Rice students protest ‘Israel at 75’ conference
On April 27 Rice University and the Baker Institute (a think-tank located on campus) will hold a conference to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding. It’s billed as a meeting of “diplomats, subject-matter experts, policymakers and stakeholders” who “will assemble to analyze the binational relationship between the United States and Israel, address the role of the United States in Middle East foreign policy, and explore the challenges and opportunities Israel faces internally and abroad.”
Speakers include former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, current president Isaac Herzog, and retired military officer Michael Herzog.
The Baker Institute’s website offers a number of sponsorship opportunities for the event. $25,000 will get donors admission, acknowledgment from the podium during the conference, recognition on invitation, and seats at the post-conference dinner.
A group of students, faculty, staff, and alumni at Rice University and the University of Houston are circulating a petition calling on the Baker Institute to cancel the event and release a statement in support of Palestinian initiatives on campus.
“The ‘Israel at 75’ conference, which marks the 75th anniversary of Israel’s colonization of Palestine, glorifies al-Nakba, or The Catastrophe, in which 400 Palestinian towns and villages were destroyed and over 1,000,000 Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homeland in order to create the state of Israel,” it reads. “For over 75 years, the Palestinian people have resisted the most barbaric forms of Israel’s violence — from daily home demolitions, to mass arrest of Palestinian youth, to illegal military blockades that deny Palestinians freedom of movement on their own land.”
“At a time when the world’s eyes are being opened to the atrocities that the Zionist entity commits against Palestinians, Rice University’s Baker Institute actively endorses this violence by hosting some of its key initiators on our campus,” Rice University Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston, Palestinian Youth Movement Houston, and Jewish Voice for Peace Houston told Mondoweiss in an emailed joint statement. “Rice’s grounds are home to Palestinian students, organizations and community; what is Rice saying to them when our university hosts men who have massacred Palestinian villages?”
Students plan to protest outside of the Rice Memorial Center on the day of the conference.
Last fall United Nations General Assembly voted to hold a commemorative to mark the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. The move was opposed by the United States government and criticized by Israel. Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called the move a “disgrace” and accused the UN of prolonging the conflict. “The Palestinians’ lies must no longer be accepted on the world stage, just as this body must stop allowing the Palestinians to continue pulling its strings. I urge you all to stop blindly supporting the Palestinians’ libels,” he declared.
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https://mondoweiss.net/2023/04/rice-students-protest-israel-at-75-conference/
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