Purdue SJP will be hosting a variety show on Thursday, March 31st from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM in the Matthews Hall 210. The proceeds from this event will benefit The Maia Project, an organization that brings clean drinking water to the people of Gaza, Palestine. The goal of MECA’s Maia Project is to provide safe clean, drinking water for tens of thousands of Palestinian children by working in partnership with community organizations to build water purification and desalination units in schools and towns throughout the Gaza Strip. Our featured guest for this event is Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American activst and poet based in New York. He is the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine as well as the editor of Poets For Palestine. A $5.00 minimum donation is suggested for admission. Visit the Facebook event to RSVP now and to find out the latest news!

Performances:
Remi Kanazi
War on Hunger
Purdue Taal
Lebanese Student Organization
Amnesty International
PESC (Purdue Engineering Student Council)
Caribsa
Local Talent… and more!

Thank you all for your dedication and commitment to helping The Maia Project to get water to people who desperately need it.

For Immediate Release

West Lafayette, Indiana – April 14, 2010 – The noted scholar Norman Finkelstein and the popular musician Lowkey will be visiting Purdue together on their respective national tours. Finkelstein, who has been visiting several campuses across the nation to discuss the topic of his recently published book describing the 2008/2009 massacre in Gaza, “‘This Time We Went Too Far’: Truth & Consequences of the Gaza Invasion,” will be sharing the stage with Lowkey, who is visiting Purdue as part of his “Rendezvous of Victory” tour. Both Finkelstein and Lowkey have been invited by Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine in an ongoing effort to raise student awareness of the suffering of the Palestinian people and the need for the United States to revise its policy of unconditional support for Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The event will be held at 7:30 PM on Wednesday, April 14 2010 in the Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall. Attendance will be free and open to the public.

One week prior to the event, on Tuesday, April 6 at 7:30 PM in room 2290 of Beering Hall, Purdue SJP will host a screening of the documentary “American Radical: the Trials of Norman Finkelstein,” which chronicles the controversy raised around Finkelstein’s scholarship and the accusations leveled at him. This screening will also be free and open to the public.

“The arrival of these two individuals, dedicated to the truth in a time of widespread deception, is of critical importance for a reputable institution such as Purdue, in order to uphold values of global justice and universal equality,” said Samir Khadra, a member of Purdue SJP, “It’s really about waking people up from the darkness of ignorance the mainstream, from politics to hip hop, with not one but two shining lights. I hope this community will realize more than ever the brutality of the massacre in Gaza and the illegal occupation of Palestine, and stand up for justice.”

Lowkey will open the event with his presentation, and then Finkelstein will be speaking on Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, its recent assault on Gaza, and the public’s reaction to the attacks. Both Finkelstein and Lowkey will then be taking questions from the audience. Copies of Finkelstein’s latest book will be available for purchase, and both Finkelstein and Lowkey will be available for signatures at the end of the evening.

About Lowkey

Lowkey is a Poet, Playwright, Political Activist and award winning Hip Hop Artist who has received airplay on numerous major radio stations including BBC Radio 1, Capital FM, Kiss FM, Choice FM and BBC 1Xtra and toured internationally performing to crowds everywhere from Glastonbury and Trafalgar Square to Germany and Amsterdam.

About Norman Finkelstein

Norman G. Finkelstein received his doctorate in 1988 from the Department of Politics at Princeton University. For many years he taught political theory and the Israel-Palestine conflict, and is currently an independent scholar. Finkelstein is the author of six books which have been translated into more than 40 foreign editions including Beyond Chutzpah, The Holocaust Industry, and Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.

About Purdue SJP

Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine is made up of a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and community members who promote justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian People. For more information, visit their web site at www.purduesjp.wordpress.com.

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West Lafayette, Indiana – March 11, 2010 – Fourteen different student organizations came together last Wednesday, March 10, to raise $2,226.26 for Purdue’s Haiti Relief Fund with “United For Haiti,” a variety show coordinated by Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine. The variety show, which was hosted in Purdue’s Stewart Center, included dances by the Purdue Arab Society and Lebanese International Organization, the Purdue Salsa Club, Dance2xs, a fashion show by the African Students Association, and poetry by Purdue’s Samir Khadra and founder/editor of “The Quirk” Kaveh Akbar. In addition to the performances, students raised funds through the sale of T-shirts provided by the Purdue Engineering Student Council and of raffle tickets for prizes donated by local restaurants and businesses, in addition to several wholly voluntary donations.

