2013 Accomplishments: Advocating for Activists Who Advocate for Palestine

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Support our work to advance the rights of Palestinian rights advocates!

Palestine Solidarity Legal Support (PSLS) was launched in early 2013 to provide an unprecedented, organized legal response to increasing threats against activism for Palestinian rights in the United States.

As the movement for freedom and justice in Palestine grows, we have documented an escalation of legal bullying tactics. These aim to silence the dedicated activists who are challenging political orthodoxies about Israel/Palestine in this country, exposing the depth of human rights violations against Palestinians, and taking bold action to slowly but surely change the stalled discourse in this country. We have their backs.

In 2013 alone, we:

• Responded to over 100 cases of legal and other intimidation against Palestinian rights activists.

• Conducted two-dozen workshops and presentations for activist and legal audiences.

• Produced a comprehensive Know Your Rights Legal Guide with information on legal issues activists might confront, and distributed it to over 1000 activists nationwide.

• Grew and coordinated a national network of legal professionals and activists to stand up for the right to speak out for Palestinian human rights!

Our work includes responding to requests for advice, referrals, representation and advocacy support; tracking incidents of repression; and providing resources to activists that will empower them to understand and deal with potential legal issues.

Case Highlights

We defended the rights of Palestine activists through intensive First Amendment advocacy in a number of compelling cases of repression.

Here are some examples that illustrate the pressure that Palestinian rights activists have faced this year, and how PSLS was able to make a difference.

• We helped win the landmark dismissal in August 2013 of complaints before the Department of Education against three University of California campuses falsely alleging that Palestinian rights activism on campus created a hostile environment for Jewish supporters of Israel. The complaints targeted film screenings, lectures, mock checkpoints, and protests of Israel’s assaults on Gaza. The dismissals make clear that these activities are in fact protected political expression. After years of uncertainty regarding the status of the complaints, UC students report they now feel a renewed sense of security engaging in campus advocacy.

• In February 2013, students at Brooklyn College faced legal threats for organizing an event discussing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Israel advocates and NYC politicians launched a campaign calling on Brooklyn College to cancel the event, even threatening to withdraw funding from the school. We urged the college to respect academic freedom and warned NYC City Council Members that threats to funding were inappropriate. We also represented students who had come under investigation by the university after the event. With our help, they were cleared of any wrongdoing.

• In the spring of 2013, a Palestinian student at Claremont Colleges in southern California was called a “cockroach” by a professor during a mock Israeli checkpoint demonstration. We supported the student in reporting the incident. When the student was then investigated for alleged violations of the demonstrations policy, we advocated on his behalf until he was exonerated.

• In the fall of 2013, Rutgers University student group was accused of bias against Jewish students after distributing mock eviction notices to raise awareness about Palestinian home demolitions. We successfully advocated for the dismissal of the baseless charges. We continue to advise and support students as they plan similar awareness campaigns.

• A California State University Professor has been repeatedly accused of wrongdoing for expressing his political views on his university website. We advocated on his behalf and urged University Trustees to reject baseless charges against him, as the State Attorney General had already done. We are standing up for academics around the country who are being attacked for expressing support for Palestinian rights.

• In October, 2013, we filed a brief with the Center for Constitutional Rights in support of the appeal of the “Irvine 11” case, challenging the criminal conviction of students who were criminally prosecuted for protesting Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren.

• In one of the most egregious campus cases of the year, students from Florida Atlantic University were charged with conduct violations for engaging in a brief walkout and protest of an Israeli soldier’s speaking event. This was after over a year of intense pressure by outside Israel advocacy groups (including the Anti-Defamation League and others) on the school to punish the students for their speech activities. The students were pressured into signing agreements that prohibit them from holding leadership positions in student organizations and required mandatory attendance at an Anti-Defamation League-sponsored “diversity” training. We advocated their cause with the University, and continue to advise the students on navigating a hostile political and legal climate and ongoing discriminatory treatment.

