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As momentum around campus BDS continued to build over this pastyear, IJAN offered strategic defense support to divestment campaigns. LastSeptember, the student network published an Open Letter to Members of University Communities around theWorld calling on Jews ofconscience to join campus BDS campaigns and stand firmly against the upsurge ofIslamaphobia at universities, to which we’re still collecting signatures. IJAN activists in the Bay Area were directly involved in UC Berkeley’sdivestment campaign and also stood in support of the divestment efforts at UCSan Diego.  While these struggles have not yet been successful in winningdivestment from Israeli apartheid, together they served as an incredibleinspiration to Palestine-solidarity student activists across the country andcontributed significantly to shifting the terms of national debate on the stateof Israel. The overwhelming success of the student referendum in support ofdivestment at Evergreen was another inspiring moment of the past year and ishelping to sustain the momentum generated by all these efforts.  IJAN’sstudent network is in the process of accessing the current moment in campus BDSwork and determining how we can most strategically support this work asanti-Zionist Jews.  We welcome the participation of others interested tojoin us in these efforts.

In the fall of 2009, IJAN organizers attended the Campus BDS Conference at Hampshire College, the first US campus to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation. The conference was an inspiring gathering of students from more than 40 colleges and universities, and Palestine solidarity movement activists, working together to expand and solidify Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) work on campuses and in our communities across the U.S. Hampshire organizers shared lessons from their divestment campaign and looked to the work ahead of them to maintain divestment and grow the explicit commitment of the campus to Palestinian liberation. At the conference, IJAN organizers facilitated the following workshops in partnership with Berkeley Students for Justice in Palestine: "White Anti-Racism and Jewish Anti-Zionism: Building Alliance and Joint Struggle," "Dealing with Opposition and Backlash," and "Building and Sustaining Organizations." IJAN organizers were inspired by and excited to be a part of the Hampshire conference, and to have this opportunity to work towards making the national campus BDS movement more connected, informed, and accountable to the Palestinian call and movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.

TheJewish anti-Zionist Academic Network (JAZAN) formed within the context of theInternational Jewish anti-Zionist Network in order to bolster academicparticipation in the Palestine solidarity movement broadly and withininstitutions of higher education in particular. As such, the academic network’spurposes and goals are multi-pronged.

Teachers,researchers and writers who work on university and college campuses engage withpolitical justice both ideologically in our own work and materially incollective struggle – as such, the academy is a site within which there ispotential for Zionist discourse to be de-legitimized and Zionist militarism tobe strategically opposed.

AsJewish anti-Zionist academics and as part of broader communities, we arecommitted to:

• Broadening and deepening anti-Zionist discourse and putting forward alternative visions
• Opposing the misuse of charges of anti-Semitism that frequently occur in an academic context
• Supporting Palestinian, Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim anti-imperialist faculty, staff and students
• Working with students on campuses who are organizing in SJP chapters and engaging in BDS campaigns
• Supporting students and faculty who are doing critical scholarship opposing US imperialism, racism and Zionism
• Engaging in mutual teaching and lear

  ning through intellectual collaboration

• Challenging academic hierarchies and forms of competition and refusing to police one another within the neo-liberal academy
• Exposing how the policies and investments of the University are linked to Zionism and other violences
• Articulating linkages to other ongoing critical forms of struggle, including solidarity with indigenous, black and anti-racist struggles, and struggles to abolish the military-prison-industrial-complex

Join us in the following projects planned for the next year:

– Developing a communications network of anti-Zionist Jewish peoplein the academy who can discuss our work and the broader politics of Jewishanti-Zionism in the PSM, while we connect and support one another

– Working on a collection of papers coming out of the US Assembly ofJews Confronting Israeli Apartheid and Racism

– Meeting and presenting at academic conferences, in such fields asEthnic Studies, American Studies, Sociology, Modern Languages, Feminist/QueerStudies, Middle East/North Africa Studies, and more

– Participation in writing articles, statements, analyses,background documents to support IJAN campaigns and work:

• A campaign to challenge the Zionist exceptionalizing and exploitation of the Nazi genocide of Jews
• A report to expose the Jewish National Fund and a series of papers on Jewish opposition to the Zionist construction of Jewish nationalism upon which the JNF is founded
• Discussion of the principles and processes toward decolonizing Palestine that may allow for the emergence of a just society

You can contact us at academic.network@ijsn.net

 

About Us: We are academic and graduate student activists interested in the building of social justice in the Middle East by supporting an international network to further anti-Zionist thinking, writing, discussions and activism. Though our main site of activism will be universities, we will collaborate with other parts of the network on local, regional and international activities and campaigns.