Many of the more than 200 audience members were amazed by the diversity of performances and the number of different student organizations participating. For many of the organizers, the cooperation between these organizations was almost as much a cause for celebration as was the success in raising more than $2,200 for Haiti. “It gives people a chance to see the diversity of cultures represented on our campus,” said event coordinator and Purdue SJP Treasurer Nahla Ahmed of the diversity of performances, “and it gives everyone a chance to come together and use their talents to help the people in Haiti who need it so desperately.”

The event’s success in raising funds for the victims of Haiti’s catastrophic January 12 earthquake has prompted members of SJP to consider making the variety show an annual fund raising event. “I think this shows how much people want to help each other,” explained Purdue SJP Vice-President Deena Schwen, “They just need an opportunity to do it. Organizing something like this every year to raise funds for people who are suffering and need our help could be a really great way to give students that opportunity.” In addition to disaster relief efforts, aid for civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine were mentioned as possible beneficiaries of future fund raising events.

The organizations that worked with Purdue Students for Justice in Palestine to raise funds in last Wednesday’s variety show included the Purdue Engineering Student Council, Beta Chi Theta, the Caribbean Students Association, the Haraka Writers, the African Students Association, the American Red Cross, Amnesty International, the Purdue Organization for Labor Equality, War on Hunger, and WiseCampus. The show’s emcees were Joandy Angrand and Katie Clemens, and performers included Danielle Roberts and Colin McDonald, the Caribbean Students Association, the “Broke Dancers” Crew, Haraka for Haiti, the Purdue Arab Society and Lebanese International Organization, the Purdue Latin Ballroom Dance Team, Tashia Venort, Samir Khadra, the Purdue Salsa Club, Josephine Casely-Hayford and the Divercity Band, Kaveh Akbar, Chu Chiemenzia and Amanda Cooper, Trice the Beast, Dance2xs, Kadyrn Kadasia, Purdue Taal, and Onyx Uzomah and Iman Allawzi.

About Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine

Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine is made up of a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and community members who promote justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian People. For more information, visit their web site at www.purduesjp.wordpress.com.

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This is the letter that Purdue SJP sent to Chancellor Drake:

Chancellor Michael V. Drake, M.D.
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697
Tel: 949.824.5011
Email: chancellor@uci.edu

Chancellor Drake:

We have long respected the campuses of the University of California both for their contributions to higher education and their reputations as places where students are encouraged to contribute to their communities by sharing their different values and concerns. The examples set by the students and faculty who demonstrated to defend public education and reject the deplorable acts of racism in San Diego have inspired students on campuses throughout the Midwest to join the struggle to make quality education available to people in the working class and members of minorities who are frequently denied such opportunities. We hope that you are proud of the way that students mobilized on all the University of California campuses last Thursday.

Unfortunately, some of this respect has been undermined at the University of California, Irvine by alarming reports of intimidation of the Muslim students who have been engaged in activism. We have been following the events that transpired in the wake of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s 8 February speech on the UCI campus, and are concerned about the measures being taken against the students who voiced their objections to the Ambassador’s attacks on Justice Goldstone’s report to the United Nations. According to the press, your faculty had 11 students arrested that evening, and are threatening them with expulsion simply for disrupting Ambassador Oren’s speech. We at Purdue were surprised to learn that you would consent to hosting an ambassador from a country known for its illegal military occupation and institutional racism on your campus without also inviting a representatives of the Palestinian government in Gaza and the West Bank, and of the United Nations Human Rights Committee or the General Assembly to encourage an open and meaningful debate. Your faculty’s response to the students’ outbursts and the draconian measures they resorted to in an effort to keep students from challenging the Ambassador’s position were even more disappointing. With these factors as precedents, the equivocation of these acts of protest with the racism and bigotry exhibited on the UCSD and UCD campuses in your February 26 statement seemed to reflect a degree of intolerance and insensitivity to the suffering of the Palestinian people that we had hitherto considered unfathomable at a University of California campus.

