Friday, 21 October
7:30 pm
International Zentrum B5
Brigittenstrasse 5, St. Pauli
Hamburg, Germany
Secours Rouge International is organizing a meeting in solidarity with Georges Ibrahim Abdallah together with the League Against Imperialist Aggression on 21 October, part of the International Week of Action to Free Georges Abdallah.
Friday, 21 October
8:30 pm
Cinema Utopia
5 Place Camille Jullian
Bordeaux, France
Evening of solidarity with Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. Projection of the film Stop the Wall: 709 Kilometers of Wall, with a talk with Julien Salingue, political scientist. Organized by the Collective for the Liberation of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah.
Thursday, 13 October
5:30 pm
Aula Magna Scienze Politiche
Viale Sant’ignazio 78
Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/620336304816023/
Administrative detention is a procedure used by the Israeli occupation army in order to imprison Palestinians for an indefinite period of time, without any formal accusation, disclosure of charges, or trial. The Israeli army detains Palestinians under administrative detention for periods of up to six months, indefinitely renewable. There are today 7000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails; 700 of them are held in administrative detention.
Discussion with:
Paola Cuccureddu, Amnesty International
Ugo Giannagelia, School of Human Rights of Como
Lecture by Monica Zuncheddu
Introduction and facilitation:
Francesco Bachis
Organized by the University of Cagliari faculty of economics, law and political science – department of social sciences; Sardinia-Palestine Friendship Association; Amnesty International
Supporters of Palestinian political prisoners rallied Friday, 7 October in New York City outside a Manhattan office of British-Danish security conglomerate G4S, a contractor with the Israeli prison system, before marching through the building’s lobby to demand that Israel release Anas Shadid, Ahmad Abu Fara, and other “administrative detainees” on hunger strike against their indefinite internment without charge or trial, and that the company end its contracts with Israel’s checkpoints, military and security forces, and prisons and detention centers.
The protest was part of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network’s participation in the global campaign for a boycott of G4S. The global campaign highlights the security corporation’s contracts with the Israeli Prison Service, to which it provides security systems, control rooms and equipment, as well as to Israeli checkpoints, police training centers and even the Beit Hanoun/Erez crossing to Gaza, where the siege is enforced. G4S has been criticized not only for human rights violations in Palestine, but also in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, where it participates in migrant detention and deportation and youth incarceration.
The corporation has pledged to sell off its Israeli subsidiary and other “reputationally damaging” businesses, but Palestinian organizations have emphasized the importance of continuing to protest G4S and demand its boycott until it stops profiting from human rights violations, occupation and oppression.
For the next two weeks, Samidoun’s New York City Friday protests will participate in the International Week of Action to Free Georges Ibrahim Abdallah. On Friday, 14 October, protesters will gather at 4 pm at the French mission to the United Nations to demand freedom for Abdallah. Abdallah, a Lebanese Communist struggler who has been imprisoned for 32 years in French prisons, has remained jailed despite being eligible for release since 1999 partially due to the influence of Hillary Clinton and other US officials. Protests will also take place in France, Italy, Germany and other countries to demand Abdallah’s release.
Photos: Joe Catron
Palestinian associations in 1948 Palestine were closed by Israeli police and Shin Bet agents on Thursday, 6 October in a series of raids in Nazareth and Umm al-Fahm. The associations allegedly are linked to the northern Islamic movement, the Palestinian religious and political organization banned nearly a year ago by Israeli officials. The leader of the Islamic Movement is Raed Salah, currently imprisoned and well-known for his advocacy in defense of Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as his participation in the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza.
Palestinian organizations across political lines condemned both the banning of the Islamic Movement and the raids on the community organizations and media institutions. The four Palestinian entities forcibly shuttered on Thursday were the Higher Commission to Support Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa, Q Press in Umm al-Fahm, the Midad Psychometry Institute and Al-Medina newspaper.
The Higher Arab Follow-Up Committee labeled the attacks “a new sign of a systematic scheme to suppress the rights of the Arab community, a repression that applies to all walks of life…We renew our rejection of the decision to ban the activities of the Islamic Movement, and at the same time warn of the danger of the use of the Islamic Movement’s activities as a new pretext to suppress even more freedoms and silence the voice of the Arab people, who are fighting against the Israeli racist policies targeting our presence on our ancestral land.”
