Prof. Speaks Against Occupation by Ariella Cohen After six days of Israeli tanks razing roads and crumbling Palestinian homes, schools and civil facilities, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies and Sociology Frances Hasso spoke out against the Israeli siege. Wednesday’s talk marked the semester’s first campus address of the rapidly escalating military take-over. In those same hours Hasso spent detailing the mass arrests of Palestinian civilians, the destruction of city infrastructure, including medical facilities and the lack of electricity and food wrought by the escalating military invasion into residential areas, Israeli military forces extended their offensive strike into Nablus, a city populated by 180,000 and under complete Palestinian autonomy, leaving only two Palestinian-ruled city or towns free of the UN sanctioned, Israeli Defense Force (IDF) siege. Hasso detailed events that have been included in mainstream media coverage, including the IDF killing of five guards protecting democratically elected PLO leader Yasir Arafat, the killing of 120 paramedics and the deaths of journalists, before going into accounts left largely unheard, alluding to the “need to read between the lines” and educate ourselves. She recounted a story told to her by a colleague, Jamil Hilal, who runs a research institute and lives in Ramallah. “During home raids [IDF] soldiers are stealing money, stealing jewelry, even taking birthday cake,” Hasso said. Hasso read an account from a University of Minnesota student, Tzaporah Ryter, currently under siege in Ramallah. The American explained her efforts to get, while under military siege, to the local bakery: “‘I got to the corner trying to get to the bakery for bread and food for people. Some people were calling and calling with only one cup of rice left. I made it to the corner but they opened fire on my first try and shot at me, so I had to turn back,’” Hasso read. Ryter mentioned that armed groups of settlers were roaming Ramallah. Israel’s military siege began last week with Israeli Prime Minster Sharon’s tank levied house-arrest of Yasir Arafat and has rapidly escalated to Israel’s largest military offensive in decades. “Operation Defensive Shield’’ was presented by both the US and Israeli governments as an effort to crush Palestinian militias that have carried out deadly attacks on Israeli civilians, now including seven suicide bombings in the past week. Hasso emphasized American diplomatic support as well as the billions of dollars in US aid and military resources that enable the Israeli occupation. Raising the possibility of a EU brokered “durable peace,” Hasso emphasized the necessity of multilateral negotiations in undercutting some of the U.S. bias towards Israel. Multilateral negotiations realized the newly approved UN resolution 1402. Still, Hasso pointed to monetary debts that the UN owes the U.S. as a factor to why even in this resolution US General Zinni and the US Tenent Plan backbone negogiations. “ There is a way in which resolution 1402 says withdrawal from areas just invaded, not from the territories in their entirety. You need to watch the language of the occupation. The terrain is U.S. terrain…set by the CIA,” Hasso said. “Activist Jeff Halpern uses the analogy of a prison to explain the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It looks like the prisoners have most of the space, there’s only a few guards, some bars but then you have to look at who puts the bars there…what this does,” sophomore Nava Etshalom said. After 20 minutes, Hasso opened her talk for questions. The first question asked Hasso to address “antisemitic backlash on the part of Western Europe.” After speaking a bit on new political alliances that have formed as some Jewish-Zionist groups, traditionally progressive, become alienated by political peers now critical of Israel, Hasso said she had no comment on the issue. Later, questions on Israel’s validity as a modern state surfaced, students discarding the Zionist myth of Israel as a “virgin birth,” “a land without a people for a people without a land” and asked how it came that the land so quickly received legitimacy for, essentially, colonial self-determination; “I would like to hear people talk about whether it’s even justified to have an Israel,” junior Adam Feldman said. “There is an existential problem for Israel, as a ‘virgin birth’ that doesn’t recognize the four million refugees its birth created,” Hasso said. “There is a problem [for Palestinians] when democracy is linked to being Jewish, or land ownership and land ownership depends on being Jewish,” Hasso said. Another question directed the talk towards the effect that the on-going house arrrest will have on Arafat’s clout. “Now he is salmid, steadfast in English…there is a way in which [his imprisonment] has reinvoragrated his power. However, he has never been a truly democratic leader…and this delays the move from autocrat. There were fair elections but nevertheless there are questions on accountability, whether he has given too much. This [the Israeli siege and the consequental rise in Arafat’s popularity] slows the process. But people are used to waiting,” Hasso said. When asked the perennial OC question, “what can we do?” Hasso suggested writing to Congress about stopping aid to Israel. This Friday, the student group Students For a Free Palestine [of which this article’s author is a member] plans to demonstrate in Cleveland calling for an end to US support for the occupation.

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