Two weeks ago, activists slipped mock eviction notices under the doors of students’ dorm rooms, highlighting the ongoing epidemic of home demolitions in occupied Palestine. The notices began by telling students that their dorm was scheduled for demolition, and continued on to explain that every year thousands of Palestinians have demolition orders applied to their homes solely because of their ethnicity. The notices clearly stated that they were not real and invited students to join the conversation on Twitter with the hashtag #BostonMockEviction.
Citing data from the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions, the notices point out that 160,000 indigenous Palestinians have been displaced since 1967. In fact, according to data from the United Nations, 862 Palestinians were made homeless by Israeli demolitions in the first nine months of 2013 alone. The Palestinian population in the Occupied Territories, including illegally annexed East Jerusalem, continues to endure violence, displacement, dispossession and deprivation as a result of prolonged Israeli occupation, in violation of their rights under international law. In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, demolitions are a major cause of the destruction of property, including residential and livelihood-related structures and displacement.
Mock eviction notices have been used at many other campuses nationwide and have usually succeeded in inspiring debate on campus about Israeli policies and the conditions under which Palestinians live. Most notably, last year at Harvard when students implemented a similar campaign, Zionist organizations made unsubstantiated claims that Jewish students had been targeted or that the notices forced students into having uncomfortable political conversations. Student activists on many campuses have responded that the question of Israel-Palestine has for too long been the ‘third-rail’ on college campuses, a subject that you were not supposed to talk about, but that direct actions are important in engaging students in a critical debate about a serious issue impacting people’s lives, which the mainstream media talks about too little or in a biased way.
The timing of this distribution of mock eviction notices coincided with the start of the 10th Annual Israeli Apartheid Week, which seeks to raise awareness of the unequal treatment of Palestinians in Israel and the conditions of those people living under Israeli military occupation, as well as build support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement. Throughout the week activists on campuses nationwide hosted events, such as movie screenings, lectures and creative actions, which raise awareness about these conditions.
-Tori Porell is a senior international affairs major and an executive board member of Students for Justice in Palestine.
