The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism wants schools to recognize Israel as a settler-colonial state and adopt APR definition
In their November 10th webinar, the IUAPR once more discusses the definition of APR and why it should be in our schools
On November 10, the IUAPR held another webinar hoping to educate participants on the definition of Anti-Palestinian Racism, its impacts and what can be done about it.
The speakers at the webinar were Cherie Ginwalla, a pediatrician, anti-racism educator and co-chair of Education Committee and founding member of IUAPR. Ginwalla, not herself a Palestinian, presented on Palestinian culture.
In September, Ginwalla spoke at a congressional briefing with the Institute For Middle East Understanding (a foreign policy advocacy organization funded by groups like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund who give money to Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow and other extreme anti-Israel groups).
She appeared alongside outgoing member of Congress Rep. Jamaal Bowman: J Street revoked its endorsement of him over his anti-Israel rhetoric, Bowman accuses Israel of ‘apartheid’, ‘genocide’, accuses AIPAC of undue influence in US politics, has engaged in conspiracy theories regarding 9/11 and denied that Hamas carried out sexual violence on October 7th.
Tariq Habash was a Biden administration appointee in the Department of Education. He resigned over the administration’s support of Israel post-October 7th. On his X account, Habash accuses Israel of genocide, ethnic cleansing and reposts figures like Hasan Piker, a very popular twitch streamer who told his millions of followers “it doesn’t matter if rapes fucking happened” on October 7th, platformed, and has defended the Houthis and Hezbollah.
The next speaker was Emily Antoon-Walsh, a pediatrician and Chair of the Advocacy Committee of IUAPR. Dr. Antoon-Walsh wore a watermelon necklace in the shape of downward facing triangle for the webinar - that is a red, downward facing triangle.
The final speaker was Jess Ghannam, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at USCF and a founding board member of IUAPR.
Ghannam has signed a petition against the Geneva Accords, supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, has referred to it as an apartheid state. Ghannam has also been an executive committee member of Al-Awda the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition.
Al-Awda has recently been involved in the protests in “solidarity” with Yemen and to “arrest Netanyahu.” Here are its “points of unity.”
Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition affirms that the Palestinian Arab people, regardless of their religious affiliation, are indigenous to Palestine. Therefore, they are entitled to live anywhere in Palestine which encompasses present-day “Israel”, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Al-Awda regards the Israeli definition of Jewish nationals, granting exclusive rights to citizenship and land to any Jew from anywhere in the world, as part of the racism and discrimination inherent in Zionist ideology, which underlies the policies and laws of the colonial occupation state of Israel.
Al-Awda unequivocally supports the fundamental, inalienable, historical, legal, individual and collective rights of all Palestinian refugees to return to their original towns, villages and lands anywhere in Palestine from which they were expelled. Al-Awda also unequivocally supports the rights of all Palestinian refugees to compensation for damages inflicted on their property and lives, and to restitution of all destroyed and confiscated property. All Palestinians are entitled to the rights to self-determination, to political, economic and civil equality, and to live in a single democratic state for all its citizens in all of Palestine. The Palestinian national identity encompasses more than 5.5 million people living in exile, more than 2.5 million living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and more than 1.2 million living within the areas of Palestine controlled by the Israeli occupation since 1948.
Al-Awda firmly stands against the continued displacement of Palestinians, the construction of illegal Jewish-only colonies in the form of residential settlements, the racist confiscation of land and the demolition of homes since 1948. Al-Awda firmly stands against the collective punishment of Palestinians, and all violations of Palestinian civil, economic, political, national and human rights. Al-Awda abhors and condemns the use of massacres and abuse of civilians to further the expansion of Israel to the detriment of Palestinian society.
Al-Awda supports the struggle for the liberation of Palestine and views it as a struggle against all forms of colonialism. This struggle is inseparable from the universal and labor struggles for social, economic and national equality, development, justice and freedom against an imposed global new world order. Al-Awda upholds all of the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Convention on the Political Rights of Women, and the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Al-Awda also upholds the African Charter of Human and People’s Rights, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (Pub. L. 99-440) and the American Convention on Human Rights.
Al-Awda respects, recognizes, and supports the central role of Palestinian women in the struggle for national liberation and the right to return. This includes the leadership of Palestinian women in the right to return movement.
Al-Awda will work to educate the public about Israeli injustices the US government subsidizes with billions of dollars annually. Until the dismantlement of the exclusionary and racist character of Israel, and until all Palestinians are granted the right to return and achieve equality, Al-Awda is united in working for and demanding:
An end to all US political, military and economic aid to Israel
The divestment of all public and private entities from all Israeli corporations and American corporations with subsidiaries operating within Israel
An end to the investment of Labor Union members’ pension funds in Israel
The boycott of all Israeli products
The right to return for all Palestinian refugees to their original towns, villages and lands with compensation for damages inflicted on their property and lives
The right for all Palestinian refugees to full restitution of all confiscated and destroyed property
The formation of an independent, democratic state for all its citizens in all of Palestine
As usual, the definition of APR comes from the Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association definition.
