3 May 2013 explaining his support for the resolution.] 

Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions
Issued by the General Membership of the AAAS

Whereas the Association for Asian American Studies is an organization dedicated to the preservation and support of academic freedom and of the right to education for students and scholars in the U.S. and globally; and

Whereas Arab (West Asian) and Muslim American communities, students, and scholars have been subjected to profiling, surveillance, and civil rights violations that have circumscribed their freedom of political expression, particularly in relation to the issue of human rights in Palestine-Israel; and

Whereas the Association for Asian American Studies seeks to foster scholarship that engages conditions of migration, displacement, colonialism, and racism, and the lives of people in zones of war and occupation; and

Whereas the Association for Asian American Studies seeks to advance a critique of U.S. empire, opposing US military occupation in the Arab world and U.S. support for occupation and racist practices by the Israeli state; and

Whereas the United Nations has reported that the current Israeli occupation of Palestine has impacted students “whose development is deformed by pervasive deprivations affecting health, education and overall security”; and

Whereas Palestinian universities and schools have been periodically forced to close as a result of actions related to the Israeli occupation, or have been destroyed by Israeli military strikes, and Palestinian students and scholars face restrictions on movement and travel that limit their ability to attend and work at universities, travel to conferences and to study abroad, and thereby obstruct their right to education; and

Whereas the Israeli state and Israeli universities directly and indirectly impose restrictions on education, scholarships, and participation in campus activities on Palestinian students in Israel; and

Whereas Israel imposes severe restrictions on foreign academics and students seeking to attend conferences and do research in Palestine as well as on scholars and students of Arab/Palestinian origin who wish to travel to IsraelPalestine; and

Whereas Israeli institutions of higher education have not condemned or taken measures to oppose the occupation and racial discrimination against Palestinians in Israel, but have, rather, been directly and indirectly complicit in the systematic maintenance of the occupation and of policies and practices that discriminate against Palestinian students and scholars throughout Palestine and in Israel; and

Whereas Israeli academic institutions are deeply complicit in Israel`s violations of international law and human rights and in its denial of the right to education and academic freedom to Palestinians, in addition to their basic rights as guaranteed by international law; and

Whereas the Association for Asian American Studies supports research and open discussion about these issues without censorship, intimidation, or harassment, and seeks to promote academic exchange, collaboration and opportunities for students and scholars everywhere;

Be it resolved that the Association for Asian American Studies endorses and will honor the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Be it also resolved that the Association for Asian American Studies supports the protected rights of students and scholars everywhere to engage in research and public speaking about Israel-Palestine and in support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

PASSED.  No OBJECTIONS.  No ABSTENTIONS.

 

Official Statement Regarding the Resolution
Issued by the President of the AAAS

The Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions was voted upon and passed at the general business meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Conference in Seattle. The meeting was open to all members, and the conference drew approximately 700 members. We announced that the resolution vote would be held to all conference attendees and encouraged them to attend the general business meeting. Our policy is that all resolutions are voted upon at the general membership meeting by a confidential ballot, not by a ballot sent to all members in advance. The resolution was discussed as one of the agenda items at the business meeting of the conference. Approximately 10% of the membership was present at the meeting, with many members who could not attend expressing their support for the resolution.

There was thoughtful discussion about the significance of the resolution to the Association’s history. Members reaffirmed the core values of the association – its resistance to imperialism and racial discrimination, and its support for self-determination of disenfranchised peoples, academic rights and the right to education for all members of a society. That the call to boycott comes from Palestinian civil society was an important point that some members emphasized. Some members made specific mention of the ways in which Israeli academic institutions are complicit with the Occupation and the discrimination of Palestinian students. There was a careful distinction made between Israeli academic institutions and individual Israeli academics. It is the former – the institutions – that are the target of the boycott and not individual scholars. The similarity of the Palestinian boycott call to the South African boycott movement to end apartheid was also underscored. The point was made that because the US government does not oppose or protest the illegal actions of Israel with respect to the Palestinians’ right to education and freedom of expression, it falls to civil society organizations like the AAAS to take up the call by the Palestinian peoples to boycott Israeli academic institutions. A final point was that US academics who speak out against the Israeli government’s policies are subject to intimidation and retribution, and so it is crucial that the AAAS stand in solidarity with US academics, particularly those of Middle Eastern (West Asian) and Muslim descent, who protest the policies of the state of Israel.

Specifically, the Resolution to Support the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions calls upon members of AAAS to educate, through courses, forums, and other means, the students, faculty, and staff on their campuses of the realities on the ground for Palestinians who live under the policies of the Israeli government; to discourage their campuses from entering into curricular or other partnerships with Israeli academic institutions; and to forge alliances with Palestinian academics and students.

The board believes that AAAS members, in voting for this resolution, affirmed the organization’s commitment to academic freedom for all scholars. The AAAS is opposed to all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism, and is committed to advocating for human rights and social justice.

Many other countries are, of course, human rights abusers and violators of international law, but there is active debate on and criticism of their actions at the levels of government and civil society. Israel enjoys special status with the United States and is immune from governmental criticism even when there is consistent violation of international law. A boycott of Israeli academic institutions by hundreds of U.S. academics and now by the AAAS is a response to this special protected status of Israel, and it is a call to civil society in both Israel and the United States to take action. We urge other U.S. academic organizations to expand debate about Israeli policy and its special status in the United States.

Sincerely,

Mary Yu Danico, President of AAAS
Executive Board Members of AAAS
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412