The intimidation fostered by your response to the students’ understandable objections to Ambassador Oren’s statements has raised several doubts about the extent to which the Irvine campus—and the University of California in general—is committed to developing student leadership and encouraging free expression, and may discourage students on other campuses across the country from taking action at a time when many of our core values are being threatened by the socioeconomic crisis. We at Purdue encourage you to reconsider your decision to continue disciplinary proceedings against the 11 students who spoke out at Ambassador Oren’s presentation, and to publicly apologize for conflating their actions with the deplorable acts of racism committed on other University of California campuses. Remember that the way this generation of students responds to the global social, economic, and environmental crises they are facing will be shaped by both their academic and social experiences at our universities. We sincerely hope that you will help to ensure that this generation is armed with the knowledge, experience, and confidence needed to take on these challenges. Thank you very much for your time and consideration on this matter.

Sincerely,
Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine

Download the flyer and post it!

“Haiti faced a natural disaster of unprecedented proportion, an earthquake unlike anything the country has ever experienced.
The magnitude 7.0 earthquake – and several very strong aftershocks – struck only 10 miles from Port-au-Prince.
I cannot stress enough what a human disaster this is, and idle hands will only make this tragedy worse.”

-Wycleaf Jean

Purdue SJP is organizing a variety show on campus to raise funds for the American Red Cross Haiti relief efforts. The performances will take place on Wednesday, March 10 from 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM in the Student Center’s Fowler Hall. A $5.00 minimum donation is suggested for admission. Visit the Facebook event to RSVP now and to find out the latest news!

Performers Wanted
Got Talent? Perform Poetry? A Photographer? Sing or Dance? We are still looking for talent! Contact one of us at the email address below if you are interested in performing:

• Nahla – nmahmed@purdue.edu
• Deena – dschwen@purdue.edu

Performances
So far, we’ve got some great acts lined up! Spoken Word, Dance, Song, A Fashion Show and MORE!

• Dance2xs
• African Students Association – Fashion Show
• Purdue Taal – Acappella

And much more!

T-Shirts
“United for Haiti” T-shirts provided by the Purdue Engineering Student Council are also available for a $10.00 minimum donation, and will gain free admission. Shirts will be available in the Student Center and the Memorial Union on the following dates:

• Tuesday, March 2 – Stewart Center – 11am-2pm
• Thursday, March 4 – Stewart Center – 11am-2pm
• Friday, March 5 – Stewart Center – 9am-12pm
• Monday, March 8 – Stewart Center – 9am-2pm
• Tuesday, March 9 – Union – 9am-1pm

Raffle
Raffle tickets will also be available at the event for the following donations:

• $2.00 – 1 ticket
• $5.00 – 3 tickets
• $10.00 – 10 tickets

Sponsoring Organizations
This event is being sponsored by each of the following organizations:

• Dance2xs
• African Students Association – Fashion Show
• Purdue Taal – Acappella
• Beta Chi Theta
• War on Hunger
• Lebanese International Organization
• Purdue Arab Society
• Amnesty International
• Purdue Organization for Labor Equality
• Red Cross
• Purdue Engineering Student Council
• Purdue Queer Student Union
• WiseCampus

Thank you all for your dedication and commitment to helping the people of Haiti rebuild their lives in the wake of this horrific tragedy.

President Barack H. Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As you doubtlessly recall, more than a year ago Israeli military forces launched “Operation Cast Lead,” a 17-day military assault on the residents of the Gaza strip that resulted in nearly 1300 Palestinian deaths and thirteen Israeli deaths. Of those killed in the assault, at least 800 were civilians, of which three were Israeli and nearly 400 were Palestinian women and children. This assault has been aptly described by many observers as a massacre, and has been almost unanimously condemned by the international community and by every respected human rights organization that has investigated the attack. The fact-finding mission mandated by the United Nations Human Rights Council has found sufficient evidence of war crimes to recommend that both Israeli and Gazan officials conduct prompt and thorough investigations into what transpired during this assault and the conditions that precipitated it.

