Open Letter
Editor's note: The following is a letter addressed to US President-elect
Barack Obama calling for the United States to change its policies vis-a-vis
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, especially in light of Israel's current
onslaught against the Gaza Strip. It was signed by more than 900 academics,
most of them based in the United States, and made available to The Daily
Star by the campaign's organizers.
Once, in what was perhaps an unguarded moment, you stated that: "Nobody's
suffering more than the Palestinian people". After days of relentless
Israeli bombing in the Gaza strip that has already killed over seven hundred
people, most of them civilians or policemen, and injured over three
thousand, many of whom may yet die for lack of medical supplies and
facilities, your words have never rung more true. And yet, so far, your
signal response to this latest assault on the Palestinians, that the UN
Secretary General diplomatically calls "disproportionate", has been to
defend Israel's right to respond to rocket attacks that, while rightly
condemned, are mere pinpricks in comparison to the horrific consequences of
Israeli bombardment and of the ongoing blockade on Gaza.
Does this mean that on the long way to the White House you have trimmed your
sails and, for the sake of securing the power you will soon assume, fear now
to speak truth to power? Does this mean that, unlike Dr. King, your sense of
justice is adjustable for the sake of political expedience? Those who
supported you from the early days of your primary campaign did so not on
account of your response to economic crisis, but because they believed in
your sense of justice and your commitment to put an end to business-as-usual
in Washington, and because they believed in your genuine desire to shape a
new and different world order.
In 1981, while you were an undergraduate at Occidental College, you were
among the first of a courageous group of students and faculty who, while the
cause was still unpopular or unheard of, spoke out for divestment from the
apartheid regime in South Africa. You knew then that it was imperative to
place pressure on a racist regime which shamefully oppressed a black and
coloured population that was discriminated against, subject to pass laws and
control of its every movement, parceled into Bantustans, and subject to
detention, torture and extra-judicial execution. When the black population
protested, like the school children of Soweto, they could be summarily shot
down by police or army. The ANC, under Nelson Mandela, was proscribed as a
terrorist movement, its leaders were imprisoned, tortured or killed, its
guerillas faced the overwhelming power of the South African army, equipped
and trained in part by the United States and its European allies. A regime
that was so unafraid to use violence in the defense of its discriminatory
and racist regime, and so unashamed to do so in the face of international
condemnation, could only understand the language of force. The divestment
movement in which you so actively participated understood that the
euphemistically and cynically named policy of "constructive engagement" was
a moral and practical failure and that only the non-violent force of a
financial boycott on the South African regime had any hope of bringing an
end to apartheid without an horrific bloodbath.
Public figures as diverse as Bishop Desmond Tutu and President Jimmy Carter
have recognized that Israel too maintains an apartheid regime, in practice
if not in name. South Africa, now a functioning multi-racial democracy, was
a white state for a white people. Israel is a Jewish state for a Jewish
people. Its non-Jewish, mostly Palestinian Arab citizens are discriminated
against in numerous ways, economically and civilly. The dispossessed and
ethnically cleansed Palestinian populations, dispersed in the diaspora and
in the refugee camps of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, are denied the
internationally recognized right of return. They have had their lands and
homes taken from them by armed and "legal" force, are subject to collective
punishment, prolonged states of siege, the absolute and deliberately
destructive control of their daily movements. Where South Africa instituted
the pass laws, the checkpoints that have proliferated all over the West Bank
and at the exits from Gaza prevent students from reaching their schools and
hospitals, workers from reaching their places or work, keep farmers from
their fields, the sick from the few hospitals that survive to serve them.
The illegal settlements, that in contravention of all international laws
regarding occupation have proliferated across the West Bank, are designed to
be permanent "facts on the ground" and have divided recognized Palestinian
territory into segmented islets, into besieged Bantustans, with the intent
of preventing a contiguous Palestinian state. A so-called security wall,
illegally built, as even the Israeli Supreme Court recognized, on
Palestinian territory, has cut farmers from their lands and turned formerly
prosperous villages into isolated prisons. Regular Israeli military
incursions into Palestinian cities and refugee camps, and bombings from the
air, have killed innumerable civilians, many of them children. Since the
election of Hamas, in fair and open elections, Israel has subjected the
civilian population of Gaza to a prolonged state of siege, designed to
suffocate them into submission, depriving them at will of water and power,
medical supplies and food, and of access to the outside world. The most
recent, all-out assault on Gaza, the disproportionate and bloody use of
excessive force, is no act of self-defense, but the dramatic extension of an
insidious policy of extermination of a people that refuses to disappear.
Every one of these acts is a crime against humanity. In their ensemble, they
constitute one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times.
