Israeli organizations in the US have launched a campaign against US organizations and institutions that show support to Palestinian rights.
StandWithUs kicked off a national campaign by sending a letter to nearly 3,000 university directors, urging them to put a stop to the now-common practice of academic departments and student governments employing official university websites, social media accounts, and email listservs to promote anti-Israel activities.
This campaign follows a publication by several research centers in American universities that recognizes Israel as a country that practices apartheid against Palestinians.
In a letter signed by at least 120 departments studying gender from universities across the United States and Europe, the Palestinian Feminist Collective called on feminists to “join the struggle for Palestinian liberation”.
The statement condemned the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the indiscriminate shelling of Gaza, and the violence of Israeli settlers, backed by the police and the Israeli army, against Palestinians.
“We do not subscribe to a ‘both sides’ rhetoric that erases the military, economic, media and global power that Israel has over Palestine,” the letter continued.
Illegal Israeli settlements choke and police Palestinian communities, and Palestinians are cut off from each other by a network of checkpoints, laws, settler-only highways and a separation wall that swallows illegally occupied Palestinian land.
Both Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have concluded that Israeli policies and practices towards Palestinians amount to apartheid.
The letter called for “the end of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine and for the Palestinian right to return to their homes”.
