Open Letter from NYC Iranians to Mayor de Blasio: When You Stand by AIPAC, You Do Not Stand by Us

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Mar 17, 2014 Israel
[NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Image from wikimedia.org] [NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Image from wikimedia.org]

Open Letter from NYC Iranians to Mayor de Blasio: When You Stand by AIPAC, You Do Not Stand by Us

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following open letter was issued by a group of Iranians and Iranian-Americans living in New York City. It was first published on Mondoweiss on 12 March 2014]

Open Letter from NYC Iranians to Mayor de Blasio: When You Stand by AIPAC, You Do Not Stand by Us

Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio,

We are a group of Iranians and Iranian-Americans living in New York City. We are firmly committed to opposing state repression — regardless of the race, ethnicity or nationality of the people suffering, and regardless of whether the oppressive government is Iranian, American or otherwise. Throughout your mayoral campaign, we were encouraged by your call for an end to the NYPD’s systemic racial profiling of Black and Latino men under the “stop and frisk” policy. Many New Yorkers hoped that City Hall, under your leadership, would become a new and loud voice for human and civil rights.

That very same commitment to justice and human rights underscores our opposition to the devastating sanctions against the Iranian people. We were surprised and dismayed to find that the single foreign-policy position that you took as Public Advocate was calling for increasing sanctions on Iran. We were deeply concerned to see you encouraged ordinary New Yorkers to enforce the sanctions regime through your “Iran Watch List” web site, thus promoting the profiling of Iranians and aggravating post-9/11 Islamophobia. Because of sanctions, Iranians in the U.S. were arbitrarily chosen to have their bank accounts closed, and refused service at several retail stores, based on their appearance or names alone. We ask that support for sanctions against Iran be excised from your future political messaging. The Iranian people are not a threat to New Yorkers, or to any Americans, and the Iranian diaspora is a proud and integral part of this city.

We also ask that you reconsider your relationship with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Last month you addressed a private meeting with this group and said, “City Hall will always be open to AIPAC. When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I’ll answer it happily ’cause that’s my job.”

We disagree. AIPAC has relentlessly pressed for a more adversarial U.S. posture against Iran, explicitly promoting increased sanctions and implicitly pushing the U.S. to the brink of war. In a 2010 letter to members of Congress, AIPAC demanded “crippling” new sanctions on Iran. U.S. sanctions on Iran are a form of collective punishment that hurt the most vulnerable members of Iranian society first and foremost. AIPAC has similarly been a consistent supporter of Israel’s atrocious violations of Palestinian human rights.

As the mayor of NYC – one of  the most diverse cities in the world – you were elected to represent all of us who live here. We stand with those Jewish New Yorkers who have recently said in their open letter to you, “AIPAC speaks for Israel’s hard-line government and its right-wing supporters, and for them alone; it does not speak for us.” We hope that you keep all of us in mind when formulating your foreign policy perspective and withdraw your unqualified loyalty to an organization that promotes policies so destructive to the children, women and men in Iran–and in Palestine–whom so many of your constituents hold dear. When AIPAC promotes collective punishment, neither they, nor the government of Israel, share our values. When you stand by them, you do not stand by us.

Signed,

  1. Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, Zanan TV Executive Director

  2. Ali Abdi, Ph.D. candidate, Yale University

  3. Ervand Abrahamian, Professor of Iranian and Middle Eastern History and Politics, CUNY

  4. Golnar Adili

  5. Milad Afrasiabi

  6. Padide Alizadeh

  7. Yahya Alkhansa, Musician

  8. Sheila Aminmadani

  9. Kamrooz Aram, Artist and Adjunct Faculty, Parsons The New School for Design

  10. Maryam Aryai Rivera, Raha Iranian Feminist Collective

  11. Mohammad Asgari

  12. Farid Ashkan

  13. Pooyan Aslani, New York University

  14. Shoja Azari, Artist

  15. Sepideh Azin, Architect

  16. Shirin Barghi, Freelance Journalist

  17. Golbarg Bashi, Professor of History, Pace University

  18. Anahita Basirnia

  19. Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

  20. Samira Darvishi, Ph.D. candidate, Stony Brook University

  21. Saeid Divanbeigi

  22. Bahareh Ebnealian

  23. Kouross Esmaeli, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU

  24. Yasmine Farhang

  25. Ali Fouladi

  26. Gisela Fouladi

  27. Hadi Ghaemi

  28. Setareh Ghandehari, Raha Iranian Feminist Collective

  29. Arya Ghavamian, Filmmaker

  30. Fahimeh Gooran Savadkoohi

  31. Sara Hosseini

  32. Koohyar Hosseini

  33. Shima Houshyar, MA candidate, NYU

  34. Nima Jafari, Architect

  35. Mazdak Jafarian, Architect

  36. Kiana Karimi

  37. Mahdis Keshavarz, The Make Agency

  38. Arang Keshavarzian, Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, NYU

  39. Mina Khanlarzadeh, Ph.D. candidate, Columbia University

  40. Mana Kharrazi

  41. Sina Mesdaghi, Associate at Handel Architects

  42. Kamran Mirfakhraei

  43. Ali Mirsepassi, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Sociology, NYU

  44. Nazgol Moshtaghi

  45. Mani Mostofi

  46. Nahid Mozaffari

  47. Saara Nafici, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

  48. Nicky Nodjoumi, Artist

  49. Sara Nodjumi, Filmmaker

  50. Nazanin Norouzi

  51. Naseem Nowruzi

  52. Manijeh Nasrabadi, Ph.D. candidate, NYU

  53. Mehrnoosh Oghbaei

  54. Afshin Parvaresh, Artist

  55. Hamid Rahmanian, Filmmaker/Graphic Artist

  56. Saba Riazi, Filmmaker

  57. Reza Roodsari, MD/MPH

  58. Bahar Sabzevari, Artist

  59. Mehdi Saharkhiz, Art Director

  60. Samin Sajadi

  61. Faride Sakhaei, Artist

  62. Saman Sarraf

  63. Niki Shah Hosseini

  64. Sadra Shahab, City Planner, Pratt Center for Community Development

  65. Narges Shahroudi

  66. Setareh Shohadaei, Ph.D. student New School for Social Research

  67. Amin Torabkhanian

  68. Azin Valy, Architect

  69. Shouleh Vatanabadi

  70. Hanif Yazdi

  71. Rustin Zarkar, Ph.D. student, NYU
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

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