CUNY Union Condemns Israeli Apartheid Practices and Calls for Discussions of BDS

Demonstration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in solidarity with Palestine on 28 May, 2021 via Left Voice Demonstration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in solidarity with Palestine on 28 May, 2021 via Left Voice

CUNY Union Condemns Israeli Apartheid Practices and Calls for Discussions of BDS

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following press release was written by members of the CUNY Professional Staff Congress who supported the union’s “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People,” which was passed by the union’s Delegate Assembly on 10 June 2021. The full text of the resolution can be found here.]

On Thursday night, the Delegate Assembly of the Professional Staff Congress [PSC]—the CUNY union that represents 30,000 members across the university system—passed a strong resolution in support of the Palestinian people. In addition to condemning the recent escalation of violence, the resolution calls out Israel as a settler-colonial and apartheid state. Furthermore, it says the union will "facilitate" chapter discussions of BDS in Fall 2021!

This is an important win for BDS on US university campuses. Congratulations to everyone in the CUNY community—including the PSC's Anti-Racism, International, and Academic Freedom Committees; delegates; rank and file members; students; and campus organizations—who worked hard to make this happen. This resolution paves the way for serious union organizing and political education work around BDS in the fall. But this victory is just the beginning! This resolution gives us the accountability we need to pass an even stronger BDS resolution in 2022. 

We are particularly excited about the following language, which made its way into the resolution as amendments because of our ability to push the delegates to embrace a radical critique of Israel. The language also requires a substantial commitment on the part of the PSC to engage with BDS. 

“Whereas, Israel’s pattern and practice of dispossession and expansion of settlements dating back to its establishment as a settler colonial state in 1948 has been found to be illegal under international law; international human rights organizations such asHuman Rights WatchandB’tselemhave designated these practices of Israel as “apartheid” and a regime of legalized racial discrimination perpetrated against the Palestinian people; and the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into these practices….” 

“Be it further resolved, that the PSC-CUNY facilitate that, in Fall 2021, all chapters discuss the content of this resolution, consider PSC support of the 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)—a movement launched by 170 Palestinian unions, refugee networks, women's organizations, professional associations and other Palestinian civil society organizations, which calls on "people of conscience in the international community" to act as they did against apartheid South Africa "in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression”—and report back on these conversations to the Delegate Assembly by the end of 2021.

Therefore, be it further resolved, that PSC-CUNY calls on the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to stop all aid funding human rights violations and an occupation that is illegal under international law.”

CUNY students were central to this victory. In a video made especially for PSC delegates, students expressed their support for the resolution and urged the union to take a firm stand on BDS. In addition, students, faculty, and staff have been organizing petitions and protests for weeks. They have also spoken out in solidarity with the Palestinian people in different CUNY forums both inside and outside of the PSC. Their long term commitment to the cause of the Palestinian people laid the groundwork for this victory. Working in a coalition with students and cross-campus organizing groups such as CUNY4Palestine and Rank & File Action, we were able to marshal widespread support, strategize effectively, and ultimately convince PSC delegates of the proper actions needed to stake a firm stance on this issue. We look forward to growing and strengthening this coalition as we continue this fight!

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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