Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP)

Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP)

Overview

* Anti-Israel activist group based at Ohio State University


The Committee for Justice in Palestine (CJP) is an anti-Israel activist group based at Ohio State University (OSU). Opposed to what it calls Israel’s “occupation” of “Palestine,” CJP’s ongoing Divestment Campaign exhorts OSU officials to sever all of the university’s current financial ties to Israeli corporations and interests.

On October 18, 2003, CJP was a sponsoring organization of a United For Peace and Justice rally whose participants first gathered at Pennsylvania’s York County Prison “to protest the continued illegal detention of immigrants following 9-11,” and then marched to the nearby Caterpillar Parts Distribution Plant “to protest Caterpillar’s continuing support for Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.” According to the promotional literature for this rally: “Caterpillar is responsible for the manufacturing of armored bulldozers, which they sell to the Israeli Defense Force. The IDF [Israeli Defense Force] uses these bulldozers in the occupied territories to demolish homes of families thought to be associated with Palestinian militants. This policy of collective punishment is specifically against the Geneva Conventions, and is considered a war crime under international law. It was with such a bulldozer that American Palestinian solidarity activist Rachel Corrie was murdered by the IDF last spring, while non-violently trying to prevent a home demolition. Rachel, while in plain sight, was viciously run over and then backed over again, by a bulldozer manufactured by Caterpillar.”

In November 2003, CJP hosted the Palestine Solidarity Movement‘s (PSM) Annual Conference at Ohio State University. CJP also took part in PSM’s Fourth Annual Conference, held at Duke University the following fall.

In 2004, CJP was a signatory — along with more than 200 other leftist organizations — to a letter exhorting members of the U.S. Senate to oppose Israel’s construction of an anti-terrorist security fence in the West Bank. In CJP’s view, the security barrier is an illegal “apartheid wall” that violates the civil and human rights of Palestinians.

In July 2006, CJP co-signed a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calling for the “Immediate International Protection for the Palestinian People in the Occupied Territory.” This letter read, in part: “[T]he inexorable march of Israeli human rights violations continues with renewed savagery. The Israeli military has escalated its assault upon the Palestinian people, with dozens of Palestinians killed and wounded in recent months. … [Israeli] forces continue illegally to arrest and detain thousands of Palestinians, confiscate Palestinian land, demolish homes, impose a deadly economic blockade, and build an annexationist Apartheid wall. … We therefore call upon the United Nations to intervene to defend the Palestinian people …” Among CJP’s dozens of fellow co-signers were the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Arab Association for Human Rights, the International Action Center, the International Solidarity Movement, Ittijah, the Middle East Children’s Alliance, the Troops Out Now Coalition, and the Workers World Party.

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