The Al-Alam media association denounced the closures and raids on Al-Medina, Q Press and other institutions and the confiscation of their computers, linking the raids to an ongoing escalation against Palestinian organizing in 1948 Palestine, among Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, in particular the campaign of arrests and harassment targeting the National Democratic Assembly (Tajammu’/Balad party).
The Freedoms Commission of the Higher Follow-Up Committee said that “these three institutions, added to the 23 already prohibited, are independent institutions that provide a variety of services for our people…How can an institution like the Midad Psychometry Institute to qualify students for exams, which tutors thousands of secondary school students, contribute to conflicts over Al-Aqsa Mosque? How can the fact that 69 students of the Midad Institute were admitted this year to study medicine in Israeli universities be a cause of conflict over the Al-Aqsa Mosque?” The statement noted the ongoing attacks on the National Democratic Assembly and the investigations targeting Haneen Zoabi and Jamal Zahalka, as well as the 104th demolition of the village of Al-Araqib and the displacement of its people on the same morning of 6 October as reflections of one policy. “This government has declared outright war on the Palestinian people inside, taking advantages of the wars in the region to implement its plans against our people in our homeland, and the Palestinian people in general,” said the statement.
The suppression of Palestinian political activity among the Palestinians of ’48 (who hold Israeli citizenship, and constitute 20% of the population of the Israeli state) is nothing new; in the first 20 years of occupation, from 1948 to 1966, Palestinian citizens lived under martial law which in many ways served as the precursor to the present-day scheme in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Since that time, the banning and violent suppression of Palestinian political activities, as well as the targeting of Palestinian political leaders for arrest and imprisonment, has not ceased. From the Al-Ard movement prohibited in the 1950s, to the Land Day protests against land confiscation met by Israeli fire, to the killing of Palestinians at the launch of the second Intifada – not to mention the imprisonment of prominent Palestinians like Salah, Said Naffaa, Ameer Makhoul and others, and the targeting of cultural workers like Dareen Tatour, the Israeli state has been firmly committed to the suppression of Palestinian existence and political organizing in 1948 Palestine. These acts of political repression accompany ongoing land confiscation, racism and discrimination, defunding of communities and institutions and over 50 racist laws targeting Palestinian existence on their land.
Friday, 14 October
4:00 pm
Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations
245 E. 47th St
New York City
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/576460882541303/
Join in the international week of action on October 15-22 in support of Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, Lebanese Arab struggler for Palestine, imprisoned in French prisons for over 32 years. Georges Abdallah’s case has built significant support in Lebanon and in France, and Palestinian prisoners have highlighted the importance of Abdallah’s case as part of the struggle of the Palestinian political prisoners for freedom and liberation.
Abdallah was sentenced to life imprisonment in France, accused of participating in actions in France targeting U.S. and Israeli interests during the Israeli invasion and occupation of Lebanon. During his arrest and trial, one of his original lawyers was a spy against him, working for French intelligence. He has been eligible for release under parole since 1999. He has been repeatedly refused, and at times when his release to Lebanon has been approved by the French judiciary, the highest forces of the state, including then-Interior Minister Manuel Valls – with the clear involvement of the U.S. government, including the personal intervention of Hillary Clinton – have intervened to keep Georges Ibrahim Abdallah locked up in French prison.
Throughout his time in prison, Georges Ibrahim Abdallah has remained politically active and, indeed, a leader, extending solidarity and full support to struggling prisoners and peoples’ movements around the world. He and fellow prisoners – Basque and Arab, among others – in Lannemezan prison returned their meals in solidarity with Palestinian hunger striker Bilal Kayed, and he has previously participated in hunger strikes in solidarity with Palestinian individual and collective strikes for justice and freedom. He recently expressed his solidarity with Toulouse BDS activists under attack and has constantly remained an active thinker on Arab, Palestinian and international liberation struggles.
He has always refused to in any way capitulate or renounce his political vision and commitment to the Palestinian cause, to the people of Lebanon, and to international struggles for liberation. He remains a committed anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist. In part because of that very refusal, he remains today imprisoned in the French prison of Lannemezan.