• PSLS spoke out, with dozens of other organizations, against the arrest and indictment of a Palestinian-American community leader in Chicago in October, 2013. Rasmea Odeh, a 65 year old woman that has received awards for her work with Arab-American women in Chicago for a decade, was charged with allegedly not indicating in her naturalization application 20 years ago that she was convicted by an Israeli military court and imprisoned for 10 years, during which time she was tortured. Her indictment follows the 2010 Grand Jury subpoenas and FBI raids against 23 anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists in the Midwest, including Rasmea’s colleague at the Arab-American Action Network in Chicago. PSLS continues to work with the community to respond to this political indictment of an important community leader.

PSLS is an independent project of the Tides Center, built in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and working closely with the National Lawyers Guild and a number of other organizations and individuals.  We have worked tirelessly with our partners to respond to the needs of Palestinian rights activists under attack for speaking out.  We need your help to sustain this work!

Please support us today, so we can continue to protect the rights of activists who are growing the Palestine solidarity movement in the US.

PSLS advises American Studies Association that boycott is protected First Amendment activity

The National Council of the American Studies Association (ASA) voted unanimously to endorse academic boycott of Israel and on December 16th the ASA announced the full membership voted to approve the resolution by a two to one margin: "The Council voted for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions as an ethical stance, a form of material and symbolic action. It represents a principle of solidarity with scholars and students deprived of their academic freedom and an aspiration to enlarge that freedom for all, including Palestinians."

Palestine Solidarity Legal Support advised the ASA National Council that the legal threats are baseless.  The academic boycott, like other boycotts for human rights, is not illegal under any federal or state law, but is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Such frivolous legal threats are a primary tactic in the repression of Palestinian human rights activism, which PSLS formed in response to.

Many have written about the historic nature of the ASA debate, and the powerful breaking of taboo on the subject (see pieces by ASA members Alex Lubin and David Lloyd, and by Judith Butler in The Nation),  the outpouring of anti-colonial and anti-racist solidarity voiced during the debate, and the personal risks academics take when they publicly speak in favor of boycott (see piece by ASA member and Palestinian-American scholar Noura Erakat). And as noted in the New York Times, this is "the largest academic group in the United States to back a growing movement to isolate Israel over its treatment of Palestinians."

The opposition's reliance on legal bullying is predictable.  Alan Dershowitz, in an open letter threatening ASA members said "a vote for a boycott will expose you and your association both for legal and academic consequences."

Unfortunately, legal arguments are a necessary response to legal bullying.  But more to the point than any legal argument is this response from David Lloyd, Distinguished Professor of English at University of California, Riverside:

By and large, Zionists have refused to debate and have ceded that ground to their opponents. Instead, they rely increasingly on other means, predominantly legal and institutional harassment, to close down debate, force student senates to rescind democratically approved divestment resolutions, or punish students and academics for criticizing Israel.

There is no doubt that Zionist organizations have great power and the material resources to enable them to engage in a forceful assault on the American Studies Association.

But in the intellectual world, the resort to force is not a position of strength. Saturday evening at the ASA showed the power of reasoned, moral argument. And there is no going back from that. In the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people, a turning point has been achieved.

Honoring Mandela, PSLS is proud to provide legal support to growing BDS movement

Reflecting on the meaning of Nelson Mandela's legacy, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support redoubles our commitment to providing legal advocacy to the growing Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States.  

We are honored to support those who actively work to end the system of "pass laws", "bantustans", and legally enshrined inequalities that Palestinians face daily, comparable to the system of oppression that Mandela fought against in Apartheid South Africa. 

A leader of the current student movement for Palestinian rights, 

Rahim Kurwa, said it best: "Honor Mandela by viewing Palestine with the same moral clarity as apartheid South Africa".

 Rahim's piece explains how today's divestment campaigns on US campuses continue the legacy of the divestment struggle to end apartheid South Africa.  PSLS is proud to provide legal backup to the boycott and divestment movement, and considers Mandela's legacy and the anti-Apartheid struggle around the world as a beacon for all working for freedom and justice in Israel/ Palestine. 

apartheid graphic

December 9, 2013, By Rahim Kurwa, active member of Students for Justice in Palestine and currently a graduate student in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles.

