What are the goals of the Princeton Committee on Palestine? What work does the Committee engage in on campus?
The Princeton Committee on Palestine has been around for a very long time. It used to be known as the Princeton Divestment Coalition in 2002, which was the earliest push to pressure the University to divest from companies that contribute to and profit from the oppression of the Palestinian people. Since then, it’s sort of morphed and changed as the situation in Palestine has also morphed and changed. It was revitalized in 2015 following the war in Gaza in 2014. In 2015, there was a referendum on divestment, and there was a lot of energy in the Princeton Committee on Palestine then.
We’re a diverse group of Princeton students, faculty, community members and staff who come from different religious backgrounds, come from different nationalities, different faiths, different ethnicities, different racial backgrounds, united by our solidarity with the Palestinian people and our vision for a free Palestine. That’s our mission statement, broadly speaking.
In the fall, the Committee co-organized an event with the Alliance of Jewish Progressives in which you displayed children’s artwork outside of Frist. Last spring, you organized donations to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Could you talk about these?
Personally, that was my favorite event this past fall. It was a collection of portraits drawn by children in Gaza following Operation Cast Lead, which left hundreds of Palestinians dead, including men, women and children. In 2009, following the war, the Middle East Children’s Alliance did a tour of the Gaza Strip, and they visited a classroom of children who were doing art therapy as a means to deal with the trauma that they experienced. The Middle East Children’s Alliance decided that the paintings that these children drew, depicting these horrible experiences they endured, could be a tool for awareness, particularly for folks in the West who don’t really know what’s happening to Palestinian children in Gaza. They brought these portraits back and they tried to display them in 2011 in California, in a children’s museum in the Berkeley area, and they were blocked from doing so. That’s when Jewish Voices for Peace got a hold of the collection.
We were contacted by the Jewish Voices for Peace Central New Jersey chapter. They wanted to display these portraits somewhere, and we had the space on campus to do so. We did an outdoor portrait gallery in late November, early December 2021 in collaboration with JVP and the Alliance for Jewish Progressives on campus. They were incredibly helpful in creating the event as well as bringing viewers. We had well over 50 community members, students, and faculty members come to view the portraits.
Then we also did a fundraiser. We hope to do more in order to raise awareness about the awful toll that the conflict has had on Palestinian children.
Could you explain the Committee’s recent activities regarding Keffiyeh Thursdays?
This is something that came from the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Harvard, which does Keffiyeh Thursdays regularly. It’s a way to raise awareness as well as create a community of advocates and allies on campuses and in communities. On February 1, 2022, Amnesty International, an international NGO that works to document human rights abuses around the world, released a report documenting the ways that Israel has instituted and facilitated an apartheid rule over the Palestinian people. That was the impetus for the first Keffiyeh Thursday, and since then, we’ve made it a regular event. Every Thursday we wear keffiyehs or, if someone doesn’t have a keffiyeh, the colors of the Palestinian flag, which are red, white, black, and green.
How has the Princeton Committee on Palestine been received by the campus community?
It’s definitely been mixed. I mean, it’s no secret that in the US, particularly, this issue is incredibly contentious. But since I have been a member of PCP and since its inception, we’ve never been an organization that looks to drive controversy on campus or to make anyone uncomfortable. We genuinely are just speaking out about a topic that is underdiscussed in the U.S. and in the West, which is the oppression and the daily human rights abuses experienced by Palestinian people. There are groups on campus that have targeted us because of the activism we do with bad faith claims of bigotry or anti-Semitism. That is something that we reject outright. We don’t want to stoop to the level of personal attacks because we don’t think that’s productive. We’re focused on Palestinians. We’re focused on speaking out about Palestinians and protecting Palestinians, and we don’t have any interest in engaging in bad faith arguments, if that makes sense.
If people are interested, how can they learn more about the situation?
The first thing I would say is to come to our events. We’re going to be hosting a lot of great events this semester. We hope to bring well-educated speakers to campus to speak about their personal experience as well as the broader topic. There are classes on the Middle East and on Palestine specifically at Princeton but not as many as we would hope for there to be. And that’s something that we’re hoping to advocate for and pressure the administration to expand.
Moreover, though, and I’m now speaking to my personal experience as an American citizen, as someone who has never been to Palestine, the first thing is just engaging with it. I think the most common response we get from new people is, oh, I don’t know enough, so I’m not going to get involved. That, to me, is no longer a viable excuse because I know from my own experience that if you care enough, you can become educated, immerse yourself in the topic area, and get involved. And even then, no one is ever going to be an expert on the topic. It is a conflict that spans centuries, and none of us purport to be experts either. But it’s a case where not speaking up just isn’t an option anymore. I would urge people, even if you don’t feel like you can get involved with the activism part, to at least get educated and use the plethora of resources online, Jewish Voices for Peace being one of them, to learn about the topic, see what’s happening now, and see ways that you can help via donating, going to a protest, or coming to a PCP event.
Could you talk about the particular place of Princeton students in relation to this issue?
I think Princeton plays an incredibly important role in the oppression of Palestinians. That may not sound intuitive, but when we look at the investment structure at Princeton University, we find that a whole lot of companies that are profiting from and contributing to Palestinian oppression have a direct link with Princeton. Also, the institution of Princeton upholds anti-Palestinian values such as through its trips to Israel, which are discriminatory against Palestinian Princeton students because Palestinian Princeton students are denied entry to many areas of Israel. Whereas I, with a U.S. passport, could enter Israel as part of one of these Princeton-sponsored trips, a Palestinian Princeton student would not be able to. In these ways, Princeton upholds discrimination against Palestinians.
What does the Committee plan to do in the future?
As the new President of PCP, I have some big ideas that I’m hoping to accomplish during my time leading the group on campus. Everything we do is collaborative, and one of my favorite things about PCP is that every new member brings their own new ideas. Keffiyeh Thursday is something that is driven by our entire group, for example, and we had a right of return panel in the fall that was organized by a lot of our members.
We’re going to be launching a divestment campaign and putting a referendum on divestment in front of the undergraduate and graduate student body. So that’s going to be a big event for the spring semester. We’re going to do cultural events as well. We’re hoping to bring a Palestinian-American artist who works in tatreez, which is an embroidery technique, to campus to teach this form of embroidery. It would be an artistic outlet where we can bring people in, and she is also going to talk about her experience as a Palestinian-American woman. Also, I’m really excited about creating an affinity space for PCP and for Palestinian students generally, where we can feel safe on campus, where we can have events, where we can create an enduring pro-Palestine community on campus. Those are some of the things that I’m really excited about this spring with PCP that, even after I graduate, I hope will carry over for the next generation of pro-Palestine advocates at Princeton.
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