|
|
|
|
Palestine Solidarity Movement: Overview and Profile The Palestine Solidarity Movement, (PSM) is a small, divestment-driven anti-Israel group which positions itself as an umbrella group amidst the often-splintered, faction-driven world of Palestinian-allied campus groups at U.S., Canadian and some European universities, including Scotland[1] and Britain.[2] The US PSM is best known for holding or being involved with coordinating several years worth of small but extremely high profile, attention-grabbing anti-Israel conferences at (or adjacent to) schools such as the University of California-Berkeley, University of Michigan, The Ohio State University and Rutgers University and also, in 2004, Duke University in North Carolina.[3] One of PSM’s achievements is making university officials essentially cower anytime PSM announces it will hold an conference at their school - conferences which do not attract thousands but instead only several hundreds attendees. Yet the PSM message - divest from Israel and create a weakened Israel and ultimately see Israel be taken over by right-of-return Palestinian refugees - naturally offends Jewish student activists and Hillel leaders. So controversial was PSM’s Oct. 15-17, 2004 conference at Duke that university officials took great pains to clarify PSM issues with an official Duke Q&A web page that read, in part; “So is the Palestine Solidarity Movement part of the International Solidarity Movement or terrorist groups? Duke's understanding from multiple sources is that the Palestine Solidarity Movement, while related to the International Solidarity Movement, is a distinct and separate organization. Extensive inquiries, also with police authorities, have revealed no evidence to support a claim that there is a connection between terrorist groups and the Palestine Solidarity Movement, which is a largely student organization.”[4] This official Duke statement shows how PSM can cover its tracks and position itself to concerned campus officials as more moderate than it truly is. For example; PSM is not part of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) but the groups are kindred, anti-Israel spirits: at PSM’s 2004 annual conference at Duke, one listed speaker was Huweida Arraf - co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement. (The conference also attracted speakers such as Marty Rosenbluth, the Amnesty International USA’s expert for Israel and the Occupied Territories.)[5] The PSM conferences are notorious for their extremism, anti-Semitism, and refusal to condemn terrorism. One of PSM’s ‘guiding principles’ is its commitment to refusing to denounce terrorism.[6] At Duke, “one scheduled speaker, Charles Carlson, had openly called for lethal attacks against Israeli youth, declaring that ‘every young Israeli is military--they are all proper war targets,’ and that "each wedding, Passover celebration, or bar mitzvah [in Israel] is a potential military target.’"[7] Another Duke lecturer called Zionism a “virulent disease,” while yet another spoke of Israel’s “racist ambitions.”[8] When ISM favorite and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died last November, PSM’s web site stated that the American group “offers its deepest condolences to the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority.”[9] While ISM works in the West Bank and Gaza to disrupt Israeli counterterrorism measures, PSM’s strength is in the U.S., where its mission is to push a campus-based anti-Israel divestment agenda and makes repeated comparisons between Israel’s counterterrorism measures on the West Bank and in Gaza and the white minority rule of apartheid-era South Africa. As PSM explains on its web site; “The PSM endorses divestment from Israel, ending U.S. aid to Israel, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees in…Divestment itself and ending economic relations with Israel are the PSM’s tools of choice…Divestment is a peaceful political tool developed during the anti-apartheid student movement to exert pressure on the apartheid South African government…Recognizing the similarities between Israel and the apartheid South African government…we decide to employ divestment as a tool once again.”[10] PSM may attract much attention for student newspapers and cause much hand-wringing among Jewish student groups, especially when they put on their high-profile conferences. However, their actual success at creating a U.S.-based university-driven, anti-apartheid style divestment movement against Israel does appear to have met with limited results. According to the Anti-Defamation League; “…the divestment campaign's arguments have not been persuasive to mainstream Americans and the overall results have not been successful. To date, no college or university has ended its investments in companies that do business in Israel.”[11] But the same ADL report on PSM also stated that the group’s inability to push divestment at universities “has not halted the PSM, which continues to use divestment as a means to organize anti-Israel activists, especially on campus.”[12] [1] http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/Abt/abt_.html [2] http://www.palestinecampaign.org/ [3] “ADL: Palestine Solidarity Movement: Backgrounder,” http://www.adl.org/israel/psm.asp [4] “Duke Focus On; Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference,” http://www.dukenews.duke.edu/mmedia/features/psm/qa.html [5] “The Israel Project; Group Which Condones Terrorism to hold conference at Duke!” http://www.theisraelproject.org/pr/Press%20info%20duke%20facts%20web.pdf and “Workshops” http://www.palestineconference.com/workshops.html [6] Palestine Solidarity Campaign principles archived at http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/790 [7] Eric Adler and Jack Langer, “The Intifada Comes to Duke,” Commentary, Jan 2005 [8] Eric Adler and Jack Langer, “The Intifada Comes to Duke,” Commentary, Jan 2005 [9] “Index page of Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Duke” http://www.palestineconference.com/index.html [10] “PSM FAQ” http://www.palestineconference.com/resources/faq [11] ADL: Palestine Solidarity Movement: Backgrounder,” http://www.adl.org/israel/psm.asp [12] “ADL: Palestine Solidarity Movement: Backgrounder,” http://www.adl.org/israel/psm.asp Organization Background The Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) was one of a cluster of anti-Israel groups which gained some small prominence in the post-September 11th culture in which far-left activists tried to blame virtually all terrorism on U.S. foreign policy and Israel. PSM was launched by Snehal Shingavi, the radical activist who had founded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Berkeley just after the outbreak of the Intifada in the fall of 2000. [See Stand4Facts profile on SJP] Concerned that attention on the Palestinians had been diverted by the anti-war coalitions that had sprung up with the US military action in Afghanistan after 9/11, Shingavi called for a meeting in Berkeley in February 2002 to refocus attention on the Palestinians. The escalation of Palestinian suicide bombing between January and February 2002 had provoked more muscular Israeli counter-terrorism measures, and this helped justify Shingavi’s call. The “national conference at UC Berkeley called ‘The National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement’ …had over 400 attendees representing over 50 schools. At that conference, students unanimously voted to make the divestment campaign a national one and voted to make April 9 a national day of action,” Shingavi proudly reported.[1] Shingavi acknowledged that the Solidarity campaign was “drawing upon the left-wing of the anti-globalization and the anti-war movements” and that “not everyone in those movements was convinced of the need to organize around Palestine and even more were hung up on questions of condemning the ‘suicide bombers.’” Nonetheless, he concluded, “the anti-imperialists within those movements took up the call for Palestine solidarity” as did many “Arabs and Muslims who have begun to demonstrate openly with increasing confidence since September 11th.”[2] The positions adopted at this first meeting in February 2002 remain in force:[3] 1. “the full decolonization of all Palestinian land, including settlements, which are illegal under international law; 2. the end of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem and all Arab lands; 3. the recognition and implementation of the right of return and repatriation for all Palestinian refugees to their original homes and properties; and 4. an end to the Israeli system of Apartheid and discrimination against the indigenous Palestinian population.” In addition, despite the discomfort some activists felt about suicide bombing, PSM also adopted position number 6 which refused to condemn it: “it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.”[4] Finally, the PSM denounced all discrimination based on “race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation,”[5] never acknowledging that its wholesale assault on Zionism-the Jewish movement for national liberation-as inherently racist and discriminatory is in fact a prime example of racism and is, at heart, anti-Semitic for PSM does not just attack Israeli policies. In denouncing Zionism it vilifies the very foundations and legitimacy of the Jewish state. PSM appears to have no headquarters or physical office space and instead communicates by e-mail and cell phones. It is not a chapter-driven group; rather than fanning out across campuses, it functions as an event planner responsible for one or two large conferences each year instead of individual campus activities. PSM focuses not on membership but on being a portal and conference organizer of membership-based anti-Israel groups. PSM’s start-up conference in February 2002, at the University of California, Berkeley was followed by a similar gathering at the University of Michigan later that year; in 2003, internal fighting with the radical New Jersey chapter led by Charlotte Kates caused a split in the organization, and the New Jersey group held its own conference that year near Rutgers University while the main body held its conference at Ohio State University in Columbus. PSM held an Oct. 15-17, 2004 conference at Duke University in North Carolina, an event which generated heated controversy over the propriety of Duke hosting activists who refused to denounce terrorism, espoused frankly anti-Semitic views and refused to permit tape or video recording of its proceedings.[6] Duke pleaded commitment to free speech and the conference went on. While some argued that the brouhaha over the conference was out of proportion to the actual, small number of attendees,[7] others expressed dismay that such extremist views were given indirect sanction by Duke’s hosting the event.[8] As for its leadership structure, PSM states on its web site that, “decisions are made in a democratic, egalitarian manner, and membership is open to all groups that agree to abide by the voting guidelines of the Palestine Solidarity Movement.”[9] [1] Snehal Shingavi, “Students Fight for Justice in Palestine,” International Socialist Review, May-June 2002 at www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Youth/Students_Justice_Palestine.html [2] Snehal Shingavi, “Students Fight for Justice in Palestine,” International Socialist Review, May-June 2002 at www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Youth/Students_Justice_Palestine.html [3] “Statement of Principles” at http://home.comcast.net/~jat.action/PSM.htm [4] “Statement of Principles” at http://home.comcast.net/~jat.action/PSM.htm [5] “Statement of Principles” at http://home.comcast.net/~jat.action/PSM.htm [6] Phyllis Chesler, “The Chesler Wars Come to Duke,” Front Page Magazine, Sept 28 2004 at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=15279 [7] “ADL: Palestine Solidarity Movement: Backgrounder,” http://www.adl.org/israel/psm.asp [8] Eric Adler and Jack Langer, “The Intifada Comes to Duke,” Commentary, Jan 2005 [9] “ADL: Palestine Solidarity Movement: Backgrounder,” http://www.adl.org/israel/psm.asp |
Copyright 2003-2005 : DiscoverTheNetwork.org