Almost alone among nations, Israel acts in flagrant violation of
international law and UN resolutions and does so with impunity. That it can
do so is in large part the consequence of the uncritical support offered to
Israel by a succession of American administrations. Without the military and
economic aid of the United States, which amounts to more than a third of all
US foreign aid, Israel could not have mounted its violent offensives against
the Palestinians or Lebanon, could not maintain its security apparatus,
could not afford the illegal settlements that seek to expand Israel into
what remains of Palestinian territory. The United States has supplied the
F-16s that are bombarding the Palestinians, their schools, police stations
and mosques, and the cluster bombs that continue to kill and maim children
and farmers in southern Lebanon. America continues to support Israel to the
tune of billions every year at the expense of US taxpayers and at the
expense of its moral standing in the world.
You will continue to do so, according to your own web page, because "our
first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the
security of Israel, America's strongest ally in the region." You and your
Vice-President, Joe Biden, not only "defend and support the annual foreign
aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel",
but moreover "have advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that
these funding priorities are met." In doing so, you lend your support, in
the name of the United States, to a regime no less criminal in its acts and
in its policies towards its own minority population and its dispossessed
Palestinian neighbors than South Africa was in the 1980s. Then, it was
argued, South Africa was our strongest ally in the region, a bulwark in the
war against communism, a crucial supplier of uranium and other minerals, a
prosperous Western-style democracy, if not the only democracy on the
continent. To bring down the South African apartheid regime, it was argued,
would be to create chaos in southern Africa, unleash a bloodbath in which
whites and blacks alike would suffer, and pave the way for a communist or
dictatorial postcolonial regime. The divestment movement, a non-violent
coalition of students and academics, union members and churches, came
together in the spirit of the Civil Rights movement to challenge those
self-serving assumptions. It changed the direction of US foreign policy,
disgracing its support of a racist regime, and placed effective pressure on
the apartheid regime to begin serious negotiations with the ANC. Through a
combination of diplomacy and divestment, we did end apartheid, making way
for a functioning multi-racial democracy that confronts its challenges,
indeed, but has not dissolved into chaos or tyranny.
It is time for the United States to place a similar pressure on Israel. That
Israel has been America's beneficiary, unchallenged in its war crimes and in
its acts of terror, uncontested for its racist civil constitution and
illegal occupations, has not been to the United States' advantage. On the
contrary, such unquestioning support of Israel has fuelled the legitimate
anger of the Islamic world, supplied the justification for terrorism, and
continually tarnished the United States' reputation among the democracies of
the world. That the United States has stood so often alone in defending
Israel before the court of world opinion in the United Nations is not a sign
of its virtue, but of the obstinacy and arrogance of its stance. But it is
not for the sake of the reputation or advantage of the United States that
you should take a new path in relation to Israel. It is in the name of
justice. It is not just to support the territorial ambitions, realized
settlement by settlement, of a Zionist minority in the region. It is not
just to continue to supply Israel with the most advanced weapons and the
most deadly arms in order that it may murder civilians, children and
policemen. It is not just that we should support Israel with all our
diplomatic force and financial aid, while leaving Israel's victims to die
slowly for lack of food, medicine, water and power. It is not just that we
should sacrifice a dispossessed people for the security of a state that
discriminates and expropriates, continually and violently ignores UN
resolutions and international appeals, collectively punishes those whose
right to resist occupation is recognized in international law.
There is no road to peace through such injustice. It may be that the
compromise in the end will be the establishment and security of two separate
states. Almost certainly, the only hope of a lasting solution is a single
state in Israel/Palestine, committed to the civil and human rights of all
peoples within its boundaries, irrespective of religion or ethnicity. That
is, after all, the standard to which we hold all other states in the world,
Israel alone excepted. But no solution at all will be possible until we hold
Israel accountable for its criminal violence and its illegal acts, until we
cease to supply it with the means to pursue a course of domination and
expansion, with arms and warplanes, with finance and diplomatic support. In
wake of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, your recent expression of
"deep concern" is not enough. It is time for constructive disengagement from
Israel, financial, diplomatic, military. What worked in the case of South
Africa, divestment and pressure, may finally work in the Middle East.
Without such justice, there will be no peace.
