Monday, February 13 2006

Zionism and Apartheid

Prof. Gabi Piterberg (University of California at Los Angeles)

Introduction by Dr. Kaveh Moussavi (University of Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies)
8:00 pm Wadham College

Old Refectory

*
Tuesday, February 14

Documentary Night

Screening of Award winning documentary Arna’s Children

7:30 pm St Antony’s College

Nissan Theatre

*
Wednesday, February 15

Palestinian Resistance

Dr. Karma Nabulsi (University of Oxford)

and an Oxford student panel

7:30 pm University College

Goodhart Seminar Room

*

Thursday. February 16

Apartheid and the Land Question

Nadia Abu-Zahra (DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford)

8:00 pm St Antony's College

*

Friday. February 17

Resisting Apartheid: Divestment and Solidarity

Prof. Ilan Pappe (University of Haifa)

Introduction by Prof. Steven Rose (Open University)

8:00 pm Somerville College

Flora Anderson Hall

*Admission to all of the above forums is free (donations appreciated)

For more information see [url=http://www.endisraeliapartheid.net]www.endisraeliapartheid.net[/url]

About Israeli Apartheid Week
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid; shamefully Israel, Canada, the USA, UK, Australia or New Zealand are not signatories to this convention. We have organized Israeli Apartheid Week to coincide with this anniversary, as well as with Black History Month in North America, and Aboriginal Awareness Week in Canada. Throughout this week we hope to show the commonalities shared by indigenous populations ravaged by the settler-colonial strategy of Apartheid.

Israeli Apartheid Week was organized for the first time in 2005 by the Arab Students' Collective at the University of Toronto. The purpose of the week was to introduce members of the campus and broader community to the analysis of Israel as an apartheid state, and following from this, that there is an obligation on the international community to implement boycotts, divestment and sanctions on the Israeli state until it ends its apartheid policies and practices.

Contrary to the claims made by the critics of Israeli Apartheid Week, our analysis in no way targets Jewish people, or supports religious fundamentalism. On the contrary, the goal we strive for is a united, secular and democratic Palestine for all of its people regardless of religion or race, including the Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed from their homeland in the process of creating the Israeli state. This is the basis for our slogan "One Person, One Vote, One State – the Refugees Will Return."

The analysis of Israel as an apartheid state in fact originated with Jewish scholars such as Israel Shahak, Uri Davis, Ilan Pappe; as well as South African anti-Apartheid activists such as Naeem Jenah and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to name but a few. The call for one democratic state as the only just and therefore viable solution to the destruction of Palestine by Zionism (the movement to forcibly create a Jewish state on an already populated Palestine) is prominent, and can be found in the calls made by Jewish anti-Zionists, Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and was the organizational mantra of the Palestine Liberation Organization until 1974.

This year (2006), other cities have joined Toronto's Arab Students' Collective in organizing Israeli Apartheid Week in Kitchener-Waterloo, Montreal, and Oxford (UK). In all of the events organized as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, there will be detailed analysis and explanation of why we are calling Israel an apartheid state and why the international community is obliged to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Israeli apartheid regime.

http://www.endisraeliapartheid.net/

Posted on 05-02-2006