In late April, a video of an American-Israeli settler attempting to remove residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Palestine’s West Bank went viral. The video, initially posted to Twitter, showed the settler walking into a Palestinian resident’s garden and verbally harassing them. After outrage sparked protests in Palestine’s Gaza Strip, Israeli Forces attacked Al-Aqsa Mosque and then began airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, followed by eleven incessant days of bombing Palestinians in Gaza.

For the first time in a long time, all eyes were on Palestine. However, this time around, there was a larger resounding echo of the words “Free Palestine” all around the world. More people criticized practices held by the Israeli government, and questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel itself. 

At Bonfire, we maintain that Israel is an apartheid settler state created with the goal of exterminating all Palestinians for a place to house Israeli Jews and must be formally condemned and divested from by the United States government, all foreign entities– and our universities. 

The University of Illinois at Chicago has failed its responsibility to support its marginalized communities as one of the nation’s “most diverse” universities, and Bonfire charges the institution with being complicit in perpetuating violence upon Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as its own Palestinian students.

What is Zionism?

The best way to understand the magnitude of Israeli violence upon Palestinians is to know that Zionism frames a 139 year long history of settler colonialism in Palestine. Settler colonialism is a distinct type of colonialism that functions through the replacement of indigenous populations with an invasive settler society that, over time, develops a distinctive identity and sovereignty.

Zionism is a political ideology and nationalist movement that emerged in the nineteenth-century in attempt to combat anti-semitism and establish a “homeland” for Jewish people and culture. According to the organization Jewish Voice for Peace, Zionism is “a false and failed answer to the desperately real question many of our ancestors faced of how to protect Jewish lives from murderous antisemitism in Europe.” They continue to expand, “Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others. Our own history teaches us how dangerous this can be.” 

Israel and its Defence Forces operate out of Zionism to perpetuate violence upon Palestinians. They displace Indigenous Palestinians in order to grant Israeli citizenship to Jewish people looking to settle in their perceived homeland/settler colonial state.

The violence of Israeli settler-colonialism in Palestine, driven by Zionism, is a facet of British imperialism. 

The US has to support Israel’s use of Zionism in order to rationalize their own genocidal history. Calling for the return of Palestinian people to their homeland is to call for the return of all indigenous peoples to their respective homelands. 

Zionism and settler colonialism come from the same vein as the imperialism and militarism that plague the world. The US military and Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) both use Zionism and settler colonialism in order to perpetuate imperialistic and militaristic violence.

There must be different ways to repair harm without reproducing it.

UIC School of Public Health Supports Israel

The UIC School of Public Health (SPH) came under fire earlier this year for inviting Professor Gabi Bin Nun of Ben Gurion University in Israel. UIC Public Health’s mission statement claims dedication to “excellence in protecting and improving the health and well-being of the people of the metropolitan Chicago area, the State of Illinois and the nation, and of others throughout the world”. 

Yet, the school invited a speaker from a settler state that currently has a blockade on medical equipment, requires Gazans to apply for medical permits to seek treatment (54 people died in 2017 alone while awaiting permit approval), and did nothing to ensure that Palestinians under the occupation have access to the COVID-19 vaccine. 

Despite having the largest Muslim Student Association in the country—with Muslims students making up 15% of UIC’s student body—SPH has public ties to an organization that has funded extremist Islamophobic hate groups. The school allowed an organization that donated over $700k to an Islamophobic hate group, send a speaker to its school. 

UIC aligns itself with organizations and people that called for Muslims to be put in concentration camps with “WWII Japanese American concentration camps as a model.”  While UIC claims to be a diverse and inclusive school, it shies away from implementing inclusivity in practice. 

Despite resistance from UIC’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the SPH allowed this speaker to come on behalf of the Jewish United Fund and its “Visiting Scholar in Israeli Studies” program. When SJP representatives met with administrators from SPH prior to the event, administrators encouraged that they attend this hate-funded event for the sake of “conversation and dialogue to the Palestinian cause”. When the event finally came around, the Zoom chat was disabled and students were removed for asking questions about Palestine. 

It has become increasingly obvious that the promises of “conversation and dialogue” are pathetic attempts at avoiding accountability. When the time comes for said conversations, Palestinian students are actively silenced.

UIC Divest Campaign

This is not the first time UIC administration has ignored calls from Palestinian students to stand against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In 2016, UIC’s Students for Justice in Palestine led a “UIC Divest” campaign. They demanded the school divest from five major corporations that play large roles in upholding the apartheid state of Israel: Caterpillar, G4S, Hewlett Packard (HP), Boeing, and Lockheed Martin. Although the Undergraduate Student Government (USG) passed the resolution in February of 2016 demanding that the school divest, administration has yet to make major, or minor changes in the corporations they work with.

In fact, in 2018, the University of Illinois system released an anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) statement claiming that participating in the movement is anti-Semetic.

Being pro-Palestinan or in solidarity with Palestinians is not anti-Semitic. Those opposing the extremist Israeli settler-state are not opposed because the settlers are Jewish, but are opposed to the genocide and displacement of Indigenous Palestinians.