David Lloyd
University of Southern California Los Angeles
January 1, 2009
Maher Abdelqader, St. Johns University
Butool Abdullah, University of California (UC), Riverside
Khadeeja Abdullah, UC Los Angeles
Wadad Abed, Palestine Aid Society
Diana Abouali, Dartmouth College
Thomas Abowd, Wayne State University
Matthew Abraham, DePaul University
Raed Abughazaleh, Hennepin County Medical Center
Janet Abu-Lughod, Northwestern University
Lila Abu-Lughod, Columbia University
Fida Adely, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service
Dorothy Aguilera, Lewis & Clark College, Portland
Sanjam Ahluwalia, Northern Arizona University
Barry Aidlin, UC Berkeley
Andrew Aisenberg, Scripps College
Maha Akhtar, Macaulay Honors College at Queens College
Daniel Alarcn, UC Berkeley
Lisa Albrecht, University of Minnesota
Linda Mart'n Alcoff, Hunter College/CUNY
David Alderson, University of Manchester
Hamid Algar, UC Berkeley
Kimberly Alidio, University of Texas at Austin
Dina Al-Kassim, UC Irvine
Amany Al-Sayyed, American University of Beirut
Evelyn Alsultany, University of Michigan
Abbas Al-Tonsi, Georgetown University
Andrew Altounyan, Concerned citizen
Atif Alvi, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Candice Amich, Rutgers University
T.R. Amsler, June Jordan School for Equity
Sriram Ananth, University of Minnesota
Patrick Anderson, UC San Diego
Gil Anidjar, Columbia University
Sinan Antoon, New York University
Nausheen H Anwar, Harvard University
Ibrahim Aoude, University of Hawaii
Juan Manuel Arbona, Bryn Mawr College
Stephen Carl Arch, Michigan State University
Elizabeth Archuleta, Arizona State University
Jacqueline Armijo, Zayed University
Anjali Arondekar, UC Santa Cruz
Nadim Asrar, University of Minnesota
Mohamed G. Atta, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Robin Attfield, Cardiff University
Elsa Auerbach, University of Massachusetts Boston
Tim August, University of Minnesota
Idelber Avelar, Tulane University
Sufia Azmat, Noor-Ul-Iman School
Paola Bacchetta, UC Berkeley
Gabeba Baderoon, Pennsylvania State University
Susan Bain, Promenade Elementary School
Amit Baishya, University of Iowa
Jennifer Bajorek, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Christine Bacareza Balance, UC Irvine
Ian Balfour, York University
Wanda S. Ballentine, Retired
Asma Barlas, Ithaca College
Tani Barlow, Rice University
Barbara Barnes, Brooklyn College
Lynne Barnes, Colorado State University
Ryan P Barone, University of Connecticut
Valerie Barr, Union College
Harry Bastermajian, Lake Forest College
Angela Ixkic Duarte Bastian, Universidad Autnoma de Mexico
Edward Batchelder, SUNY, Buffalo
Janet Bauer, Trinity College
Anis Bawarshi, University of Washington
Rosalyn Baxandall, SUNY, Old Westbury
Moustafa Bayoumi, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Toby Beauchamp, UC Davis
Michael Beck, Queens College
Adam H. Becker, New York University
Joshua A. Bell, Smithsonian Institution Jonathan Beller, Pratt Institute
L. Kent Bendall, Wesleyan University
Lourdes Bener'a, Cornell University
Sylvia Benini, Austin Center for Peace and Justice
Rick Berg, University of Southern California
Brook Bernini-Galup, University of Minnesota
Tamara Bhalla, UMBC
Jess Bier, CUNY
Anna Bigelow, North Carolina State University
Laure Bjawi, Santa Clara University
Jody Blanco, UC San Diego
Barb Blazej, University of Maine
Steven Blevins, Florida International University
Katherine Blouin, University of Toronto
Van Bluemel, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Jason N. Blum, University of Pennsylvania
Lawrence Blum, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Abigail Boggs, UC Davis
Mallory Bolduc, University of Florida
Catherine Bolten, University of Michigan Victoria Bomberry, UC Riverside
Marion G. Bontrager, Hesston College
Papori Bora, University of Minnesota
Rozalinda Borcila, University of South Florida
Eileen Boris, UC Santa Barbara
Purnima Bose, Indiana University, Bloomington
Daniel Boyarin, UC Berkeley
Marylee Bradley, California State University, Stanislaus
Amy L. Brandzel, University of New Mexico
Bruce Braun, University of Minnesota
Lundy Braun, Brown University
Gray Brechin, Univesity of California, Berkeley
Laura Briggs, University of Arizona
Mary Shannon Brooks, University of Texas
Jayna Brown, UC Riverside
Nathan Brown, UC Davis
Wendy Brown, UC Berkeley
Karl Bryant, SUNY, New Paltz
Lotte Buch, University of Copenhagen
Susan Buck-Morss, Cornell University
Jericho Burg, UC San Diego