For more on the definition of APR, its origins and its implications for free speech and education see here , here and here.
The speakers argue that Palestinians are indigenous to Israel because Palestinians constitute Jews, Christians and Muslims, using census data from the British Mandate of Palestine (formed with the ultimate intention of the formation of a Jewish state.)
The talk moved on to a discussion of cultural racism:
Racism, according to IUAPR, is a “culture of white supremacy.”
“whiteness is centered, normalized, uplifted and presumed to be the standard to maintain access to social, political and economic dominance for White.”
Now that we know that racism is systemic and structural white supremacy (in other words, racism can only be understood in the context of power), we can move on to discussing what “anti-Palestinian racism” is. As stated earlier, IUAPR adopts ACLA’s definition in its entirety:
As you can see, taking issue with, debating or denying the Palestinian narrative of the “Nakba” is racism. Rejecting the idea that Palestinian refugees (and this includes descendants so the Palestinian “refugee” community has only grown) have a “right to return” is racism. However, the right of return has never seriously been considered in any two state solution agreement because it would effectively mean the end of Israel.
This was glossed over in the webinar, but you can see that “equating the oppressed with the oppressor” or “blaming the oppressed for the actions of the oppressor” is racism - in this conception, it would seem that criticizing Hamas, for example, or blaming Hamas for October 7th, its refusal to surrender and return the hostages, would be racism. “Rationalizing the use of violence against Palestinians”…again it would seem that arguing that Israel has a right to self-defense, to carry out missions to retrieve hostages, would be rationalizing violence and therefore racism.
As an example of the “exclusion of Palestinian allies”, IUAPR offers that Kenneth Roth, former head of Human Rights Watch, was denied a Harvard Kennedy School Fellowship. An apology and offer of Fellowship was subsequently given to Roth. He instead accepted a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a visiting professor at Princeton. What a great example of the “exclusion” of a Palestinian ally - the former head of a major institution, Human Rights Watch, extended two fellowship offers at ivy league universities and now a visiting professor at Princeton.
How has Ken Roth been an ally for the Palestinian cause? Under his leadership, HW became preoccupied with Israel. The founder of Human Rights Watch has accused his former organization of bias against Israel. Roth was behind a widely criticized report , criticized by the Biden administration amongst others, accusing Israel of apartheid. In 2021, the ADL criticized Roth for blaming an increase in antisemitism in the UK on Israel’s policy in Gaza. He did the same in 2014, this time Germany was the country under examination. Roth also reiterated claims that “Zionism” and “white supremacy” are birds of a feather.
Here is another example of “exclusion” : the incorporation of the IUAPR took more time than they would have liked because of concerns over the organization’s name and goals. After writing a letter to the Secretary of State, IUAPR was incorporated the next day. Of course, the goal of APR is to smear the State of Israel. The Secretary of State had been onto something…
Some examples of this defamation would be useful. But as with ACLA, IUAPR is light on examples.
As you can see from the survey carried out by IUAPR, the people most affected by APR are not in fact Palestinian and the ‘impact’ seems to be a difficult measure of “feelings.”
So now that we know what APR is and its impacts on Palestinians and their allies, what does IUAPR propose to do about it? As this is a K-12 tracker, I will focus on IUAPR’s answer in the realm of education:
IUAPR wants to incorporate the APR framework in ‘organizations’ and ‘communities’, it wants to normalize the term and not have it subsumed by the term “islamophobia” and it wants measures to combat APR.
What are these measures:
1: approach your school board
2:make sure that APR is included in curricula when discussing forms of racism
3:establish dedicated support services
4:Create measures of accountability
5: Include APR in DEI training for educators
As previously discussed on this substack, the next step for activists like IUAPR is to ensure that APR is incorporated into school policy - that teachers, administrators and students have trainings based around APR. This is already being floated in school districts in California. And this was an explicit strategy mentioned by ACLA - if you use the term “racism” in your complaint, institutions will need to deal with those claims using the mechanisms they have in place. Even though Palestinian is not a race, claiming racism requires institutions to investigate.
The definition of APR requires one to accept that Israel is a settler colonial state, that Palestinians have indigeneity to the land, a right of return, and that violence against Palestinians has no justification. To argue against these claims, debate them, discuss them in a classroom setting would leave students and teachers vulnerable to accusations of racism if APR becomes widely adopted.