Contracts Complicit to Violence

Bonfire has previously questioned the University’s affiliations with the CIA for their “Signature Schools” Program—a program that actively targets students of color and international students—including Palestinian students. UIC Engineering’s ties to Boeing and Caterpillar deserve just as much pushback from the student body. Boeing and Caterpillar give millions of dollars worth of weapons and machinery to Israel. 

The D9 bulldozers that Israel utilizes for its demolitions of Palestinian homes (which are cutely nicknamed “Doobi”, meaning “teddy bear” in Hebrew) are designed and sold by Caterpillar, a machinery company based in Peoria, IL. Caterpillar also has their own sub-company known as Israeli Tractors and Equipment (I.T.E.) based in Holon, Israel. 

In February of 2017, Caterpillar paved the Nabi Elias Bypass Road, a “settlers-only” road. This required the demolition of 25 acres of Palestinian land and 700 olive trees. UIC seems to have no issue with this, as just two months later the Innovation Center extended their partnership with Caterpillar.

Boeing is another corporation with a large hand in the occupational violence against Palestinians. The Biden Administration recently approved a $735 million sale of Boeing’s “Joint Direct Attack Munition” (JDAM). JDAM’s are a “guidance tool kit” that converts unguided, freefall bombs into “precision-guided missiles” also known as smart bombs. This allows for bombs to hit specific targets. (Keep this in mind next time the IDF says they accidentally exploded a home, school, or hospital.)

Additionally, Boeing has single-handedly boosted the Israeli Aerospace Industry by nearly $1 billion in only three years. It was the Israeli Aerospace Industries that converted those D9 Caterpillar bulldozers into autonomous machines. 

Much like Caterpillar, UIC prides itself on its relationship with Boeing. The Office of Global Engagement flaunts the fact that UIC is in the same city as the Boeing headquarters on its website. 

Knowing the ways in which these companies contribute to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, does it make you uncomfortable to know that UIC has a Boeing-specific career fair for its students? UIC alumni are directly participating in designing these weapons, and current UIC students are being taught that designing a tool for colonialist mass destruction is success.

UIC Silent While Canary Mission Targets UIC Community

Not only does UIC fail to protect the rights of Palestinian students, but it also fails to protect their safety. Canary Mission is an online organization that prides itself on “documenting people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews”. Many UIC students and faculty have been victims of this watchlist. For each of these students and faculty, there is an entire page dedicated to leaking extremely detailed information and exaggerations about their ‘hateful’ actions, as well as images and their social media information. 

Canary Mission is very active. One UIC student’s page was last updated within the past month. Their page meticulously describes their actions done within UIC through a student organization. Another student’s page describes an essay they wrote for a class and later published. There are even pages dedicated to professors at UIC, so the administration is failing a lot more than just its students.

Canary Mission pays Google to be the top search result of students’ names in order to dox these individuals, which is a huge threat to their safety. This infringes on individuals’ rights to free speech and tries to intimidate people into silence. It is the university’s responsibility to protect the safety and freedoms of their community, yet they remain silent. All to protect the façade that UIC is a safe space for marginalized people.

Being documented on Canary Mission’s database affects hireability, is an extreme violation of privacy, amplifies the surveillance states of both the US and Israel, and gives IDF soldiers more leniency in turning Indigenous Palestinians and other pro-Palestinian people away at checkpoints in Palestine.

Canary Mission is not the only mode of surveillance that Palestinians and other Arab students face. The American Friends Service Committee reports, “Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Program is disproportionately targeting and criminalizing Muslim and Arab youth in Illinois.” The CVE program surveills students for “extremist indicators” such as being influenced by radicalism, or, what is most often the case: simply being Arab, Muslim, or non-white.

By not protecting its students, UIC passively threatens the safe space that every student is entitled to within the university. Silence enables violence. It is truly shameful that the UIC administration uses images of Black and brown students on brochures to keep up the pretense of an inclusive space, while simultaneously leaving those same students to fend for themselves against violence and stalking on campus. 

** note: Please do not search UIC students and faculties’ names on Canary Mission as extra traffic on the site will amplify their names in the algorithms.

We Condemn UIC

Bonfire condemns UIC’s affiliation and support of Israel, and demands this institution protect and fight for its marginalized students before using our faces to pretend this is a safe space for people of color. We demand UIC cuts ties with Israel, stands behind the Palestinian community, and publicly rejects any and all forms of Zionism and colonial violence. Creating cultural centers will never be enough.

UIC administration has never formally released a statement in solidarity with Palestinian students. They know that they can’t. They can’t because they directly benefit from the exploitation and death of Palestinians.

Call to Action

Students: Speak up and continue to have conversations with your peers about the colonial violence in Palestine. Continue to challenge UIC’s administration and every institution’s intentions, decisions, and actions. 

UIC Administration: For every time you think your heinous actions and ties go unnoticed—think again. We see you.

Glossary:

apartheid: inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

checkpoints: barriers erected by the Israeli Security Forces as part of the apartheid system of the Israeli government to prevent Palestinians from being able to move freely through their homeland.settler colonialism: a form of colonialism in which settlers create societies that are distinct from the indigenous population and seek to control land and resources and establish their own economy and system of governance.