What is IAW Beirut?¶

IAW Beirut is a grassroots non-hierarchical student-led movement to bring Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) to the American University of Beirut in March, 2010. This represents the first time IAW will be held at a university in the Arab world (outside of Palestine) and for this historic action we are seeking international support. In response to the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), we intend to hold five nights of lectures, roundtables, film screenings, BDS planning workshops, concerts and other events focused on the theme of global opposition to Israeli apartheid.

International Faculty Advisers¶

• As’ad AbuKhalil – CSU Stanislaus
• Adrienne Hurley – McGill
• Jens Hanssen – University of Toronto
• Amir Hassanpour – University of Toronto
• Stephen Sheehi – University of South Carolina
• Kara Lynch – Hampshire
• Saree Makdisi – UCLA
• Tom M. Ricks – University of Pennsylvania
• Salim Tamari – Birzeit
• Muhammad Ali Khalidi – York University
• Henri Franses – American University of Beirut

IAW Beirut Declaration¶

GIVEN that we stand at a historical moment of total desperation, with the collapse of the so-called peace process, and;
GIVEN the illegality and brutal violence of Israeli policies of discrimination, segregation, occupation and military belligerency, and;
RECOGNIZING that Palestinian refugees were driven from their homes by a policy of ethnic cleansing, and;
AFFIRMING the right to resist occupation and the right of return of all refugees, and;
STANDING in solidarity with all dispossessed peoples;
GIVEN that Palestinian civil society has called for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel;
INSPIRED by the historic struggle of South Africans against apartheid and;
IN VIEW of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa, and;
IN THE SPIRIT OF international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, and;
AFFIRMING that we stand with fellow students at all Palestinian universities, and;
RECALLING especially the recent destruction of the Islamic University of Gaza by the Israeli army on 28 December 2008, and;
AFFIRMING the importance of grassroots student participation in a non-hierarchical movement to bring IAW, a worldwide campaign, to Beirut;
DECLARING this the first time in the Arab world, outside of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, that an Israeli Apartheid Week has been organized by students, and;
GIVEN our commitment to the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, and;
GIVEN that in the Arab world, previous attempts to challenge Israeli apartheid have been suppressed…

…WE THE UNDERSIGNED, on behalf of the student movement, declare our intention to hold
the inaugural Israeli Apartheid Week at the American University of Beirut in 2010.