The military assault on the Gaza Strip is merely the latest in a series of attacks on Palestinian civilians that date back to 1948 and, more recently, to Israel’s efforts to forcibly expand its borders further into occupied Palestinian Territories that it acquired in the June 1967 war. Despite the US government’s official opposition to Israel’s attempt to expand its borders through military conquest stated in United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, this same government has consistently supplied arms and other military aid to Israeli forces, making the US an integral part of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. From 2004 to 2007, the US accounted for 95% of all commercial arms and ammunitions sales to Israel, with a total recorded value of over $1.3 billion. Many of these munitions were employed against civilian targets in last year’s attack on Gaza. In all six instances where Human Rights Watch documented Israeli forces using air-burst white phosphorus munitions illegally on populated areas, the source of these munitions was identified as the same lot manufactured in the United States in 1989 by Thiokol Aerospace. Amnesty International investigated several different types of munitions used in the assault, and found that Israeli forces used air-delivered munitions fired from F-16s, helicopters, and UAVs , artillery and mortars, white phosphorus munitions, flechettes, and tank ammunition all supplied by the United States. As with the white phosphorus, the manner in which many of these weapons were employed constitutes war crimes, and Amnesty International has called on the US government to stop the escalation of violence by suspending the transfer of military supplies to Israel. The US government has thus far ignored Amnesty International’s calls to suspend arms transfers.

The US government has also ignored the role that its military aid has played in Israeli attacks on Palestinian refugees outside its borders and in the Occupied Territories. As many as 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were forcibly expelled by Israeli forces from their homes within Israel’s declared borders in the conflict that followed the declaration of statehood in 1948. Many of those who fled voluntarily did so after learning of massacres in other villages captured by Israeli forces, which became particularly brutal after the implementation of “Plan Dalet.” The Israeli government seized the homes and properties of these refugees, in some cases handing them over to Jewish settlers, and razing entire villages and rebuilding atop their remains in others. Many of these people and their families remain refugees, and the Israeli government has consistently denied them the right of return and compensation for their seized property. Moreover, Israeli forces have used weapons supplied by the US in their attacks on Palestinian refugee camps during their assaults on the Occupied Territories and conflicts with Israel’s neighbors.

Finally, the US government continues to ignore evidence of institutionalized discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel in its military aid agreements. In addition to ignoring the issue of Palestinian refugees created by its various military operations, the Israeli government continues to deny equal citizenship to the Palestinians who remain within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. While persons of Jewish heritage continue to receive full citizenship upon request, citizenship is regularly denied to Palestinian Arabs, even in cases of family unification. The Israeli government also continues to maintain a separate school system for Jewish children and Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel that fails to offer the latter group of students the same levels of funding, resources, and quality of education that it offers to the former. Land ownership laws and regulations also discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are regularly denied the right to purchase or retain land within Israel. A 2008 report by Human Rights Watch described the conditions under which the Israeli government declared Bedouin villages that had existed prior to 1948 in the Negev region illegal, and has been deliberately denying these communities access to infrastructure, excluding them from its development plans, and demolishing homes and entire villages without compensating their residents or providing alternative shelter. Human Rights Watch also reported that new structures erected by Palestinian Arabs were routinely demolished by Israeli authorities, while structures erected illegally by Jewish residents received retroactive permits. The report concludes, based on policy documents and official rhetoric issued by Israeli authorities, that the discriminatory housing and land ownership policies are being employed in a manner inconsistent with international human rights law by Israel in a deliberate effort to “maximiz[e] its control over Negev land and increas[e] the Jewish population in the area for strategic, economic and demographic reasons.”

