By Anna Ward & Andrea Abi-Karam
This past Sunday and Monday, around 800 people convened in the George Sherman Union at Boston University to attend a conference organized by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, a pro-Israel media watchdog group. The conference also attracted other students – protestors.
Students from Boston University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), along with American Jews for a Just Peace, ItisApartheid, and other Palestine supporters, gathered to peacefully demonstrate on the sidewalk in front of the GSU. There were around 40 people on each day.
Protestors held up a mock “apartheid wall,” which, according to the SJP Press Release symbolized “the nearly 440 mile long wall Israel has used to seize and carve up Palestinian territory beyond the 1967 Green line.” The Brass Liberation Orchestra, a street marching band that often touts a socio-political message, accompanied the demonstrators. The protestors were successful in attracting attention and distributed over 600 fliers about their cause.
Protestor and CAS senior Katie Knight, CAS ’11, told the Quad why she was demonstrating against CAMERA’s conference at BU.
“CAMERA is an organization that tries to influence the media in the way that [the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] is seen,” she said. According to Knight, the event was “clearly biased and used as propaganda” for Israel.
“I think that we should have as unbiased reporting as possible, the facts, and what’s really happening on both sides rather than try[ing] to skew opinion in one direction or the other,” she said.
Although the CAMERA claims to combat international media biases against Israel by organizations such as CNN and the United Nations Reliefs and Works agency, protestors disagreed.
“I think American media is very one-sided in favor of Israel,” said Ian Chinich, an SJP member and political science Ph.D. candidate at BU.“The New York Times is probably the worst of the mainstream newspapers,” Chinich continued. “They misconstrue events, neglect international law . . . There was a little girl killed by an Israeli sniper and when talked about it was ‘a Palestinian got too close to the wall’ and [they] failed to mention that she was twelve years old.”
Chinch also commented on BU and BU Hillel’s decision to host CAMERA.
“It’s really problematic,” he said.
Chinich said that the acceptance that BU offered CAMERA contrasts with its treatment of SJP events.
According to Chinich, the university pressured SJP to change the name of last semester’s “Israel Apartheid Week, ” because it was too controversial, although SJP ultimately kept the name.
On the other hand, “BU hosted [the CAMERA] talks titled ‘Jewish Defamers,’ including speakers that have made racist comments in the past. It just seems like they’re favoring Israel,” he said. “They put up barricades and kept us far away from the actual event.”’
Knight felt optimistic about a shift in the pro-Israel bias she observes on campuses.
“That’s starting to change, and part of that is because of SJP movements popping up on campus. [Campus] opinion is starting to reflect more of both sides than what we’ve previously seen,” she said.
Of the protest itself, Chinich said that student observers were very respectful and curious, whereas many older conference-goers cursed at the protesters. He said that one “could also see a huge disparity in age, as we were nearly all students and the conference goers were mostly middle age and older people,” and attributes it to the “growing change among American Jews.”
Despite the protestors’ optimism of this “growing change” of awareness on university campuses, many still saw a need to represent the Palestinian cause and to protest CAMERA’s event.
“Israel has a ridiculous amount of public relations firms, such as CAMERA, to talk about their side of the story,” said Chinich. “Palestinians have no such thing.”
For more information about CAMERA click here
For more information about SJP click here
Check out the Quad’s coverage inside of the event here
The protesters’ chants of “resistance is justified” in front of a banner that said “bulldoze dershowitz” were telling. “Resistance” is the term used by many Palestinians to describe suicide bombs and rockets intentionally targeting civilian men, women and children. Justified?? And one protester, despite prodding, couldn’t get herself to say that she opposed such attacks.
Extremist propaganda of these students is frightening.
Oh please! No one was advocating the actual use of force against Dershowitz in this entirely peaceful student demonstration. The banner was meant to point out how absurd he and his viewpoints are on issues like home demolitions, for example. As for the “when people are occupied, resistance is justified” chant, I think the response of the poster below takes care of that issue quite well and I’ll leave it at that.
That said, using bulldozers as murder weapons (does the name Rachael Corrie ring a bell?) and the targeting civilians- women, children, UN warehouses, and hospitals- are tactics that seem to have been perfected by the Israeli military! Not only are they used time and time again, but the entire world continues to stand by and watch because organizations like CAMERA tell the world that such incidents are justified under the guise of protecting Israeli security, which, of course, is paramount to just about everything else, including human rights, dignity, and the lives of those who dissent from the accepted, pro-Israel point of view.
Rant and moan all you want about that you THINK these students were saying (instead of actually looking at their actions and message on the day of the protest) and take go take a look at the crimes committed as a matter of policy by this entity that you seemingly so blindly support.
“Resistance” is also the term used to describe Palestinian farmers’ unwillingness to cede the ownership of their farms to Israel as “abandoned property” after Israel has: blocked them from access with walls or fences, then severely limited their access to their farms through distant checkpoints with inconsistent, limited schedules so they cannot reasonably tend their crops, and then prohibited them from transporting their produce back through the checkpoints in the same vehicle onto which their harvest was loaded. “Resistance” is also the term used to describe any Palestinian who is not satisfied with getting only 5 hours of electricity per day in his/her city in the West Bank; or one who is dissatisfied with having access only to bottled water for several days in a row, while the Jewish settlements on the hills above them enjoy unlimited access to both water and electricity. Semantics are everything. Please learn the facts before choosing sides.