Action: Write to NYC Councilmembers headed to Israel

Click here to send a letter to NY City Councilmembers going on the Israel junket.

Let let them know New Yorkers are paying attention, and that we object. They've gotten hundreds of letters so far -- more than ever before.

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New Yorkers ask City Councilmembers to skip racist Israel junket

QAIA joins with the 65+ New York City community groups calling on our elected officials -- many of whom are in the LGBT and Progressive Caucuses of the NYC Council -- to skip a trip to Israel. Below is the text of the letter.

The 9-day junket (!) is paid for and organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council and the United Jewish Appeal. NYC Councilmembers who are planning to go on the Feb. 15 junket are: City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Members Mark Treyger, Brad Lander, Antonio Reynoso, David Greenfield, Rafael Espinal, Darlene Mealy, Mark Levine, Helen Rosenthal, Corey Johnson, Ritchie Torres, Andrew Cohen, Donovan Richards, Eric Ulrich, and James Van Bramer.

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OPEN LETTER 

As a diverse coalition of concerned New Yorkers and grassroots social justice groups, we urge you to exercise the responsibility entrusted to you as elected officials by declining to accept an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, scheduled for February 2015 and sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and United Jewish Appeal, which inaccurately claim to speak for the Jewish community. Do not neglect your official responsibilities to our diverse city by touring an apartheid state.

In light of the 2014 massacre in Gaza that killed over 2,300 people, including over 500 children, (1) injured over 10,000 (2), and left countless others displaced and psychologically scarred (3), this trip would be an exercise in misinformation. You will not see Israel’s Apartheid Wall, four times longer and twice as high as the Berlin Wall. Nor will you traverse the labyrinth of military checkpoints that West Bank Palestinians encounter daily. You will not walk Gaza’s decimated streets to speak to residents about their murdered families, or the poverty imposed upon 1.8 million people, mostly refugees, in an open-air prison one-third the size of New York City. (4)

As New Yorkers, we recognize that the struggle for social and racial justice in our own city is deeply connected to that of the Palestinian people. Israel’s callous disregard for international human rights norms and the impunity enjoyed by Israeli police and occupation forces cannot be viewed apart from the near-total lack of accountability mirrored by the NYPD and other police forces as they target communities of color in the United States.

In recent weeks, many of us joined demonstrations to protest the killings of countless Black people by police forces across the country. Members of City Council also protested these killings. However, these gestures are wholly incompatible with participating in a private tour funded by special interests hoping to legitimize Israel’s laws discriminating against its Palestinians citizens and the violence it inflicts upon Palestinians under military occupation. To demonstrate in support of racial justice while participating in a tour of apartheid is a fundamental contradiction.

International law requires Israel to protect the civilian population in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, yet it has repeatedly failed to do so. The world has witnessed Israel’s increasingly horrendous war crimes, from the fatal shootings of protesters in the West Bank (5) to the horrific slaughter in Gaza. Strengthening cultural, business, and educational ties to a state engaged in these ongoing transgressions is not a proper goal for our city.

The trip is especially worrisome given the NYPD’s long history of cooperation with Israeli forces, including its 2012 establishment of an office in Kfar Saba, just outside of Tel Aviv, funded with our taxes. (6) NYPD officers, including former Commissioner Ray Kelly, have joined at least 9,000 US law enforcement officials on trips to Israel. (7)

These junkets have an undeniable effect on NYPD policies. A former official described the Department’s notorious Demographics Unit, disbanded in April after outrage followed revelations of its unconstitutional surveillance of Muslim communities, as “modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank.” (8)

At a time of public outrage over police brutality, participation in a delegation ignoring Israeli policies that inspired and reinforced unjust tactics of the NYPD can only aggravate New Yorkers’ concerns. Any trip in support of Israel conflicts with a concern over domestic police abuses. Finally, accepting this invitation would breach a request for solidarity from Palestinian civil society organizations, who have called for boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions against Israel until it “meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.” (9)

These demands, which have inspired a robust movement with international support, call on citizens and public officials alike to do their part in bringing comprehensive justice and peace to the region. Being part of this trip is the equivalent of crossing an international picket line. In a year when the people across the world have been inspired by the Palestinian people’s resistance to an unjust occupation, and at a moment of heightened political tension in our city, participating in an all-expense-paid vacation to a country committing war crimes enabled by United States tax dollars would be viewed by many as entirely inappropriate.

  In the spirit of the progressive values you espouse, we urge you to withdraw from this delegation. We are eager to dialogue and will follow up with your offices in the coming weeks.

Sincerely, The Undersigned Groups


SIGNERS ON THE OPEN LETTER (as of Jan. 10, 2015)

Jewish Voice for Peace - New York
Adalah-NY: The New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel
Direct Action Frontfor Palestine
Queers Against Israeli Apartheid
Jews Say No!
Granny Peace Brigade
CUNY for Palestine
Students for Justice in Palestine Chapters: Hunter, Brooklyn College, Pace, NYU, Columbia, CUNY School of Law, College
of Staten Island, John Jay
CODEPINK NYC
Women in Black Union Square
NYC Solidarity with Palestine
We Are All Dominican
Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism
Librarians and Archivists with Palestine
New Day Church
Existence is Resistance
Queens Families Speak Out
MADRE
Center for Constitutional Rights
Palestine Solidarity Legal Support
Laborfor Palestine
International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network - New York
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)
Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
New York City Labor Against the War
Boricuas for Palestine
People Power Movement
Brooklyn For Peace
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT)
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
VirtualBoricua.org
Trinity Lutheran Church (Brooklyn)
American Muslimsfor Palestine
Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)
Breakaway
National Lawyers Guild, NYC Chapter
North Manhattan Neighbors for Peace
West-Park Presbyterian Church
Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition
International Socialist Organization (ISO)
Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV)/Organizing Asian Communities
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC)
Campaign to End the New Jim Crow-NY
Freedom Road Socialist Organization, NY/NJ District
(continued)St. Michael's Task Force on Israel Palestine
Park Slope Food Coop Members for BDS
Irish Queers
Rising Tide NYC
Critical Resistance, NYC Chapter
YaYa Network
Washington Heights Women In Black
Queens Peace Council
War Resisters League, National Office
Justice Committee