In your June speech at Cairo University, you argued that, “[a]ll of us have a responsibility to work for the day when the mothers of Israelis and Palestinians can see their children grow up without fear.” Many of us in the United States agree with you on this point, and continue to do whatever we can to educate our fellow citizens about the suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. We are still waiting on you and your colleagues in the Senate and the House to do the same. Despite a direct appeal from Amnesty International to place an arms embargo on the entire Israel/Palestine region, you chose to approve former President Bush’s plans to increase US military aid by 25% by providing $30 billion in aid under a ten-year agreement to 2017. Instead of standing up to the House of Representatives when it responded to the United Nations’ fact finding mission with baseless accusations of lies and slander, your administration echoed these accusations and Susan Rice, your ambassador to the UN, claimed that the Goldstone report was “unbalanced, one sided and basically unacceptable” while Douglas M. Griffiths, your delegate to the Human Rights Council, voted against endorsing the report. Meanwhile, Justice Goldstone’s request to your administration to clarify what flaws and inaccuracies exist in his report remains unanswered. By supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine after you yourself stated that “[i]t is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true,” you and your colleagues in the House and Senate are reinforcing the widespread belief that the Democratic Party’s commitment to peace and human rights is nothing more than empty rhetoric designed to deceive voters and activists into backing its conservative agenda.

The credibility of the US government’s position on the legitimacy of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is further undermined by the fact that your administration continues to maintain military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a conservative estimate of casualties from US operations places the Iraqi and Afghani death toll at more than 1.3 million people. In Iraq, 72% of the population were opposed to the presence of Coalition forces in their country even before you entered office, yet instead of implementing an immediate withdrawal, you chose to prolong the occupation and continue to contract security operations to private mercenaries. You also chose to increase the numbers of US forces in Afghanistan in contravention of the will of the Afghani people, of whom 44% wanted the number of US soldiers decreased, and 29% wanted no increase. Many sources of tension threaten the prospects for long-term peace and stability in the Middle East. If we are, as you suggest, to “face these tensions squarely,” then it is only reasonable that we begin with those that the US government is directly responsible for.

You and your administration are at a crisis point. You can continue to ignore the international consensus and earn yourself a place alongside previous presidents who spoke of peace and governed with violence, or you can deliver on the change you promised and take steps to curb the spread of violence in the Middle East. The path to peace is not a complicated one, and it can begin with the following small steps:

1. Work with the UN Security Council to, in the words of Amnesty International’s Michael Smart, “impose an immediate and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel … until effective mechanisms are found to ensure that munitions and other military equipment are not used to commit serious violations of international law,” and “suspend all transfers of military equipment, assistance and munitions to Israel … until there is no longer a substantial risk of human rights violations.” This arms embargo should be maintained until Israel has fulfilled the following three obligations to international law:
   1. Israel must withdraw its military forces beyond the pre-1967 “Green Line” or a similar modified border based on a one-to-one land swap. In addition to withdrawing its military forces, Israel must eliminate all subsidies and incentives for settlements outside these recognized boundaries.
   2. Israel must recognize the rights of Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens within its own borders to equal access to the opportunities for representation, land ownership, government services, education, family unification, and cultural preservation that it offers to its Jewish citizens.
   3. Israel must accept a resolution of the Palestinian refugee question based on the principles of return and compensation that are supported by the international community and respected human rights groups.
2. Withdraw all US forces and security contractors from Iraq and reduce the number and security functions of US forces in Afghanistan to what is being called for by the Afghani people. Remaining troops in Afghanistan should be placed under the command of a United Nations peacekeeping operation. Moreover, the US government must pay the reparations owed to both countries so that they can rebuild themselves on their own terms.

Although these small steps alone will not bring an end to the conflicts that the US has helped to foment in the Middle East, they represent important steps forward as we enter the second decade of a new millennium. You have argued that the people of Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Israel deserve the right to peace and self-determination. This is what we intend to struggle and agitate for both here in the United States and internationally. You must decide whether you will work with us or against us in this.

Sincerely,

Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine

The Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine

Boston University Students for Justice in Palestine

New York University Students for Justice in Palestine

Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Washington

Students for Justice in Palestine, University of Chicago Chapter

c.c. Robert C. Byrd, President Pro Tempore, United States Senate; Nancy Pelosi, Speaker, United States House of Representatives

In an effort to build support for the weapons embargo on Israel that Amnesty International is calling for, we are circulating this letter to various SJP chapters and other peace and Palestinian rights movements across the US. If you or your organization would like to be listed as a signatory to this letter, just contact Brian Napoletano at b.napoletano@gmail.com with your full name (or the name of your organization), your contact information, and any information you would like to have included with your signature.