Emily Burrill, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Jessica B. Burstrem, University of Arizona
Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois
Snjezana Buzov, Ohio State University
Layla Cable, the Curley School
Jeffrey Cabusao, Bryant University
George Constantine Caffentzis, University of Southern Maine
Andrew Calabrese, University of Colorado at Boulder
Asli Calkivik, University of Minnesota
Jordan Camp, UC Santa Barbara
Corey Capers, University of Illinois, Chicago
Cesare Casarino, University of Minnesota
Eugenia Casielles, Wayne State University
Noel Castree, University of Manchester
Keith Catone, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Paul Catterson, Chicago State University
John Paul Catungal, University of Toronto Eric Cazdyn, University of Toronto
Marija Cetinic, USC
Aditi Chandra, University of Minnesota
Nandini Chandra, University of Minnesota Ryan Chaney, Columbia University
Sylvia Chan-Malik, UC Berkeley
Tina Chanter, DePaul University
Ignacio Chapela, UC Berkeley
Piya Chatterjee, UC Riverside
Ruchi Chaturvedi, Hunter College, CUNY
Jolie Chea, UC Los Angeles
Mel Y. Chen, UC Berkeley
Thomas Chen, Brown University
Eva Cherniavsky, University of Washington
Anita Chikkatur, University of Pennsylvania
Kyeong-Hee Choi, University of Chicago
Sylvia Chong, University of Virginia
Elora Chowdhury, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Peter Chua, San Jose State University
Kandice Chuh, University of Maryland
George Ciccariello-Maher, UC Berkeley
Christina E. Civantos, University of Miami
Diana Claitor, Texas Jail Project
Beth Cleary, Macalester College
Patricia Ticineto Clough, Queens College and Graduate Center CUNY
Nanette Le Coat, Trinity University
Lawrence Cohen, UC Berkeley
Matthew Coleman, Ohio State University
Martha Collins, Oberlin College
Patricia Connolly, University of Minnesota
Sheila Contreras, Michigan State University
Paula M. Cooey, Macalester College
Karin Cope, University of Nova Scotia
Roselyn Costantino, Penn State University
Clare Counihan, Nazareth College
Margaux Cowden, UC Irvine
Robert Cowles, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Corey Creekmur, University of Iowa
T.J. Cribb, Churchill College
Charles Crittenden, California State University, Northridge
Stephen Crowley, Oberlin College
Denise Cruz, Indiana University
Michael Cucher, USC
Ofelia Ortiz Cuevas, UC Riverside
Kate Cummings, University of Washington
Chris Cuomo, University of Georgia
Kavita Daiya, George Washington University
Marlowe Daly-Galeano, University of Arizona
Mahendra Damarla, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Maria Damon, University of Minnesota
Bucker Dangor, Imperial College London
Huma Dar, University of British Columbia
Susan Muaddi Darraj, Harford Community College
Atasi Das, Keene State College
Rochelle Davis, Georgetown University
James Davis, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Ashley Dawson, CUNY Graduate Center
Iyko Day, Mount Holyoke College
Colin Dayan, Vanderbilt University
Jodi Dean, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Lara Deeb, Scripps College
Randi Deguilhem, CNRS, IREMAM
Chela Delgado, UC Berkeley
Anneke DeLuycker, Butler University
Manan Desai, University of Michigan
Lynne DeSilva-Johnson, City College, CUNY
William Dewey, UC San Francisco
Vicente M. Diaz, University of Michigan
Colin Dickey, USC
Linda Dittmar, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Naazneen Diwan, UCLA
Tayyab S. Diwan, Mayo Clinic
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, St. Olaf College
Sharon Doetsch-Kidder, UC Santa Barbara
Thomas John Donahue, Saint Joseph's University
Andy Doolen, University of Kentucky
Roxanne Lynn Doty, Arizona State University
Simon Doubleday, Hofstra University
Roberta L. Dougherty, University of Texas at Austin
Anne E. Duggan, Wayne State University
Lisa Duggan, New York University
Kevin C. Dunn, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Bud Duvall, University of Minnesota
William Duvall, Willamette University
Robert Ellis Dye, Macalester College
Andrew Edgar, Cardiff University
Eduardo Cadava, Princeton University
Ben Ehrenreich, Otis College of Art and Design
Kaveh Ehsani, De Paul University
Mushira Eid, University of Utah
John Eisele, College of William and Mary
Zillah Eisenstein, Ithaca College
Muhammad S. Eissa, University of Chicago
Hisam Elaqad, Ohio State University
Nada Elia, Antioch University
Marie-Therese Ellis, Mills College
