05.08.2020
Editorial Note
The Group “Action Palestine” at King’s College London (KCLAP) has only one mission, to attack Israel. The group has been recruiting Israeli academics to present Israel in a negative light. A recent online event was held by KCLAP, titled “Black Jewish Lives Matter.”
The event was reported by Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy, an associate with the CAMERA on Campus UK, a pro-Israel organization that follows campus campaigns to delegitimize Israel, titled “An academic attempt to frame Israel as a devious colonial enterprise.” The keynote speaker was Efrat Yerday, a doctoral candidate and lecturer at Tel Aviv University. She is a leading activist for Ethiopians in Israel who holds an M.A. in Politics and Government from Ben Gurion University. In her talk, Yerday was quoted as saying, “Ethiopians are sick of being depicted as people who should be grateful to their white ‘saviours’ for … barely qualifying as Jews.” Last year, Yerday has published an article with the publisher Berghahn Journals, Visual Anthropology in the Middle East, guest edited by Profs. Esther Hertzog and Yael Katzir. Yerday’s article, “To Be Black and Beautiful in Israel,” reviews works by female artists of Ethiopian origin. She argues that “these artists are presenting their attitudes towards the ‘white gaze.’ Though constantly subjected to it by the Israeli hegemony.” Yerday draws on postcolonial theory, among others. As a former student of BGU Politics and Government, the use of post-modernist jargon to debunk Israel is not surprising.
The host was Nimrod Evron, an Israeli member of KCLAP, and a master’s student of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck College. He, according to Leatherdale-Gilholy’s report, “was out to dismiss the reality of Israeli society so as to frame it as a devious colonial enterprise.” Evron also teaches middle school pupils at the London Acorn School for alternative schooling. Evron is a radical activist who gave a talk in 2015, before a Quaker audience. He was described as a “Jewish Israeli activist and Educator who’s activism includes involvement in New Profile’s Refusal Support Network and Alternative Summer Camp for Youth.” He explained his opposition to the Israeli State’s policies of “occupation and oppression.” He discussed “Direct action with Palestinians, worker immigration rights, the current situation on the Israeli left, Israel and the international community, international activist engagement with the Israeli public.”
Evron was also recruited by KCLAP to teach a workshop “Occupation 101,” teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the basics. This course aims to give a “comprehensive basic understanding of the conflict and occupation, both for people new to the conflict and people that already find themselves involved but feel they just need a better understanding.” Evron is presented as an activist in the anti-militarization and refusers movement, in various direct actions with Palestinians and various social justice campaigns, combining politics with critical education. In this course, he is accompanied by different Palestinian guest speakers.
According to KCLAP publication, this course is hosted by Babel’s Blessing, a grassroots language school.
The course prospectus includes a warning: “This is not a neutral course (there is no such thing). It does not aim to be “balanced” or “equal” to “both sides”. The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is far from being symmetric. There is a military occupation and a systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinian’s basic rights upheld by the state of Israel and the vast majority of Jewish-Israeli society. There is a dire need to resist this. However, the discourse promoted in this course aims to show that the clarity of having strong moral and political positions is not dimmed, but strengthened, by being supported by nuance and complexity.”
In June, KCLAP sent a letter to Prof. Edward Byrne, the KCL Principal, regarding partnerships with Technion. KCLAP stated, “We do not stand for any normalization of oppression. We do not want KCL to play any role in oppression worldwide. KCL must therefore listen to Archbishop Tutu and cut it’s partnership with the Technion immediately.”
In May, KCLAP promoted another initiative, “Apartheid Off Campus,” a new front for the Palestinian youth movement in the UK. It urges students “to get involved and find out how complicit your university is in Israeli Apartheid.” They argue that “Despite previous successful divestment efforts, King’s College London still insists to invest over 2.2 million pounds in companies complicity with the illegal Israeli occupation although they have an ethical investment policy which includes ESG issues like human rights. They clearly need to start acknowledging the rights of Palestinians as Human Rights too!”
As mentioned above, Israelis from Ethiopian descent are being recruited by Palestinians to present Israel in a negative light. This, against the backdrop of Ethiopians Jews, waiting for Israel to fly them in from Ethiopia. Some are relatives of those who are already living in Israel.
King’s College London, like many other universities in the West, should note that Palestinians are hacking their students’ organizations for their war against Israel.
JUL
05
Black Jewish Lives Matter – Meet Efrat Yerday (Free)
by Nimrod Evron
Date And Time Sun, 5 July 2020 21:00 – 22:30 IDT
Location Online Event
About this Event
Sign up here:
Meet Efrat Yerday, Chair of the Association of Ethiopian Jews.
Around 2% of Israeli Jews are from Ethiopian background, but they make up 16% of the population accused of attacking police officers.
After years in Isreal of facing systematic discrimination, erasure of their identity and police violence, many Ethiopian Jews are tried of being depicted as people who should be grateful to their white “savours” for just barely qualifing as Jews. They are fighting back.
You are invited to meet Efrat Yerday. Poet, journalist, activist and chair of the Association of Ethiopian Jews, the leading organization for the struggle for equality for Ethiopian Jews in Israel.
This is a unique opportunity to learn about what is perhaps the least talked about community in the most internationally talked about conflict, and hear about what is it like to be a black Jew in Israel, where does that position them within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and about complicated relations between race, identity, state and struggle.
Is there a specific question or topic you want Efrata to address? You can put your suggestion in the sign up (link above).
Moderator: Nimrod Evron. An Israeli activist and educator based in London.
Zoom link to be sent just before the beginning of the event to those who signed up.
