by Penn Against the Occupation
On May 11, Palestinian-American journalist Shereen Abu Aqleh was shot and killed by Israeli forces covering a raid in the occupied West Bank. She was a veteran journalist who dedicated her life to the Palestinian cause, a face known on TV screens across the Middle East, and the world. Targeting journalists is a symptom of the larger system that is the Israeli occupation. In the same vein that international law is not holding Israeli forces accountable for killing Shereen, it continues to turn a blind eye to the crimes of occupation.
We hear that “the conflict” is too difficult to talk about. “You better stay out of that subject, OK?” But too often its “complexity” impedes necessary discussion. Refusal to acknowledge that this is not a conflict but systematic oppression is a treacherous scenario where the only politically responsible position to take vis-à-vis Israel is to take no position at all.
Israel is a settler colonial state that uses apartheid to further its ethnic cleansing agenda. In 2021, Human Rights Watch finally charged Israeli authorities with the crimes of apartheid and persecution. Why do we use the word “apartheid” to describe Israel? Apartheid is a legalized system of racial discrimination. For 50 years, Palestinians and Jewish Israelis lived with different sets of rights—all allocated based on their ethnicity. Israeli civilian law is applied to Israeli Jews, who have freedom of movement and circulation, freedom of speech, and political rights. Israeli military law is applied to Palestinians, who possess none of these rights. For years, this situation has been normalized and voices for equality shut down. This is an issue of human rights and equality. Penn Against the Occupation (PAO) leads, learns, and educates with a human rights-based approach.
It is time to end the way our school helps to perpetrate human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and organize around divesting from Israel. Here’s what you should know about divestment, a popular movement to fight for equality for Palestinians.
In 2016, the UN OHCHR urged all states to ensure they are not assisting the expansion of settlements or the construction of the wall in the OPT by trading with settlements, as this is illegal under international law. The UN also released a list of corporations that are complicit in the violation of international law by assisting or profiting from illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Penn trades with, invests in, and performs research for several of these companies. They include but are not limited to, Caterpillar, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Elbit Systems, Mekorot, Hapoalim, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. By investing in these companies, Penn actively contributes to the violations of international law and human rights in the OPT: the destruction of Palestinian homes and construction of illegal settlements, the inhumane restriction of movement through roadblocks, checkpoints at the Apartheid wall, the theft of Palestinian resources, unethical surveillance and policing, and the unequal treatment of Palestinians under Israeli law. Below we further explain more ways in which Penn supports the occupation:
Research
The university does not only support human rights abusers with the endowment, we also have students and faculty performing research that makes the siege of Gaza possible. In 2014, Penn Engineering established a collaborative research fellowship with Raytheon United Technologies, the world’s fourth largest defense company and the largest producer of guided missiles. This firm supplies Israel with guided air-to-surface missiles for its F-16 fleet, cluster bombs and bunker busters (constantly used against Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure), as well as radar systems used on Israel’s fighter jets and missiles. Raytheon also produces Blackhawk helicopters, which are used to attack Palestinian cities and refugee camps and are responsible for the lion’s share of Palestinian civilian deaths.
Recruitment
Career Services sends Penn graduates to work and intern at firms that violate the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in relation to the OPT. For example, in 2013, General Electrics recruited Penn students through Career Services and, since then, has been offered as a prospective employer for recent engineering graduates. Former GE vice chair even gave career advice to Wharton students in an event for Knowledge@Wharton. GE’s Apache helicopters and F-16 jets are used for assaults on Gaza, including in the targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructures and in attacks on homes and refugee camps.
Motorola’s internships are also featured on the Career Services website. The UN found Motorola to provide Israel with surveillance systems to prevent Palestinians from moving freely in their territory, besides sustaining the settlements and checkpoints on the wall.
Blacklisting
Pro-Israel blacklisting organizations intimidate Penn professors and students into not speaking up about the military occupation of Palestine. Any criticism of Israel’s racist politics is labeled as anti-Semitic with the aim of shutting down pro-Palestine voices. Canary Mission intimidated Penn professors with charges of anti-Semitic hate speech simply for giving lectures about Palestine. Among them are prominent Middle East experts like Dr. Norton, Dr. Vitalis, and—recently retired—Dr. Lustick (who is not only Jewish but also a self-declared Zionist.) This is immensely detrimental to our community, especially considering that professors rarely voice an opinion on the issue (let alone students and faculty members who are engaged in activism and Palestinian advocacy).
Penn Israel Programs
Birthright
By supporting Penn Hillel’s Birthright Israel, the University turns a blind eye to the crimes of Israeli occupation and erasure of Palestinian identity. Many students attend Penn Hillel’s Birthright Israel program, described as “an amazing, FREE, ten day trip to Israel for Jewish young adults between 18 and 32.” Birthright Israel’s mission is to strengthen Jewish ties to Israel through an all-expenses paid trip partially funded by the Israeli government. Birthright Israel advances a Zionist mission, disregarding Palestinian history and the reality of Israeli occupation. While any individual with a Jewish parent is paid to visit Israel, 7 million Palestinian refugees are denied the opportunity to return to or visit their homeland, regardless of the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) Of December 1948 which “Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.” To this day, the Israeli government continues to violate international law by refusing to recognize Palestinians’ right of return.
Fellowships
Penn offers several fellowships and programs that normalize ties with the occupation and frame the Zionist colonial entity in a positive light. One such fellowship, which claims to shed “an intentional light on the complexities and nuances” of “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” is the Perspectives Fellowship. By framing the issue as a “nuanced” and “complex” conflict, the program deliberately ignores and misinforms students about Israel’s violent colonial history. Other deliberate word choices that mask the violence of the settler state and contribute to the erasure of Palestinian identity make up the program’s description. For example, the apartheid wall is termed a “separation barrier/security wall that divides Israel and the West Bank.” Eighty-five percent of the wall is illegally built inside the West Bank on occupied land, annexing land that legally belongs to Palestinians and permitting illegal settlements. The wall violently regulates Palestinian movement, alienates them from their land and other Palestinians, denies Palestinians access to adequate healthcare, and increases brutal military policing and surveillance of Palestinians. According to the itinerary, students will get the chance to speak with a variety of Zionist Israeli artists, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals, as well as members of the Palestinian Authority (the government under which Palestinians live, which polices and brutalizes Palestinians and normalizes ties with the Zionist entity for its own political and economic gain at the expense of Palestinians), Khaled Abu Toameh (a journalist who writes for several Israeli publications such as The Jerusalem Post and The Times of Israel, biased against the Palestinian cause), and Bashar el Masri (a Palestinian American billionaire developer collaborating with the Israeli government to build a gated community in the West Bank, where Israeli settlers are permitted to own property). These are the only Palestinian narratives to which the students are exposed on the trip.
These fellowships and programs demonstrate Penn’s complicity in the occupation of Palestine and the maintenance of the apartheid regime. PAO demands that the university cease supporting Israel’s illegal activities through the endowment as well as academic research. Moreover, we encourage all university departments to evaluate their complicity with the normalization of Israeli apartheid, and we ask faculty and students to speak up about the military occupation of Palestine.
Penn Disorientation Guide 