In today’s edition of the Daily Bruin you can read wonderful interviewswith Professors at UCLA who were a part of the 1970s and 1980s struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Apartheid is the term coined by whites in that country to refer to a political system in which whites systematically dominated the native black population - using a comprehensive set of separate laws to keep the black population unfree and unequal. The paper also includes a warm essay by Eitan Arom reflecting on the University of California’s relationship to Mandela, how he and Winnie Mandela were seen as inspirational figures, how the anti-apartheid movement helped UCLA discover its "moral center," and how the fight for South African liberation awakened a sense of internationalism among UCLA students.

Arom’s essay includes a prayer that "we can only hope to see with the same moral clarity as [Mandela] did, or at least for leaders like him to open our eyes when we don’t."

Today, however, we have an opportunity to put the lessons of Mandela and South Africa into practice by looking at the question of Palestine with the same moral clarity.

In 1974 there were pass laws that restricted where blacks could travel within their country. Students protested Polaroid, the company that supplied the film to create the pass-books that repressed millions on the basis of their skin color. Today, Hewlett Packard operates an analogous system in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, providing the biometric identification systems used to restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians in their own country.

In 1974, there was a network of blacks-only areas, known as “bantustans,” outside of which blacks were not allowed to go. These bantustans were turned into independent black mini-states, cut off from each other and denied access to the resources of the South African state. Today, the West Bank is carved up into much the same network of isolated islands, cut off from water resources, fertile lands, and each other. Those islands are surrounded by a system of segregated roads and a network of checkpoints and walls (that we are invested in) that attempt to make their isolation permanent. Comparing the Palestinian territories in the West Bank to the bantustans from South Africa’s past, South Africa’s International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said ”the last time I saw a map of Palestine, I couldn’t go to sleep…It is just dots, smaller than those of the homelands, and that broke my heart.”

Bantustans in South Africa

The West Bank’s Palestinian areas:

In 1974, blacks in South Africa were systematically denied the right to education, the right to vote, the right to a fair judicial process. Today Palestinians yearn for the same basic equalities.

In 1974, the University of California was invested in many American corporations that did business with and propped up the apartheid system. These companies were happy to sell the apartheid government whatever it wanted, at a steep price, and the University of California invested in those companies because it knew it could get a high return on its investment.

Students at the University of California, led by figures such as Tim Ngubeni, Sam Law, Pedro Nogueira, and hundreds of other women and men whose names have fallen from the historical record, recognized their complicity in this oppressive system. They understood that it was their obligation to stop the University of California from investing in American companies that supported apartheid. From approximately 1974 to 1986, they organized to force the UC Regents to divest from South Africa. It required no small measure of moral clarity to work day after day to achieve something that was not promised, and for a long time never seemed likely to happen.

As we mark the death of Nelson Mandela and think about his legacy here at UCLA, we must recognize that 1974 and 2014 are not so different. Today we are investing in a very similar kind of apartheid. A new set of corporations are providing the goods and services that are required in order to deny Palestinians the same basic freedoms that blacks in South Africa were denied for so long. And a new set of students are joining the divestment movement across the state. If Mandela’s legacy lives on, it must be in our constant effort to understand our relationship to systems of oppression. It must be in our struggle for divestment from oppressive systems like the prison industrial complex in our own country and the apartheid system operating in Palestine today.

It should come as no surprise that there is a long history of South African solidarity with the Palestinian people, who like black South Africans are jailed, beaten, and killed while struggling for their own freedom. Nelson Mandela expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian struggle in simple but compelling terms. Today, Desmond Tutu actively supports the divestment campaigns of SJPs at the University of California, and Ahmed Kathrada, who spent 26 years in prison alongside Mandela, works to free Palestinian prisoners subjected to conditions he, Mandela, and many others once faced.

