PRESS RELEASE from Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee
13 November 2019
STUDENTS WALK OUT OF ISRAELI AMBASSADOR’S LECTURE ON “LEGAL” SETTLEMENTS
Over 100 students from across Harvard staged a silent protest at the Harvard Law School lecture given by the Israeli Consulate General in New York, Dani Dayan, entitled “The Legal Strategy of Israeli Settlements.” Students walked out of the auditorium after Dayan was introduced, holding signs that read “SETTLEMENTS ARE A WAR CRIME.” The Israeli Consulate General was forced to deliver his lecture to an almost empty room as students joined forces with the protest organized by the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine outside Austin Hall.
Dayan is a vocal advocate for the illegal expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian territory. In a 2012 op-ed in the New York Times, he wrote that the international community should abandon its vain attempts at the two-state solution and accept the Israeli presence in the West Bank as “an irreversible fact.” Israeli settlements are blatant violations of international law, and the Israeli settler movement is a violent project of settler-colonialism in occupied Palestine.
Smiling at the sight of the protesters silently leaving the room, Dayan remarked: “I remember a time doing something similar in my kindergarten.” He later tweeted (translated): “On my way back to NYC I’m thinking why are these people so happy with themselves? A bunch of losers trembling in fear of the disciplinary committees of their school.”
“I’m disappointed that the Harvard Law School would let this kind of propaganda for a colonial project for accumulation by dispossession be framed as “legal.” This is not only complicit but simply dishonest,” a student organizer remarked. “Let us be clear, there is a consensus among the international community that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and a violation of the fourth Geneva Convention,” they added.
Today’s silent protest comes on the heels of the most recent violent Israeli assault on Gaza. The death toll is reported to have surged to 26 Palestinians since early Tuesday, including 3 children and over 80 injured.
This event is part of a growing momentum on Harvard’s campus for justice in Palestine. “We do not intend on sitting out on complicity in oppression,” a student organizer remarked. “Not at Harvard, not anywhere else.”
PRESS CONTACT: harvardpsc@gmail.com
Students join the Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine outside Austin Hall
Empty Room after 100+ students walk out of Austin Hall