Notes:
1) Ma’an News Agency | maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=751290
2) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs | ochaopt.org/documents/ocha_opt_sitrep_04_09_2014.pdf
3) Washington Post | wapo.st/1uq7cHK
4) British Broadcasting Company - Profile: Gaza Strip | bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-19975211
5) Amnesty International | amnesty.org/en/news/trigger-happy-israeli-army-and-police-use-reckless-force-west-bank-2014-02-27
6) Al Monitor | al-monitor.com/pulse/security/01/09/nypd-kfar-saba-branch-new-york-p.html
7) Al-Akhbar | al-akhbar.com/content/occupation-%E2%80%9Coccupy%E2%80%9D-israelification-american-domestic-security
8) Associated Press | ap.org/Content/AP-In-The-News/2011/With-CIA-help-NYPD-moves-covertly-in-Muslim-areas
9) BDS National Committee | bdsmovement.net/call

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Honduran queer event organizers call out LGBT Center's racism

QAIA was just forwarded this letter from NYC queer organizers working in support of Honduran queers. Go, sisters!

The Center's claim that it's "open" break down as the community excluded gets broader and broader. The Center has flatly ignored critiques about its racism, refusing to be accountable to its community, or to present any response at all. This event (on 2/12) will be held instead at the Venezuelan Consulate -- click on the image for details.

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Dear Ms. Testone:

This Tuesday, February 12, Pepe Palacios, a leader of the LGBT community in Honduras, will be in New York City to speak as part of a national tour organized by the Honduras Solidarity Network. He will report on the brutal repression against the LGBT community by the illegal coup government, and also about the heroic resistance of the Honduran people. We hope that Pepe's appearance here will raise awareness of the struggle in Honduras for democratic rights and against the U.S.-backed coup regime. We especially hope to win supporters for that struggle among the LGBT community here.

The LGBT Center would have been a natural home for this event. However, during the planning process, we heard about the Center's history for the past two years of denying meeting space to Queers Against Israeli Apartheid and other groups that support the Palestinian people in their struggle against occupation. We were disappointed to learn that the Center, which for so long had been a welcoming locus for the diverse LGBT community, now bars certain parts of the community. This ban on pro-Palestinian groups and individuals amounts to a racist affront to the Palestinian, Arab and in fact all communities of color.

In the light of this terrible, shameful policy on your part, we could not in good conscience hold our event in the Center. And so a representative of the Honduran LGBT community will speak not at the purported center of New York's LGBT community, but rather is being welcomed at the Venezuelan Consulate.

We wanted you to know this, to know that as a consequence of your reactionary ban against QAIA and its chilling effect on LGBT communities of color, New Yorkers will go elsewhere to hear the words of a brave, heroic Honduran gay leader. We expect to have a great, stirring, well-attended meeting. But not on 13th Street. Not while those who support our Palestinian sisters and brothers are barred from your premises.

Teresa Gutierrez
Teresa Gutierrez
International Action Center

Lucy Pagoada-Quesada
Lucy Pagoada-Quesada
Honduras/USA Resistencia

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QAIA reportback from Brooklyn College

From Brad Taylor

Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti’s presentation at Brooklyn College on Thurs. night (Feb. 7) lived up to all the incredible hype that preceded it.  They were informative, engaging, appealing, constructive – as much as their full-capacity audience wanted and expected.  They were sometimes funny – Judith paused wryly in her remarks about hearing and listening, allowing the sound of the anti-BDS crowd chanting outside to punctuate her comments.

Both speakers mentioned the barrage of scurrilous charges of anti-Semitism, threats of funding attacks on Brooklyn College from public officials – the panoply of false accusations, character assassination and assaults on their intent and dignity - that they suffered in the lead-up to Thursday’s event.   And both were visibly tired and saddened by the pitch and timbre of the unfriendly and unsavory reception that some in New York had in store for them.   But, undaunted, they elucidated the objectives and strategies of the BDS movement, backgrounded the current moment in the campaign, and noted numerous very substantial recent successes of the boycott - among those, the recent endorsement of BDS from the African National Congress, a landmark development.

One thing about the evening’s discussion that I found particularly notable was the grace and generosity with which both Barghouti and Butler received questions from the audience members which were designed to challenge the strategic fairness or effectiveness of BDS.  These questions required tenacity of the questioners in the decidedly pro-BDS surround – and they were sometimes questions which were so blank, so generic that they were actually somewhat inappropriate in the setting.  Like one gentleman asked, essentially, what was the point of BDS? – when that had been the whole substance of the conversation which had been going on for two hours when he asked the question.  Omar and Judith fielded every question with respect, with generosity, and found a way to answer each one much more substantively than many would have felt that the questions merited. 

That’s, I think, the hallmark of a good spokesperson – the ability to cover a concept inclusively, in a way that belittles no-one and avoids the censorship and malice that, unfortunately, the speakers themselves encountered in Brooklyn.

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