In the same interview in which she compared the situation in Palestine to her country’s own past, Nkoana-Mashabane declared that "the struggle of the people of Palestine is our struggle." Today we must join her in solidarity with the Palestinian people, or else bury the legacy of Nelson Mandela.

PSLS presentation on repression of student activism at US Human Rights Network conference in Atlanta- December 8

On Sunday, December 8, 2013, Dima Khalidi, Director of Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, presented during the "Emerging Issues" portion of the US Human Rights Network's annual conference in Atlanta, Georgia.  The presentation, entitled: Repression of Student Activism for Palestinian Human Rights – An Emerging Battle over Free Speech on Campus, highlighted the kind of backlash students advocating for Palestinian rights have been facing on their campuses, from criminal prosecutions for speech activities, to disciplinary sanctions, to smear and intimidation campaigns, to surveillance and infiltration.  Read more here.

Action Items to support Palestinian American activist Rasmea Odeh

Rasmea Odeh, a 65 year old Palestinian American active in Chicago's Palestinian community, plead not-guilty at her arraignment on immigration fraud charges on November 13, 2013 in a Detroit federal court.  No date has been set for the next status hearing or for the trial.  Please continue to show your support for Rasmea by taking these Action Steps: 1) Sign the petition to drop the charges against Rasmea: http://www.iacenter.org/rasmeaodehpetition/

2) Call and send photos of support for Rasmea!

3) Join the Facebook page: Drop The Charges Against Rasmea Now! and Tweet using #justice4rasmea

4) Have your organization sign or write a solidarity statement (email to: stopfbi@gmail.com).  See the PSLS/CCR organizational sign-on statement here.

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AAAN Statement:

October 23, 2013

The Arab American Action Network (AAAN) condemns the politically-motivated  

arrest

 and indictment of Rasmea Yousef Odeh, our beloved Associate Director.  The sixty-five year old was arrested at her home yesterday by agents from the Department of Homeland Security, alleging an immigration violation on a 20-year-old application.  Rasmea, who has made it her life's work to serve and help empower Palestinian and Arab families, is the victim of another witch-hunt by our federal law enforcement agencies, which continue to violate the civil rights of Arabs and Muslims with impunity, particularly those who are critical of U.S. support for Israel's crimes against the Palestinian people.

Rasmea is a leading member of Chicago's Arab and Muslim communities, and her decade of service here has changed the lives of thousands of people, particularly disenfranchised Arab women and their families.  She has been with the AAAN since 2004, and as Associate Director, is responsible for the management of day-to-day operations and the coordination of our Arab Women's Committee, which has a membership of close to 600 and leads our work in the areas of defending civil liberties and immigrant rights.  She is a mentor to hundreds of immigrant women, as well as many members of our staff and board, and is a well-known and respected organizer throughout Chicagoland, the U.S., and the world.

Earlier this year, Rasmea received the 

"Outstanding Community Leader Award"

from the Chicago Cultural Alliance, which described her as a woman who has "dedicated over 40 years of her life to the empowerment of Arab women, first in her homes of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon, where she was an activist and practicing attorney, and then the past 10 years in Chicago."

Rasmea is a community icon who recently completed a Master's degree in Criminal Justice from Governors State University.  She overcame vicious torture by Israeli authorities while imprisoned in Palestine in the 70s, and is a proud reminder of the millions of Palestinians who have not given up organizing for their rights of liberation, equality, and return.

It is appalling that our government is now attempting to imprison her once again.  We condemn this attack on our friend and colleague Rasmea, as well as the broader pattern of persecuting Arabs and Muslims who are outstanding and outspoken leaders in their communities in the U.S.

Rasmea's attorneys have requested a continuance of her next hearing, originally scheduled for November 1st in Detroit, so we will have details soon on mobilizing to support her there.

For more information, see 

www.stopfbi.net

, visit 

facebook

, and email

cppr@aaan.org

.

************

Support Rasmea!

Send us your pictures!