Maryam El-Shall, UC Irvine
David G. Embrick, Loyola University-Chicago
Zachary Noffsinger Erbaugh, Bethany Theological Seminary
Colleen Eren, CUNY Graduate Center
Jenny Ernst, Park Day School
Adriana Estill, Carleton College
Nava EtShalom, University of Michigan
Sylvanna M. Falcn, UC Riverside
Nahyan Fancy, DePauw University
James C. Faris, University of Connecticut
Grant Farred, Cornell University
Munis D. Faruqui, UC Berkeley
David Faust, University of Minnesota
Silvia Federici, Hofstra University
Ilana Feldman, George Washington University
James Ferguson, Stanford University
Roderick A. Ferguson, University of Minnesota
Allan Fisher, City College of San Francisco
Elllen Fleischmann, University of Dayton
Colin Flint, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Courtney G. Flint, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Amy Foerster, Pace University
Claudio Fogu, UC Santa Barbara
Alessandro Fornazzari, UC Riverside
Noha Forster, University of Chicago
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, University of Michigan
Claire F. Fox, University of Iowa
Anne-Lise Fran ois, UC at Berkeley
Cynthia Franklin, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Cary Fraser, Pennsylvania State University
Carla Freccero, UCSC
Nathaniel Freiburger, UC Davis
Lezlie Frye, NYU
Gloria Frym, California College of the Arts
Dan Fulton, San Lucas Toliman Hospital
Gary Gaffney, Art Academy of Cincinnati
Nancy Gallagher, UC Santa Barbara
Catherine Gallou't, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Anthony Galluzzo, Clark Library
Ritika Ganguly, University of Minnesota
Matt Garite, SUNY Buffalo
Matthew Garrett, Wesleyan University
Adriana Garriga-Lpez, Columbia University
Leo Gerweck, Harvard Medical School
Bishnupriya Ghosh, UC Santa Barbara
Vinay Gidwani, University of Minnesota
Stephanie Gilmore, Dickinson College
Rachel Giora, Tel Aviv University
Reda E. Girgis,, Johns Hopkins University
Abbott Gleason, Brown University
Carolyn Goffman, DePaul University
David Theo Goldberg, UC Irvine
Catherine Tracy Goode, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Priyamvada Gopal, University of Cambridge
Gayatri Gopinath, New York University
Sumanth Gopinath, University of Minnesota
Avery Gordon, UC Santa Barbara
Jeffrey Gore, DePaul University
Melanie Gould, Voluntary Service Overseas
Stephen Graham, University of Durham
Lucy Graham, Stellenbosch University
Ronald Walter Greene, University of Minnesota
Mary Jo Grennan, Keene State University
Zareena Grewal, Yale University
Pamela Grieman, USC
Larry Gross, USC
Sarah Gualtieri, USC
Patricia Guizzetti, Chicago Public Schools
Andrew Paul Gutierrez, UC Berkeley
Ferit GŸven, Earlham College
Khristina Haddad, Moravian College
Mathew Hadley, University of Minnesota
Elaine C. Hagopian, Simmons College
Jeanne Hahn, Evergreen State College of Liberal Arts
Jennifer Haidar, Des Moines Public Schools
Samira Haj, CUNY Graduate School
Paula Hajar, Bronx Charter School for Better Learning
Semya Hakim, St. Cloud State University
Judith Halberstam, USC
Sondra Hale, UCLA
Lisa Kahaleole Hall, Wells College
Susanne E. Hall, Duke University
John Halman, Macalester College
Jeff Halper, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
Raja Halwani, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Brian Hand, Wexford Campus (IT Carlow, Ireland)
Margaret Hanzimanolis, De Anza College
Michael K. Hardy, Rutgers University
Molly O'Hagan Hardy, University of Texas at Austin
Marguerite Hargrove, retired citizen
Gillian Harkins, University of Washington
Barbara Harlow, University of Texas at Austin
Laura Harms, Earlham College
Gillian Hart, UC Berkeley
Janet Hart, University of Michigan
George Hartley, Ohio University
Michelle Hartman, McGill University
Barbara Harvey, lawyer, Detroit, Michigan
Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State University
Wail S. Hassan, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Frances Hasso, Oberlin College
Paul M. Hassoun, Johns Hopkins University
Nola J. Heidlebaugh, SUNY-Oswego
Courtney Helgoe, University of Minnesota
Peter Henry, Seattle Schools
RDK Herman, Smithsonian Institution
Jocelyn Claire R. Hermoso, San Francisco State University
Caroline Herzenberg, Argonne National Laboratory
Devin Hess, Park Day School
Nik Heynen, University of Georgia
Annie Higgins, Wayne State University
Edwin Hill, USC
Brenda Hillman, Saint Mary's College of California
...
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