Say no to the Wall

Students vote overwhelmingly to denounce Israel's building of the Apartheid separation wall

LONDON - Saifedean Ammous

December 2003

The students of the London School of Economics (LSE) voted in an overwhelming majority to condemn the building of Israel's so- called security fence and demand its immediate dismantlement.

 The motion was proposed by the Friends of Palestine Society (FoP) in the Union General Meeting (UGM), a weekly meeting that all students from the university are invited to attend to set Student Union (SU) policies and evaluate the work of student officers.

The contentious issue had sparked unprecedented debate on campus and attracted an over-capacity crowd to the Old Theatre, eventually forcing Student Union officials to set up a video link with the New Theatre so that everyone could attend and would have the chance to vote.

 In the week of presenting this motion, the FoP had set up a stall on campus, distributing leaflets, talking to students, raising awareness and urging people to come to vote.

This was the center of some heated exchanges at times, as less than happy Israeli students often came to these stalls and got embroiled in arguments with their Palestinian counterparts.

It has to be noted, however, that the Friends of Palestine behaved impeccably, they refused to be dragged into demeaning arguments or insults and kept a cool head.

The same could not be said about the opposition to the motion. Israeli and Jewish societies could not adopt an official stance on the issue, since many of their members supported the motion (one of them, Muriel Kahane, who is also a member of Friends of Palestine, was actually the first speaker for it).

Meanwhile, some members from both the Jewish and Israeli Societies behaved in a less than ideal manner.

“They were tearing down and defacing our posters, verbally attacking our members and continuously harassing Muriel Kahane,” Omar Srouji, from FoP, told Alternative.

In the UGM, Kahane spoke about the injustice this wall would enforce upon millions of Palestinians, and emphasized that it would fail in bringing peace.

In reply, the first speaker against the motion was Daniel Friedman, head of the Jewish Society.

Friedman claimed that Jewish and Israeli students felt disturbed by the anti-Semitism on campus, and that such a motion would aggravate anti-Semitism. He also said that in a few days, the anniversary of Remembrance Day falls, in memory of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. “It would be inappropriate to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust for this motion to pass.”

 Friedman's speech did not go down as well as Kahane's with the previously impartial crowd. When the second speaker for the motion, South African Paul Kirby answered Friedman, it was obvious the crowd was won in favor of the motion.

 Kirby insisted the motion was not anti-Semitic. He berated Friedman for giving it this context, and emphasized that it was a humanitarian motion aimed against a state policy that is not conducive to peace. After tumultuous applause to Kirby, the final speaker got up to attack the motion.

 Alikhan Velshi, a British student from the Conservative Party said that as a Muslim, he thinks the Wall was a great idea, since it will limit the bloodshed, and create a better atmosphere for peace. His speech went down very badly with the crowd who hissed and booed him.

 The floor was then given for discussion, in which the opponents of the wall did themselves little favor by continuously being embarrassed by the questions of the crowd, while Kirby and Kahane were able to answer emphatically well.

 The audience then motioned the chairman of the session to move to a vote, in which around 80 percent of the crowd voted to support the motion and condemn Israel's government for its policy.

Under the terms of this motion, the LSE SU will write a letter outlining its position to the Israeli and British governments, as well as the media and the International Solidarity Movement.

 After the motion, FoP were delighted and made a point of going to their Israeli counterparts to shake hands and emphasize that this motion was not aimed at them personally nor at alienating them on campus.

The reaction Palestinians felt was not ideal though. One Palestinian student said: “I wanted to make sure that we are not seen as fostering a hatred for Jewish or Israeli  students, so I went to shake hands with them, unfortunately, some of them  refused my handshake and stormed off."

A Jewish-American student expressed his dismay at the way Friedman outlined his defense of the wall. He told Alternative: “I have so many relatives who perished in the Holocaust, for him to use their tragedy to justify the building of this criminal wall was the biggest insult to their memory. This Israeli propaganda trick to use the Holocaust to justify anything Israel does is not working anymore.”

The motion was part of a world movement, especially among youth and in universities, that denounced the wall. World opposition did not stop Israel from building the wall.