Though the academic network is being initiated by anti-Zionist Jewish academics as part of the broader work of IJAN, we welcome the participation of and input from all anti-Zionist academic activists and hope to work with, collaborate with and support other anti-Zionist efforts.

Purpose and goals: The academic network seeks to connect people working in academia with one another, students and activists to:

• provide defense of and support for anti-Zionist academics and academics who are critical of Israel;

• promote anti-Zionist research, analysis, discussions and writing through on-campus events, film series, speaking tours and book releases, promote anti-Zionist thinkers with speaking tours, book releases

• produce documentation and materials for organizing and education such as a report on the censorship of cultural work, academic work and organizing that is critical of Israel, reports on the movement of Jews toward conservatism as a result of Zionism, including alliances with Christian fundamentalists, etc.

• collaborate with other parts of the network on an on-line journal

Current projects: There are no immediate projects planned beyond the longer term goals above. Following the launch we hope to have conversations over email about the role and work of the Academic Network.

Past projects: Though there has been interest in building an academic network as part of IJAN, we have not yet formed one.

Stand for free speech and against Islamophobia

by signing your name in support of the

University of California Irvine’s Muslim Student Union.

Background:

For years, Orange County Zionist Jewish organizations have been using false charges of anti-Semitism to try to silence the Muslim Student Union (MSU) for its Palestine solidarity activities. These groups have now convinced the UC Irvine Administration that MSU does nothave a right to exist as a campus organization.  Electronic Intifada summarizes the events of the past academic year: "In response to intense political pressure by multiple pro-Zionist organizations, administrators at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) have recommended the suspension of Muslim students’ right to assemble and practice their faith together on campus. Alleging that emails anonymously "leaked" to the university prove that the Muslim Student Union was responsible for a protest of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’scampus appearance by eight UCI students, the administration plans to suspend the more than 250-member Muslim Student Union for a year beginning in September, and place it under intense scrutiny and disciplinary probation if the student group is allowed to re-apply for recognition in the fall of 2011. The student group is appealing this proposed ban, contending that the MSU did not sponsor theprotest, and that the students arrested for interrupting Oren’s speech were acting as individuals. Members have also challenged UCI’s moves to impose what their attorney Reem Salahi has described as "nothing but collective punishment" by proposing to suspend the entire group over a political protest. The ban would become official after a final university decision, pending the outcome of a hearing and if the student group’s appeal fails." (Read the rest of the article at: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11374.shtml)

The Chicago chapter of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network congratulates the Berkeley student senate for voting to divest from companies that support the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. We encourage the Senate to vote tonight to overturn the president’s veto.

IJAN-Atlanta members are involved in the Movement to EndIsraeli Apartheid-Georgia (www.meia-g.net).   MEIA-Gis currently leading a BDS campaign calling on Georgia State University to endthe Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), a program currentlyhoused at GSU.   The purpose of the program is to facilitatetraining exchanges between Georgia police departments and others around theworld, primarily Israel.  IJAN-Atlantajoins MEIA-G is calling on GSU to divest from Israel by first breaking its tieswith GILEE!

In April, IJAN-Atlanta worked with MEIA-G and others insponsoring DAM, a Palestinian hip-hop group. DAM spoke at Kennesaw State University after a screening of the film,Slingshot Hip Hop, and then performed the next day at a local venue in Atlantawhere over 200 people packed the place!

    website: www.ijsn.net email: (international) ijan@ijsn.net (UK) uk@ijsn.net mob: 07816 251377 Dear friends, Here are some of the press articles & letters arising out of the Never Again – For Anyone tour, beginning with a major piece on Dr Hajo Meyer in the prestigious Huffington Post An Ethical Tradition Betrayed.  The tour began in … Never Again for Anyone

We all know of course that Raphael Lemkin,who first coined the term Genocide in 1943/44, did not mince hiswords. He stated that, throughout history, genocide "happened so manytimes", and that in the 20th century it happened "Firstto the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler tookaction." (Dadrian, V.. History of the Armenian Genocide,p. 350) The theme … The Neo-Mask of Genocide-Collateral Damage