Catie Haddad '25
Guest Editor
This week, the National Lawyers Guild at UVA is hosting the Law School’s first ever Apartheid Week. The event, cosponsored by the undergraduate organizations Students for Justice in Palestine and Dissenters, is part of an international effort to bring awareness to Israel’s illegal apartheid regime against Palestinians. At UVA Law specifically, Apartheid Week represents a recognition that our school is currently not doing enough to educate on and condemn regimes that are committing international human rights violations. Moreover, it is a statement that students at UVA Law refuse to continue allowing our school to normalize Israeli Apartheid.
At this point in history, several human rights organizations have recognized Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and brutalization of Palestinians as apartheid (these include Amnesty International,[1]Human Rights Watch,[2] and the United Nations,[3] among others). However, there is nothing novel about Israeli apartheid. Not only has it continued since the mid-20th century, but it replicates fundamental tropes of settler colonialism: a settler entity slowly and increasingly encroaching on and taking land, falsely claiming that the land being dispossessed is empty or inhabited by a “savage population,” acting with the goal of eliminating the indigenous people and replacing them with a settler society, and instituting a complex set of laws and restrictions so as to establish dominance over the native population and deprive them of their most basic human rights.[4]
Pictured: UVA Law's PalTrek Group last month at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Photo Credit: UVA Law PalTrek.
In order to understand why Apartheid Week is important, one must first learn about the event that propelled and enabled the founding of Israel: the Nakba. The Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) is the most explicit and marked event of removal of Palestinians from their land. It refers to the ethnic cleansing campaign against the indigenous Palestinian population, which started in late 1947. During the Nakba, Zionist militias expelled over 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, destroyed and depopulated 531 Palestinian cities, towns, and villages, and committed an estimated 155 massacres.[5] It represented not only an attempted physical annihilation of Palestinian civilization, but also the annihilation of Palestinian culture, identity, and history.[6]
The Nakba is a historical moment that would set the tone in Palestine for the next seventy-five years onward. The Zionists responsible for eradicating Palestinian villages were never charged or held responsible for their actions.[7] Soon, a pattern would emerge as a part of what Palestinians call the “ongoing Nakba,” which describes the continuation of Israel’s unchecked violence and expansion of its settler-colonial state with no international accountability. This ongoing Nakba, and the way Israel has essentially “legalized” its apartheid regime, will be our primary focus and framework during Apartheid Week. Discussing the importance of this event, Warren Griffiths ’23 said, “While [the Paltrek group was] in Palestine, we learned how the occupation affects every part of Palestinian life, we learned about the variety of methods Israel uses to oppress Palestinians, we learned about the constant threat to Palestinian existence. We learned all of this in order to teach others in the U.S. about it. That’s what Apartheid Week is about.” The events this week will demonstrate the way Israel’s apartheid system touches on nearly every aspect of life for Palestinians: It destroys the environment, prevents Palestinians from economically supporting themselves, restricts freedom of movement and travel, relies on and legitimizes police brutality, and deprives children of their humanity and innocence.
As I write this, I cannot help but think about a recent example of Israel’s inhumanity, and an event that, I believe, communicates how important it is that we talk about Palestine here at UVA Law and everywhere. Tuesday night, the Israeli occupation forces invaded Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the most sacred sites in Islam, and a site that our Paltrek group had the privilege of visiting just three weeks ago. Here, the occupation forces assaulted hundreds of Palestinians praying and worshiping during the holy month of Ramadan. They shot stun grenades and tear gas inside the mosque, causing the Palestinian worshippers to suffocate. They also beat worshipers—who were kneeling on the floor in prayer positions—with batons and rifles. They forced worshipers to lay on the ground while they handcuffed them one by one. In a barbaric and internationally illegal display of power, the occupation forces then detained approximately 400-500 Palestinian worshippers in total. Additionally, they started a fire in the mosque, burning sacred ornaments and destroying furniture.[8]
While I was following the news coverage of the Israeli occupation’s attacks, I came across the following question posed by Mohammad El-Kurd, a Palestinian activist and poet:
“There is a moment of ‘awakening,’ usually at an early age, in which Palestinians become violently aware of their identity and the subsequent subjugation that haunts it… For me, that moment was the killing of [twelve-year-old] Muhammad Al-Durrah in his father’s arms. Can you recall yours?”[9]
It is time for the UVA Law community to hold itself accountable. Our institution and the individuals comprising it cannot consider ourselves to be promoters of justice and equality if we choose to discuss somehuman rights violations while deliberately refusing to discuss others. Our willful ignorance is not neutral. It is oppressive. Not everyone has the privilege of refusing and postponing the “awakening” about which Mohammad El-Kurd writes. Most Palestinians, as he mentioned, experience it at a young age. This Apartheid Week, I invite you to have your own moment of awakening; I urge you to become violently aware of the subjugation that terrorizes Palestinians and the ways in which they resist it.
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avc4ku@virginia.edu
[1] Israel's apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International (2022), https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-system-of-apartheid.
[2] Omar Shakir, Hum. Rts. Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution (Eric Goldstein et al eds., 2021), https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/israeli-authorities-and-crimes-apartheid-and-persecution.
[3] Press Release, United Nations, Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in OPT: Israel Has Imposed Upon Palestine an Apartheid Reality in a Post-apartheid World (Mar. 25, 2022), https://www.un.org/unispal/document/special-rapporteur-on-the-situation-of-human-rights-in-opt-israel-has-imposed-upon-palestine-an-apartheid-reality-in-a-post-apartheid-world-press-release.
[4] Settler Colonialism, Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (updated May 2022), https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/settler_colonialism.
[5] The Nakba and Palestine Refugees, Inst. for Middle East Understanding (May 5, 2022), https://imeu.org/article/the-nakba-and-palestine-refugees-imeu-questions-and-answers.
[6] Ofer Aderet, Testimonies from the Censored Deir Yassin Massacre: ‘They Piled Bodies and Burned Them’, Haaretz.com (Jul. 16, 2017), https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-07-16/ty-article-magazine/testimonies-from-the-censored-massacre-at-deir-yassin/0000017f-e364-d38f-a57f-e77689930000.
[7] Antisemitism and anti-Zionism are two separate, incredibly different things. As emphasized by the anti-Zionist organization Jewish Voice for Peace, “Criticism of Zionism is not to be conflated with antisemitism. States such as Israel and the United States are openly criticized in public life, and their political beliefs and policies are subject to critical debate, in accord with our basic First Amendment rights.” Criticism of Israel, a state that many Jewish people themselves oppose the founding of, is not antisemitism, and to construe it as such is not only inaccurate and misguided, but dangerous. For more thorough explanations and literature on the matter, please refer to JVP's approach to Zionism, Jewish Voice for Peace, https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/zionism (last visited February 5, 2023).
[8] Israeli Forces Storm Al-Aqsa, Attack Worshippers During Ramadan, Al Jazeera (Apr. 5, 2023), https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/5/israeli-police-attack-worshippers-in-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque.
[9] Talal Abu Rahma, Behind the Lens: Remembering Muhammad Al-Durrah, 20 Years on, Al Jazeera (Sep. 30, 2020), https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/9/30/behind-the-lens-remembering-muhammad-al-durrah.