Right now we want to get Rasmea's story out there! We are calling on everyone to send us their picture holding up the following message:

"I am ________ and I support Rasmea!"

You can fill in the blank with any self-identifier: your name, your occupation, or any other description.  Some examples may be:

"I am a stay-at-home dad and I support Rasmea!"

"I am a youth organizer and I support Rasmea!"

"I am a supporter of Palestinian human rights and I support Rasmea!"

Hold the sign up and snap a selfie, then send it to 

cppr@aaan.org

. Put it up as your Facebook/Twitter profile pic, Google Account image, or anything else! Just remember we may use your image in future publications and informational pamphlets that get published online or distributed as hard copies.

PSLS, CCR and 64 other rights groups sign statement opposing indictment of Palestinian-American activist Rasmea Odeh

October 23, 2013 The below-signed organizations are deeply disturbed by and stand opposed to the indictment yesterday of Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a Palestinian-American community activist who has dedicated 10 years to the Chicago Arab-American community, working with women on issues ranging from promoting literacy and political education to addressing domestic violence and anti-Arab and Muslim sentiment.

Rasmea’s indictment for alleged immigration fraud comes at a time when advocates for Palestinian rights and immigration rights activists have been facing increasing pressure all over the country.  Exactly three years ago, 23 anti-war and Palestinian rights activists were subpoenaed to testify before a Grand Jury, and several of their homes were raided by the FBI.    There have been no indictments against the 23 activists subpoenaed in 2010, presumably because of a lack of evidence. It is no coincidence that federal prosecutors are now targeting Rasmea, who is a pillar in the same community.

The 2010 raids, the Grand Jury subpoenas that accompanied them, and this indictment against a 65 year old woman who suffered for a decade in Israeli prisons before coming to the U.S. in 1995, are a clear signal that federal authorities, along with Israel and its supporters in the U.S., are continuing to search for ways to intimidate and silence those who are effective advocates for Arab American communities, and who speak out for Palestinian rights.

In the last year alone, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Rights, and in collaboration with the National Lawyers Guild and other organizations, has documented over 75 cases of intimidation and legal bullying. These include perceived surveillance, FBI contacts, and discriminatory enforcement of laws against advocates for Palestinian rights.  Rasmea’s arrest and indictment must be viewed within this wider context of widespread attempts to intimidate people into silence on one of the most pressing human rights issues of our time.  Rasmea’s indictment is also an illustration of increasingly draconian enforcement of immigration laws, which have left immigrant communities devastated at the hands of Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.

Rasmea is an exemplary citizen who recently finished a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice, and has a law degree from Jordan.  She has overcome amazing odds after being convicted by the Israeli military court system in 1969 for her alleged association with a leftist Palestinian nationalist group that the U.S. designated a terrorist organization.  The military courts operate exclusively to subjugate occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.  They routinely bypass all but a modicum of due process, and justify holding individuals without charge or trial for months and years, often in abusive conditions and subject to torture.  Rasmea’s activism against the Israeli occupation in the 1960s resulted in her imprisonment in Israeli prisons for 10 years, and it is surely her community activism in the U.S. that has made her, and by extension, the community that relies on her, the target of this indictment.

We call for solidarity with Rasmea as she undergoes a difficult legal battle.  Please support Rasmea at her November 13 or 14 appearance in federal court in Detroit, Michigan.  (Please stay tuned for an exact date, which is not yet set.) We are also asking all supporters to call Barbara McQuade, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit, at 313.226.9501 or 313.226.9100, from 8 AM to 4 PM CST, to demand that she Drop the Charges Now.  For further action items, please see the Arab American Action Network alert. 