The imprisonment of Georges Abdallah comes alongside the persecution and arrest of BDS activists in France for urging the boycott of Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people, ongoing racist targeting of Arab and Muslim communities in France and the “state of emergency” being used to repress popular movements for justice, while the French state promotes itself as a supporter of “peace” in the region while acting directly in support of the Israeli occupation and Zionist colonization.
Dunia Waked, 36, was released from Israeli prison after three and one-half years in early October. Waked, from Tulkarem, was imprisoned on charges of “supporting prohibited organizations” by providing support to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including canteen funds.
In an interview with Asra Media after her release, she spoke about the situation faced by Palestinian women prisoners in Israeli jails. She noted that there is a significant overcrowding within the prisoners’ section and that “people cannot move due to overcrowding,” noting that this causes both physical and psychological distress among the women prisoners. “There are 12 child prisoners who do not know the meaning of prison, who are in a state of complete shock, who do not know the vocabulary of the prisons such as ‘the daily number’ and are subject constantly to the racism of the prison administration,” Waked said. She noted that the situation is worsened by the separation of the child prisoners from the adult prisoners, noting that “we could hear the crying of the minor prisoners behind their doors, missing their families,” and noted that some of the prisoners have severe injuries that remain unhealed.
She also addressed the situation of the “Bosta,” the metal van in which Palestinian prisoners are transported while shackled, often in intense heat or cold. She noted that “the journey can begin at 1 a.m. and end at 10 p.m. and during this harsh journey you are subject to ongoing harassment.” She noted that the Bosta is a joint transport that includes both Palestinian political or “security” prisoners and Israeli “criminal prisoners” and that there are clashes among prisoners inside the Bosta.
She highlighted the case of Israa Jaabes, 31, noting her severe injuries that continue to this day, among the 12 women prisoners wounded by Israeli occupation soldiers before their arrest. She noted that “The question of the prisoners is, where is the Palestinian street? The lives of prisoners are at risk. Are people waiting for prisoners to come out like the martyr Yasser Hamdouna came out from prison, and then to be carried on shoulders with posters and slogans? The prisoners are demanding their freedom while they are alive in order to breathe the scent of freedom. The news of the martyrdom of Yasser Hamdouna of Yabad has been a shock to the prisoners. The policy of medical negligence to the wounded prisoners and the prisoners in general is clear. The doctor, medicine, and treatment in general is very difficult and it can take four to five months to receive space in the hospital, without help for their illness.”
Waked added that the women prisoners are also demanding access to gynecological care, noting that the lives of prisoners are at risk due to medical neglect, delay and procrastination. Prisoners are also demanding access to Qur’ans and other books, which are not being allowed entry.
In relation to family visits, she noted that “visits are more harsh for the families than for the prisoners even, and they are treated more like prisoners than the prisoners themselves.” Many times family visits are repeatedly denied again and again, and when the visits occur, family members “are subject to humiliating inspections and must see their imprisoned loved one from behind a glass panel. Everything is made to be harsh and humiliating.”
Waked noted that there is a policy of isolation targeting the prisoners. “Isolation is the basis of operations of the prison administration. During the three and a half years I was allowed to send two letters only. The prison acts to prevent prisoners from receiving and sending letters at the hands of racist prison officers.”
She called for mobilization of lawyers to defend the prisoners, especially the child prisoners and the prisoners receiving lengthy sentences of years. She noted that there is a 13-year-old prisoner serving a 3 year sentence, that Amal Taqatqa has been sentenced to 7 yeaars, and Israa Jaabes is facing sentencing while seriously injured.
Palestinian young woman Shifaa Awad Mahmoud Abu Freijeh, 20, from the village of Artas near Bethlehem, was arrested after midnight on Friday, 7 October after 12 hours of interrogation at the Etzion settlement complex. Abu Freijeh was summoned for interrogation at 12:00 noon at the settlement; she was interrogated until midnight and then her family was told she was being detained for undeclared security reasons from two years prior.
Abu Freijeh is among 59 Palestinian women imprisoned in Israeli jails as political prisoners, including 12 girls under 18. The women and girls are held in HaSharon and Damon prisons.
