FFIPP

Spring
FFIPP-USA Newsletter Spring 2008
The Faculty for Israeli Palestinian Peace: May 2008__________________________________________________________________
  

Dear Friends,

With
Spring in full bloom, it is time to take stock of our achievements over
the long winter and redouble our sense of purpose as we look to the
hard work that faces us in the remainder of the year and beyond.
 
It
has truly been a year of growth and exchange for FFIPP-USA, with three
speaking tours since October.  Rateb Abu Rhma, a lecturer at Al-Quds
Open University and member of The Popular Committee Against the Wall in
Bilin, and Kobi Snitz, a lecturer at Bar Ilan University and member of
Anarchists Against the Wall visited the US as part of a FFIPP tour. 
Student organizers facilitated events on eleven campuses.  Rateb and
Kobi’s belief in power of nonviolent resistance to oppose the
settlements and illegal encroachment on Bil’in was inspiring to FFIPP
and his student audiences alike. We were so lucky to have them.   Kobi
and Rateb’s ongoing work in allying student groups in Bil’in with both
Palestinian and Israeli Activists echoes FFIPP’s hope and mission in
empowering students and the academy to hasten an end to the occupation.

As
winter approached, FFIPP had the pleasure of bringing two more amazing
speakers to the United States.  Hannah Safran of Emek-Yisrael College
and a founder of “Women in Black,” the past coordinator of Isha L'Isha,
the Haifa feminist center, and a member of the Coalition of Women for
Just Peace in Israel and Ola Shtewee, legal department coordinator for
the Palestinian-Israeli feminist group Kayan lent their voices to the
FFIPP community and beyond.  They spoke to the complexity of peace
activism in a dynamic society- reminding us that entangled with the
struggle for freedom and equality between Palestinians and Israelis
there is also the struggle for women to escape oppression.  Each event
drew eager audiences drawn by returned interns and student organizers.

Across
the pond, FFIPP-France marked the 60th anniversary of the Nakba and the
creation of the state of Israel this March with a conference featuring
the Israeli-American anthropologist Jeffery Halper, coordinator of the
Israeli Coalition against House Demolitions and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
Nominee.  FFIPP France has also been keeping busy organizing events and
drawing interns from the very prestigious Instituts d’Etudes Politiques
and the Universities in Paris, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Grenobles and
Mulhouse.

And to conclude our series of US speaking tours to
date, this past month Rima Essa of Ramallah and Esti Tsal of Tel Aviv
braved the cold New England Spring to visit Amherst College, Harvard,
Penn State, UMASS, Smith, BC, Brandeis, Columbia and Johns Hopkins. 
They also presided as guests of honor at FFIPP’s 6th Anniversary
Celebration in Northampton.
Rima Essa showed a number of films
throughout the tour, including ‘Hole in the Wall’ and ‘The Garbage
Cage.’ She spoke eloquently of her own history as a Palestinian coming
of age in the Israeli school system, eventually going on to become the
first Palestinian graduate of the Sam Spiegel film school in Jerusalem-
and of the of oppression she continues to experience living as a
Palestinian in Ramallah.  
The tour also featured Esti Tsal’s photo
exhibit, ‘Endless Checkpoints.’  Her photographs both document and
protest the injustice and violence of Israeli checkpoints in
Palestinian territories. Esti spoke to us of her journey from being an
“average Israeli” of an intellectual and bourgeois class, who read “all
the right newspapers” to her awakening to the reality of the oppression
of Palestinians in her own country.  Her words were a cautionary
reminder to her American audience of the importance of seeking
responsible media sources and underscored the importance of FFIPP’s
purpose in bringing academics from the US and Europe to
Palestine/Israel to bear witness themselves. Their joint presentation
made a sobering impression and imparted a sense of gravity and urgency
to FFIPPs’ 6th Anniversary.

With renewed conviction that FFIPP’s
work is now more important than ever, we are happy to report that our
Internship program is thriving. We are poised to send a more numerous
and accomplished group of interns than ever before. Last year we were
proud to send 30 students to complete internships and volunteer work in
organizations such as the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem in
Bethlehem, Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem, Freedom Theatre in
Jenin, Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, Project Hope in
Nablus, Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh refugee camp, Kyan a feminist
organization for Israeli Palestinian women in Haifa, Arab American
University in Jenin, Alternative information Center in Jerusalem,
Palestinian Farmers union in Ramallah, and summer camp in Shaknin,
Israel.

This year we will be sending 50 interns, from the most
elite academic institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, France and Germany to Palestine-Israel and Jordan. So far
our interns hail from the London School of Economics, University of
Chicago, Harvard, St. Andrews, University of Bordeaux, University of
Amsterdam, SOAS, Johns Hopkins and NYU, to name a few.
We are
currently still accepting applications from educators for our Summer
Educational Tour. We invite those of you who are educators, artists,
activists or community leaders to join us this summer, from June
30-July 9th for an Educational Tour of Palestine-Israel.  The tour will
be fast moving, covering a great deal of ground and with meetings with
Palestinian and Israeli Peace activists, community leaders, local
faculty and students.

We also invite those of you who are new to
FFIPP to join us! As a member of the FFIPP community, you will receive
the FFIPP-USA quarterly e-newsletter, as well as invitations to attend
FFIPP conferences, campus events, and FFIPP Community meetings. As
always, we encourage our readers to become active and stay involved in
their own communities, to start FFIPP chapters and to host FFIPP
speakers in Fall 2008.

Peace,

Lise Bradford
FFIPP-USA Coordinator

For more information please see our web site.

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