SIGNED:

Al-Awda New York, Palestine right to Return Coalition

American Friends Service Committee           

American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

American Muslims for Palestine

Arab Jewish Partnership for Peace and Justice in the Middle East

AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center

Bay Area Committee to Stop Political Repression (BACSPR)

Bay Area Women in Black

Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights

Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign - Vancouver

Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine

Canada Palestine Association

Center for Constitutional Rights

Chicago Movement for Palestinian Rights

College and University Workers United

Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine

Committee for Open Discussion of Zionism 

Council on American-Islamic Relations – Chicago

CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine

Friends of Deir Ibzi'a

Grassroots Global Justice Alliance

Hampshire College Students for Justice in Palestine 

International League of People’s Struggles

INCITE! Women and Trans* People of Color Against Violence 

Independent Jewish Voices-Vancouver

Interdenominational Advocates for Peace (IDAP)

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

Jadaliyya

JEWS SAY NO!

Jewish Voice for Peace

Jewish Voice for Peace – Bay Area

Jewish Voice for Peace - Chicago 

Jewish Voice for Peace - Detroit

Jewish Voice for Peace -- Philadelphia

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

Justice for Palestinians, San Jose, CA

Labor for Palestine

Legalease Collective, CKUT, Montreal

Minnesota Break the Bonds Campaign

Muslim Defense Project of the National Lawyers Guild - New York Chapter

National Lawyers Guild Free Palestine Subcommittee

National Lawyers Guild Chicago

National Students for Justice in Palestine

New York City Labor Against the War

NYC Queers Against Israeli Apartheid

PAWA: Palestinian American Women's Association

Palestine Aid Society 

Palestinian Christian Alliance for Peace (PCAP)  

Palestine Solidarity Group - Chicago

Palestine Solidarity Legal Support

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (Toronto)

Red Sparks Union – Vancouver

San Francisco Women in Black

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Socialist Action

Solidarity: a socialist, feminist, anti-racist organization

Sunbula: Arab Feminists for Change

The Dream Defenders

Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)

US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

US Palestinian Community Network

WBAI Justice and Unity Campaign 

Women of Colour Collective at the McGill Faculty of Law 

Voice of Palestine

CCR, JVP Submit Amicus Brief in Appeal of “Irvine 11” Convictions

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) filed a joint Amicus brief in support of the appeal to overturn the convictions of the “Irvine 11” – ten students who were criminally prosecuted for peacefully protesting a speech by Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren in 2010.  Each of the students stood up at different points during the speech, made a short statement condemning Israel’s human rights violations, and walked out, occupying no more than five minutes of the one hour event.  They were arrested, and then prosecuted after a year-long investigation.

These students, like university students across the country, have regularly and vigorously protested speakers and public officials without consequence, much less arrest.  CCR and JVP asked the court: why was this case worthy of criminal prosecution while similar protests, both before and after, were not?

The brief underscores the likelihood that the protest was punished not because it “substantially impaired” the meeting, as required by the California law under which they were charged, but because the message of the protesters "substantially offended the sensibilities of the [event] organizers and the state." California law and the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibit precisely this type of political prosecution.

Said Dima Khalidi, Cooperating Counsel with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Director of Palestine Solidarity Legal Support: "This prosecution did not happen in a vacuum.  There has been widespread repression of speech advocating for Palestinian rights across the country - by government agencies, universities and organizations that promote Israeli policies against Palestinians.  It must therefore be viewed as part and parcel of efforts to intimidate and silence a viewpoint that is consistently drowned out by mainstream orthodox positions in the U.S. that are unconditionally supportive of Israel, whatever its human rights record.”

The Brief also puts this case in a historical context, showing how discriminatory enforcement of vague laws has been used to suppress other movements for social change, including the Civil Rights and anti-war movements.  The California appellate court has a duty, as the U.S. Supreme Court has dictated in response to past repression of critical movements, to ensure that these students’ First Amendment rights are protected against the whims of local law enforcement, prosecutors and courts who have the power to stifle dissenting viewpoints.

Said Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director of JVP, “There is a reason for the dramatic difference in the way these students were treated for challenging an Israeli public official, and the way JVP members and others are treated for engaging in similar protests.  Widespread Islamphobia and attempts to suppress views supportive of Palestinians surely contributed to a decision to go after these students.”

Read the full Amicus brief here.