Goldstone publicly released the final draft of his report beforehand, and announced its findings in a press conference on 15 September. Goldstone stated that, “The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force (IDF). There’s no question that the firing of rockets and mortars [by armed groups from Gaza] was deliberate and calculated to cause loss of life and injury to civilians and damage to civilian structures. The mission found that these actions also amount to serious war crimes and also possibly crimes against humanity.” He also noted that the report reflects the unanimous view of all four of the mission’s members.

The report concludes that mortars fired from Gaza constitute indiscriminate and deliberate attacks against civilian populations. Israel’s response, however, was said to have employed disproportionate force, and that by deliberately killing civilians and targeting civilian structures, Israeli forces are responsible for grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Israeli soldiers and planners responsible for these attacks bear individual criminal responsibility, according to the report. The Israeli military’s deliberate attacks on water supplies and industrial sites, in addition to its use of Palestinian civilians as human shields, were also identified as war crimes.

To address the lack of accountability for these crimes, the report recommended that Israel and the proper authorities in Gaza be required to report to the Security Council in six months on the progress of investigations and the prosecutions that it should carry out, in addition to independent oversight by a body of observers appointed by the Security Council. The mission recommended referring the situation to the International Criminal Court if the experts’ reports do not indicate that independent proceedings are taking place withing six months.

The Israeli government and its U.S. and international lobbies immediately responded to the report by flooding the media with vitriolic attacks on both Justice Goldstone and the United Nations itself, accusing them of everything from “singling out” Israel for criticism to supporting and promoting terrorism. Many Palestinian activists, on the other hand, balked at the fact that the mission equated primitive “qassami” attacks with the Israeli government’s coordinated military assaults on civilian populations and infrastructure and its illegal military occupation of Palestinian territories. While it too accused the Council of exaggerating Israel’s crimes, the U.S. government instructed its junior ally to comply with the the report’s recommendations and begin conducting credible investigations into possible war crimes committed by Israeli forces.

The UN’s 15 September press release on the Goldstone report can be found here: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32057&Cr=&Cr1=.

The 29 September press release on Justice Goldstone’s presentation to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council can be found here:http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32339&Cr=palestin&Cr1=.

The final draft of the 575-page report can be found here: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf.

Contact: Brian Napoletano
Tel: 765.543.8929
Email: bnapoletpurdue.edu

For Immediate Release

West Lafayette, Indiana — 24 September 2009 — Purdue Students for Justice in Palestine will be hosting poet and peace activist Remi Kanazi in room 172 of the Robert E. Heine Pharmacy Building on Thursday, 8 October 2009 from 7 to 9 PM at “Speak Peace,” an exhibition of poetry and visual artwork discussing peace and other social issues by local and nationally recognized artists.

The evening will begin with a collective reading of Hashem Said’s “I am Israel,” followed by a slideshow presentation of paintings photographed on Israel’s illegal separation wall. Local and student poets will then present their work and works that they admire, and then Remi Kanazi will deliver a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. The event is free and open to the public.

“Speak Peace” is designed to offer personal insight into peace and justice issues around the world, including the conflict between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The students organizing the event hope that it will help to foster a deeper understanding of and appreciation for different cultures and the perspectives that they offer.

“I think that this event could help people to see their world from a different point of view,” said Purdue SJP president Yaseen Kadura, “I really think that we learn a lot from looking at ourselves through someone else’s eyes.”

Kadura explained that the evening’s theme, “a voice for a people without a voice,” reflects this need for victims of injustice and violence to find a way to communicate their experiences to others. He hopes that efforts such as this will help people to escape a cycle of violence by finding creative, constructive ways to voice their suffering, and that they will encourage everyone to work toward a more peaceful future.

New York-based poet and writer Remi Kanazi devotes much of his professional life to communicating his perspective as a Palestinian-American. He regularly travels around the United States to present his poetry, and his writing has appeared in ZNet, CounterPunch, and Media Monitors, and he recently edited a collection of poetry and other works titled, “Poets for Palestine.”

About Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine

Purdue University Students for Justice in Palestine is a diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and community members who organize in order to promote justice, human rights, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian People. For more information, visit www.purduesjp.wordpress.com.

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