BOYCOTT

Statement by Reuven Abarjel, Founder of Israel's Black Panthers, in supports the Academic Boycott of Israel

Translated by Smadar.Lavie

Tuesday, June 6, 2006.

To The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

NATFHE – The University and College Lecturers’ Union, Britain

I am Reuven Abarjel. I was born in Morocco and have lived in Israel since 1950. In the 1970s I founded the Black Panthers Movement. Our struggle against the regime was difficult and without compromise. The violence spread in the streets and in order to break the Mizrahi resistance, the police acted with full force under the instructions of then prime-minister Golda Meir. From the onset of our struggle the Black Panthers embarked on a dialogue with both local and European Palestinian leadership. Black Panthers delegations traveled to Italy, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Concurrently, we met in refugee camps with bereaved families who lost their children to the struggle against the occupation. Just before Hon. Chairman Yasser Arafat died I joined a delegation of activists who met with him in the besieged Muqata`a.

At the onset of our struggle I began understanding that the problem is way deeper than I thought, complicated to the extent that the average person finds it difficult to come up with solutions. The confusion is tremendous because the Israeli political system, maintained by external capitalist motives, causes the oppressed Palestinian and Mizrahi groups to collapse under the weight of the oppression and occupation.

The Mizrahim in Israel went through a sophisticated process of oppression under the guise of slogans such as “we are all brothers,” and “we are all Jews.” While the Ashkenazi establishment beamed with “solidarity” toward us, it committed crimes against us such as medical experiments in radioactive radiation of about 100,000 children, almost all of whom immigrants from North Africa, kidnapping children from large Mizrahi families and transferring them to childless European Jewish couples, and the exclusion of Mizrahi Jews from Israel’s educational institutions and centers of influence.

It is the duty of every pacifist in this world, whether academic or not, to join the struggle against racist governments who practice discrimination against the minorities and disenfranchised groups who constitute their population. It is the duty of every pacifist to encourage these groups to raise their voice and enact their influence anywhere, let alone in this highly charged region that threatens world peace. I was glad to hear that a large group of British academics has raised an outcry and OKed a decision comprised of three demands:

(1) An end to the occupation

(2) An end to the structural discrimination of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in the arena of education

(3) A demand from Israel that its higher education system must reflect the majority of its citizenry. This majority is the Mizrahim.

These were some of the demands of the Black Panthers Movement which I had founded. Our struggle was against the racism, discrimination and oppression of the non-European populations of Israel and of the territories it occupied after 1967. Today I am a senior member of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow.

Here we are, 35 years later, when a large group of intellectuals is rising up, able to stand tall against the Zionist academic-political hegemony of Israel and of the world. Their resistance to this hegemony is not dependent on the wishes of Zionism and its followers. The importance of the boycott is not in the very act of boycotting, but in the resistive stand against the Israeli academy and its collaboration with Israel’s political hegemony.

Even though I am not an academic I add my signature. I take pride in the struggles I conducted and still conduct against a violent force, which requires a larger force in order to restrain it. I hope that the ranks of the boycott will continue to grow until the occupation is over, and racism and discrimination, abolished.

Let blessing be bestowed upon you,

Reuven Abarjel.