An Ill Wind From Berkeley
Conference aims to force universities to divest from Israel
Several hundred pro-Palestinian students and activists from across the country converged on the University of California at Berkeley this February. They came to attend the three-day “National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement,” organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a Berkeley-based activist group.
In the past year and a half SJP organized several high-profile actions at UC Berkeley including a mock refugee camp, a mock Israeli army checkpoint, and a campus building occupation last April that ended with the arrest of 32 protestors. SJP hopes to force the University of California to divest from companies that do business with Israel. Its effort is modeled after the student anti-apartheid campaigns in the 1980s to force colleges and universities to stop investing in companies that did business with South Africa.
The February conference–which was initially scheduled for the fall, but was postponed after September 11–aimed to take SJP’s divestment campaign national. Conference co-sponsors included the International Socialist Organization, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Jews for a Free Palestine, the Muslim Students Association, and Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT), among other groups.
Yitzchak Santis, Middle East affairs director for the local Jewish Community Relations Council, attended a conference session and told the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California that one speaker who stated his opposition to negotiations with Zionists and a two-state solution was cheered. “Clearly this is not the language of dialogue and peaceful co-existence,” said Santis. “This is the language of hate and rejection. They are talking, bottom-line, about the destruction of Israel. The conference is anti-peace, rejectionist, pro-war and, ultimately, hypocritical.”
The conference eventually adopted resolutions condemning “the racism and discrimination inherent in Zionism” and demanding “the end of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank including East Jerusalem, and all Arab lands” and “the recognition and implementation of the right of return and repatriation for all Palestinian refugees to their original homes and properties.” The conference also declared its “solidarity with the popular Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid,” and stated that as “a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation” (i.e. there were no resolutions passed condemning Palestinian suicide bombings, etc.).
The conference decided to endorse a national day of action on April 9 to call for universities to divest from Israel, send an international delegation of students and others this summer to serve as “an observer and protector force for the Palestinians,” and convene regional conferences in late September to advance the divestment campaign.
But Israel wasn’t the only target of the conference participants’ ire. The conference also adopted a resolution that stated: “The liberation of Palestine is inextricably linked to the larger struggle for global justice and an end to the U.S. ‘war on terror’ and U.S. imperialism.”
Holy Sex!
A priest, a rabbi, and a minister get intimate
Father Gary Braun may be a celibate Catholic priest, but he has a lot of advice to share on love and sex. Along with Rabbi Hyim Shafner, Minister Mike Kinman, and Washington University sophomore Allison Small, Braum hosts Missionary Positions, a call-in talk show on campus television in which the clergymen and Small answer students’ most intimate questions.
Shafner, the Orthodox campus rabbi of St. Louis Hillel, came up with the idea for the show when watching the MTV show Loveline. He told the Riverfront Times that Missionary Positions tries to open a new source of dialogue on relationship issues. “Our goal has always been to sanctify this, to bring morality and holiness into general sexual conversation out there,” he said. “We are not preaching. We are meeting people where they are at.”
The clergymen certainly don’t seem to avoid topics for religious reasons. Past episodes have touched on rough sex, bondage, crushes on R.A.s, and homosexuality. “People think it is just bizarre that a priest, a rabbi and a minister are talking about this, but why not?” Kinman told the Riverfront Times. “This is holy stuff.”