On 19 September, Adila Ibrahim al-Tamari, 51, from Bethlehem, was arested by Israeli occupation forces who invaded the family home in a pre-dawn raid, smashing the family’s belongings. Tamari is the mother of seven children, including three Palestinian prisoners, Shehadeh, serving a 2 1/2 year sentence; Hamza, serving an 18 year sentence; and Ayaatullah, 19, arrested with his mother on 19 September. She is the widow of Mohammed Shehadeh, assassinated by Israeli occupation forces in 2008, in the same assassination that targeted Ahmad al-Balboul, the father of former hunger strikers Mohammed and Mahmoud al-Balboul.
Among the minor girls imprisoned in HaSharon prison is Istabraq Noor, 15, from the village of Madama south of Nablus. Istabraq has been denied family visits and her mother and father have been denied visit permits on the basis of “security”. Her family has received no information about Istabraq’s health or her needs in prison, and her father, Ahmed, is urgently appealing to receive family visits with his daughter. Istabraq was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment and a fine of 3000 NIS (approx. 750 USD); she was shot by Israeli occupation forces on 21 October 2015 and accused of planning to stab occupation settlers. Istabraq was the only person injured; her right hand was severely injured and has required several operations.
Another child prisoner, Malaak Hamad Yousef Salman, 16, from the village of Beit Safafa near Jerusalem, had her trial continued for the sixth time, until 16 November 2016. She was arrested on 9 February by occupation forces and accused of having a knife in order to stab an occupation soldier in Jerusalem.
The trial of Israa Jaabes, 31, of Jerusalem, was once again continued until 3 November. Jaabes was arrested while severely burned on 11 October 2015 after a gas cylinder used for cooking stoves exploded inside her car; Israeli occupation forces opened fire on her car. She spent three months in hospital and was transfered to HaSharon prison despite her ongoing severe injuries and the amputation of eight of her fingers. Her trial has been extended nine times.
After seven months in Israeli prison, Salsabil Shalaldeh, 21, a student at the Palestine Polytechnic University was released, as was Raghad Khaddour, 18, imprisoned for two weeks after Israeli occupation soldiers shot and killed her fiance as the two were driving.
Amal Taqatqa, 21, of Beit Fajar, was sentenced on 21 September to seven years in Israeli prison; she has been imprisoned since 2014 and accused of attempting to stab an Israeli occupation settler at a bus stop.
Other Palestinian women, such as Sahar Natsheh, are held under “house arrest,” forbidden from using social media, internet access or using the phone. Natsheh, one of the “Marabitoun” who defend Al-Aqsa Mosque, is accused of “incitement” via social media. She was arrested in Jerusalem on 20 March and two days later, Israeli occupation forces raided her home in Beit Hanina, ransacking it and confiscating her computers. Natsheh’s arrest was continued until 1 November on 26 September.
Perhaps the best-known Palestinian held under house arrest currently is poet Dareen Tatour, whose case has been continued until November even as international poets, writers and artists around the world are escalating calls for her freedom.
The following letter was written by the wounded Palestinian teen, Natalie Shokha, to her family and community. Natalie, 15, is imprisoned in HaSharon prison alongside 11 other minor Palestinian girls.
Natalie, from the village of Rammun near Ramallah, was shot by Israeli occupation soldiers on 28 April, with a live bullet in her back and chest. She was arrested along with another minor Palestinian girl, Tasneem Halabi, near the village of Beit Ur west of Ramallah. Natalie and Tasneem were accused of seeking to stab Israeli occupation soldiers. Tasneem marked her 15th birthday inside HaSharon Prison just two weeks ago.
Natalie’s letter, which highlights the role of the older Palestinian women prisoners in organizing the life of Palestinians inside Israeli prisons (creating a magazine and a cultural committee) as well as the sisterhood between the imprisoned young girls (referred to here as zahrat, “flowers”), follows:
My greetings to all of the generous people of my beloved village, Rammun. My greetings to the council of the village and to everyone who supports its development.
Mother, I am in now in prison a member of the cultural committee. I have also become a member of the magazine. I discuss novels and I am the fourth in reading. 🙁 Thank God at any rate.
