Dr. James P. Wickstrom
Chicago students stage simultaneous walkouts on Israeli apartheid
by Sami Kishawipan>
On Thursday, November 10, 2011, students and community members staged simultaneous walkouts at two prominent Chicago universities as part of a concerted effort to undermine propagandist attempts to normalize the occupation of Palestine and the systematic violation of human rights law.
At Northwestern University, roughly one third of the audience silently walked out soon after Gil Hoffman, chief political analyst for the Jerusalem Post and an Israeli reserve soldier, began a presentation on "63 Reasons to Like Israel". One week after students walked out of Hoffman's speaking engagement at Wayne State University in Detroit, organizers capitalized on the momentum to remind Hoffman and the event's sponsors that the reality of oppression, apartheid, and humanitarian abuse cannot be ignored.
In response to the walkout, Hoffman generically asserted that the walkout served only to "delegitimize Israel" but still failed to acknowledge any aspect of Israel's illegal activity, including settlement building and adamant rejection of refugee rights.
At the same time, students and community members gathered at DePaul University to strategically disrupt a StandWithUs-sponsored event designed to paint Israel as socially-responsible and its policies towards Palestinians as compliant with international law. The group began by "fact checking" the panel -- a tactic popularized by the growing Occupy movement in which the crowd repeats statements or facts announced by the group's leader, thus amplifying the message (see video above). The demonstration was followed by a walkout and an outdoor teach-in and debriefing.
By the end of the evening, Chicago activists, students, and concerned community members effectively shut down two events that sought to whitewash Israel's discriminatory policies towards the indigenous population of Palestine as necessary components for democracy and peace. For the second time in a matter of days, Hoffman was forced to face the facts he selectively chooses to ignore, and pro-Israel organizations must now deal with the reality that state-sponsored propaganda has no room on America's college campuses. Read more of this post
