Sunday, November 29, 2015
Elder of Ziyon
This looks like a parody, but it's not. It is a recommendation that was overwhelmingly approved by those voting at the National Women's Studies Association meeting:
Recommendation 1
The first recommendation, developed by Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto Rico at NWSA 2014, urges the Association to join the international Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and draws on transnational, intersectional feminist frameworks to emphasize an “indivisible sense of justice.” Voting on this question follows on a solidarity statement released by NWSA early in 2015, issued in response to strong member engagement with BDS at the 2014 NWSA Conference in Puerto Rico.
How does the recommendation or resolution relate to the NWSA mission, which reads, NWSA leads the field of women's studies in educational and social transformation.
As feminist activists, scholars, teachers, and public intellectuals who recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians. This resolution is an act of transnational solidarity aimed at social transformation for a better world.
Who will do the work required to execute the proposed recommendation or resolution?
Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (FJP), an ad-hoc group founded in Puerto-Rico at NWSA 2014 will lead the efforts to publicize and disseminate the resolution, including education, outreach, media and publicity.
Full text of recommendation or resolution.
Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine Support An Indivisible Sense of Justice!
Support BDS
A Resolution submitted to: National Women’s Studies Association 2015
As feminist scholars, activists, teachers, and public intellectuals we recognize the interconnectedness of systemic forms of oppression. In the spirit of this intersectional perspective, we cannot overlook the injustice and violence, including sexual and gender-based violence, perpetrated against Palestinians and other Arabs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, within Israel and in the Golan Heights, as well as the colonial displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba. The discriminatory treatment, exclusion, military siege and apartheid imposed by Israel on its own Palestinian citizens as well as those residing in the occupied territories constitute flagrant breaches of international law, UN resolutions, and fundamental human rights.
In the present moment, our counterparts in Palestine face daily violations of their human rights, including their academic rights to free speech, assembly, association, and movement. At the same time, Israeli institutions of higher learning have not challenged, but instead legitimized, Israel’s oppressive policies and violations. These violations, which severely impact the daily lives and working conditions of Palestinian scholars, students, and the society at large, are also enabled by U.S. tax dollars and the tacit support of western powers, thus making any taxpayer in the West complicit in perpetuating these injustices.
As members of NWSA who are committed to justice, dignity, equality and peace, we affirm our opposition to the historical and current injustices in Palestine that we view as part and parcel of the multiple oppressions we study and teach about. We also affirm the commitment of NWSA to principles of human rights, justice and freedom for all, including academic freedom. At our 2014 national conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, nearly 800 participants signed a petition calling upon the organization to declare its support for the international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. About 2500 members of the audience at the plenary on Palestine stood in unison in support of freedom and justice for/in Palestine.
Therefore, in keeping with these principles and the strong consensus of the majority of our 2014 conference participants, let be it resolved that the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) endorses the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of economic, military and cultural entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel. In doing so, we join the growing grassroots international consensus and add our voices to other professional U.S. academic associations that adopted similar resolutions in recent years. These associations include the African Literature Association, American Studies Association, Association for Asian American Studies, Association for Humanist Sociology, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Peace and Justice Studies Association, University of Hawaii at Manoa-Ethnic Studies Department, United Auto Workers Local 2865, The University of California Student Workers Union, and over 1000 members of the American Anthropological Association.
In plain English, a group of people who hate Israel use pseudo-intellectual gobbledygook to claim that somehow historic oppression of women are interconnected with Israel's actions to defend itself from terror. Therefore, out of all of the examples of oppression in the world, these academics decided that Israel's actions are the only ones that must be condemned and the only ones that are "interconnected" with women's studies, and therefore Israel is the only country that must be boycotted. Syria and China and North Korea are just dandy.Other so-called scholars in those other groups said that "one has to start somewhere," and they always start with Israel and then lose all interest in boycotting anyone else.
Here's some extra comedy from the same organization's Code of Ethics:
NWSA members/staff may not engage in discrimination in the organization based on age; gender; race; ethnicity; national origin; religion; sexual orientation; disability; health conditions; marital, domestic, or parental status, gender identity and gender expression; or any other applicable basis proscribed by law.
So will they work with Israeli Jewish professors or won't they? (BDSers never have a problem with working with Israeli Arabs.)
This resolution makes the National Women's Studies Association into a laughingstock whose members have no ability to evaluate the difference between easily debunked lies and truth, for whom rhetoric trumps facts, and who cannot even understand their own sickness in condemning the only country in the Middle East that gives a damn about Arab women's rights.
The icing on the NWSA hypocrisy cake is that the resolution passed at the exact same time that young Arab women under PA rule are being incited by their own government's ruling party to stab any Jew they find.