Mom, Dad, everyone here is proud of your raising of me. Have your head held high. And I am living in the room with six other girls. We are the twelve flowers (security prisoners who are minor girls). We live together through bad and good times. Mom, please say hello to all and tell them I miss them so much and that I am sorry if I forgot anyone. May God bring us together, united, soon. God, bring us freedom now!
They will not imprison the scent of jasmine in a flower!
The prisoner Natalie Shokha
HaSharon Prison
Division 14
Natalie and Tasneem are among 59 Palestinian women political prisoners in Israeli jails, and over 350 Palestinian children imprisoned by the Israeli occupation.
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network expresses its strong support for Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, targeted in a harassment and intimidation campaign by the far-right Zionist organizations Campus Watch, AMCHA Initiative and Middle East Forum.
As an active Palestinian academic, a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, and the director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) program at San Francisco State University (SFSU), Dr. Abdulhadi has repeatedly been targeted in campaigns by Zionist organizations seeking to silence her scholarship on Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities.
Her most recent accomplishment in leading the process that led to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between SFSU and An-Najah University in her Palestinian hometown of Nablus has been at the center of the latest attacks.
This campaign aims to both silence the activity and scholarship of a prominent Palestinian professor – who also serves as faculty mentor to the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at SFSU – and to further criminalize Palestinian students, education, politics and society within the US academy and internationally. Thus, the campaign relies on the demonization of Palestinian student political activity in support of Palestinian political organizations working for the liberation of their homeland.
Just as Palestinian students face a constant threat of arrest and imprisonment for involvement with student union activities and student protests, the Zionist campaign against Dr. Abdulhadi and the SFSU/An-Najah Memorandum of Understanding attempts to criminalize Palestinian student political activity as a mechanism to break the bridges between U.S. and Palestinian campuses built by the work of scholars and activists.
The attempts to demonize An-Najah students by Zionist groups working to break the academic partnership and target Palestinian academics in the United States operate hand in hand with the violent military raids and pre-dawn arrests against Palestinian student activists at An-Najah and universities throughout occupied Palestine. Within Israeli prisons are hundreds and thousands of Palestinian prisoners whose education has been denied or delayed due to occupation forces’ arrests and repression.
Rather than an “investigation” of the partnership with An-Najah and of the scholars who have forged that partnership, what is needed are escalating partnerships between international and Palestinian campuses that break the Zionist colonial attempts to besiege and isolate Palestinian students under occupation, and, simultaneously and urgently, the implementation of the academic boycott of Israeli universities, which as institutions are fully complicit in the violent, settler colonial occupation project.
Further, we note that this attack comes amid multiple attempts to criminalize and marginalize activists for Palestine and Palestinian scholars and activists within the United States, from state surveillance and infiltration by police departments and the FBI, to the promotion of anti-BDS legislation, to the use of websites like “Canary Mission” that attempt to use economic pressure against students by threatening their jobs and livelihoods in order to suppress Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and solidarity organizing on campuses. These actions are part and parcel of the project of criminalization and “terror” labeling promoted by the occupation state and its strategic partner in the United States. On the SFSU campus, GUPS itself has endured extensive attacks, often promoted by outside Zionist groups against student activism on campus.
Samidoun expresses its solidarity with Professor Abdulhadi and its full support for the MOU between SFSU and An-Najah. We also reprint the statement of the Anti-Prison, Labor and Academic Delegation to Palestine below, with our full support.
Dr. Abdulhadi and her colleagues on the delegation held a joint event with ex-prisoners and scholars at An-Najah University that highlights the value and importance of building such bridges.
To sign on in solidarity, please Sign Here: http://bit.ly/2dtPmzP
Open Letter to San Francisco State University President Leslie Wong by the Prisoner, Labor and Academic Delegation to Palestine
Uphold the MOU with An-Najah University and Support Professor Abdulhadi!
Join us in signing on to the letter and email SFSU President Wong Here: http://bit.ly/2dtPmzP
Members of the Delegation with faculty and students from An-Najah University.
In March 2016, nineteen of us were part of a multi-racial, multi-generational Prisoner, Labor and Academic Solidarity delegation to Palestine convened by Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, a professor at San Francisco State University. A highlight of our trip was a conference we participated in at An-Najah University in Nablus in the Palestinian West Bank. Faculty and students from An-Najah and members of our delegation shared presentations about the marginalized histories of colonial repression, racism and resistance in Palestine and the U.S. A dynamic discussion ensued, laying the basis for future academic cooperation and public engagement. For us it was an exciting model of what international academic exchange between activist scholars should be.
The conference at An-Najah was facilitated by a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which was established between San Francisco State University and An-Najah in 2014. The agreement was initiated by Dr. Abdulhadi, who grew up in Nablus, and it grew out of her close ties to both academic institutions. The purpose of the agreement was to encourage exchange and partnership between the universities and with the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies program, an important part of the College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU.
We were very disturbed to learn at the beginning of September that an online petition had been launched by the Middle East Forum, a neo-conservative, pro-Israel group led by Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, named as leading Islamophobes by the Southern Law Poverty Center, calling on San Francisco State University President, Leslie Wong, to terminate the MOU with An-Najah. The petition accuses An-Najah of “incitement to violence, anti-Semitism and the glorification of terrorism.” It cites the opinions of other discredited Zionist organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as sources for these inflammatory allegations. The vilification of An-Najah, which is consistently ranked as a leading academic institution in the Arab world, is accompanied by an attack on Dr. Abdulhadi who is condemned for initiating the MOU and for her “record as an anti-Israel activist.” Some of the examples given include her role as a founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and her service as faculty advisor for SFSU’s General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS).
Unfortunately, the petition is not an isolated diatribe but part and parcel of an escalating backlash by pro-Israeli, Zionist organizations to undermine support for Palestine which has been gaining momentum on college campuses across the United States over the past ten years, catalyzed by the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The 2015 report, “The Palestine Exception to Free Speech” by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal explains how pro-Israel groups “leverage their significant resources and lobbying power to pressure universities, government actors, and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy in support of Palestinian rights.”
Multiple forms of pressure have been employed including the creation of an online hit list by the Canary Mission, a Zionist campus watch group explicitly founded to harass and target students and faculty active in the BDS movement. Dr. Abdulhadi as well as various SFSU GUPS student members are listed on this website in an attempt to derail their academic careers and invite attacks against them. Another significant pressure point is the spread of McCarthyite anti-BDS legislation which criminalizes businesses, organizations and individuals who participate in boycotts of Israel. Eleven states have passed such laws and dozens more, including California, are considering them. In June 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order against boycott and divestment.
At the same time, a recent wave of Israeli raids and arrests in Palestine at the end of July have targeted An-Najah students and students in other Palestinian universities. Since it is illegal for Palestinian students to organize protests on campuses, and campus political organizations are banned, there is a constant pretext for the Israeli military occupation to arrest students arbitrarily. The suppression and increasing criminalization of free speech about Palestine on U.S. campuses represent a move in the same direction.
Recently the AMCHA Initiative, another Zionist campus-focused group, launched a campaign to cancel a course, “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” at UC Berkeley. The effort was defeated due to widespread University and public pressure. A number of our Palestine Delegation members live in the San Francisco Bay Area and we expect SFSU to also uphold its commitment to academic freedom and social justice, values that are prioritized by our communities.
We are encouraged by a statement that SFSU’s associate vice president of strategic communications, J. Elizabeth Smith, made to CBS San Francisco defending the right of SF State faculty to partner with An-Najah. “The university supports the academic freedom of its faculty. Partnerships are initiated by faculty members based on their own academic interests, either for their own particular scholarly pursuits or to advance learning opportunities for their students.” We encourage President Wong to publicly reaffirm this commitment as well.
In the face of the bigoted attacks on the MOU between San Francisco State University and An-Najah University in the Palestine West Bank and on Professor Abdulhadi, a leading Palestinian scholar, we the undersigned Delegation members and other concerned academics, students and community members, call upon President Wong of SFSU to:
Signed by the members of the 2016 Prisoner, Labor and Academic Solidarity Delegation to Palestine:
*All institutional and organizational affiliations are for identification purposes only