KCL Action Palestine Society
“Around 2% of Israeli Jews are from Ethiopian background, but they make up 16% of the population accused of attacking police officers.
After years in Israel of facing systematic discrimination, erasure of their identity and police violence, many Ethiopian Jews are tried of being depicted as people who should be grateful to their white ‘savours’ for just barely qualifing as Jews. They are fighting back.”
By looking at the treatment of Ethiopian Jews in Israel, our understanding of the racist discrimination experienced by Palestinians becomes clearer.
This is a unique opportunity to hear from Efrat Yerday, a leading figure in the Black Lives Matter movement in Israel, hosted by educator Nimrod Evron.
SUN, 5 JULBlack Jewish Lives Matter – Meet Efrat YerdayOnline event100 people interested
======================================================
https://twitter.com/KCLAP
KCL Action Palestine@KCLAP Student run anti-Apartheid group. Aiming to educate on the Occupation of Palestine & campaign against KCL’s complicity. FREEDOM, JUSTICE, EQUALITY
https://twitter.com/KCLAP/status/1233853602990522369
KCL Action Palestine @KCLAP ·Feb 29 Hi everyone, this workshop on Occupation 101 will be running from 11th March led by Nimrod Evron. It’s £10-15 per session and proceeds will be going towards Babel’s Blessing’s work with refugees. Details are in the link below
Learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the basics
https://occupation101.business.blog/
Learning about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, from the basics
Occupation 101
Everything you wanted to know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but were too afraid to be called out to actually ask
*Dates: Wednesdays 19:00-21:00
8.7 , 1.7 , 24.6 , 17.6 , 10.6 , 3.6 , 29.4 , 22.4 ,15.4 , 1.4 , 25.3 , 18.3 , 11.3
The course is online – with Zoom
Hoping to end closer to 20:45*
Sign up: https://babels2019.as.me The first meeting at 11.3 is free! or contact me at occupation101course@gmail.com
Aims of this Course
To give comprehensive basic understanding of the conflict and occupation, both for people new to the conflict and people that already find themselves involved but feel they just need a better understanding.
To create a safe space to study, discuss and to inner-reflect about one of the most relevant, yet hazardous-for-discussion topics on the agenda.
To give complicated, nuanced and helpful information and discourse on a topic which often lacks all of these in mainstream and social media.
Each session is 1.5-2 hours. The sessions will combine discussions, and fun learning games with lectures and videos.
About the facilitator: Nimrod Evron is an Israeli activist and educator. He has been active in the anti-militarization and refusers movement, in various direct actions with Palestinians, and in various social justice campians. He specializes in combaining politics with critical education. He will be accompanied by different Palestinian guest speakers in several of the sessions.
This course is supported by the Yalla Nakba Education – a led by young Palestinians and Jews to teach about the Nakba, and is hosted by Babel’s Blessing – a grassroots organization that offers courses to raise money for English lessons to refugees.
:Fees
All fees go to fund English lessons for refugees in the UK. The facilitator does the course for free.
!Come to the first session, on 11.3.20, for free, and then decide if it’s right for you
Student cost – £120 ( £10 for each session)
Standard cost – £180 ( £15 for each session)
Warning: This is not a neutral course (there is no such thing). It does not aim to be “balanced” or “equal” to “both sides”. The violence between Israelis and Palestinians is far from being symmetric. There is a military occupation and a systematic disenfranchisement of Palestinian’s basic rights upheld by the state of Israel and the vast majority of Jewish-Israeli society. There is a dire need to resist this. However, the discourse promoted in this course aims to show that the clarity of having strong moral and political positions is not dimmed, but strengthened, by being supported by nuance and complexity.
Course Structure
For the full course structure, scroll bellow
The course is divided into three sub-sections:
Sessions 1-3 (11.3-25.3) “The Basics” aim to “give us a footing” about the conflict, in understanding the group we are in, our personal, emotional and political positions, and having a wide (but brief) historical background (some of which will be expanded upon later).
Sessions 4-7 (29.4-20.5) “The Issues” will dwell each time on a specific issue of the conflict, this will usually involve a guest as well.
Sessions 8-13 (3.6-8.7) “Perspectives and Solutions” should help us understand both ideas of why and how the occupation is being sustained, current trends, what acts of resistance are being attempted, and finally to allow the participants to “try and solve the conflict” or at least think what are their stands about it now.
The course – session by session
The Basics
1. Introduction: why we are here, what is our presumptions, why can’t we usually learn properly about this, and how are we going to make it a proper space to learn and express our opinions.
2. Having basic navigational skills in the fundamentals of the conflict – Brief historical picture (19th century until 1967): The Zionist Dream, Palestine pre 1948, 48 war and the Nakkbah, The state of Israel and the Palestinians until 1967.
3. The six day war, Occupation of 1967, establishment of occupation, First Lebanon War, First intifada, Oslo Accords, Second intifada, Separation Wall, Disengagement plan, Hamas takeover, Gaza Siege.
The Issues
4. The Nakkbah and the refugees
5. The military occupation in the West Bank and living within it (as Palestinians and as settlers, including also Palestinian violence from the West Bank and the military judicial and bureaucratic system)
6. Palestinian Israelis + the divided city of Jerusalem
7. Gaza (including also Hamas and rocket launching) + Palestinian prisoners
Perspectives and Solutions
8. The wider Arab-Israeli conflict and additional actors in the conflict (additional wars, Golan heights, Hezbollah, Iran, Egypt, Evangelicals, AIPAC, Saudi Arabia, EU, USA).
9. Zionist perspectives
10. Israeli Jewish society and the Occupation (including the politics of inner-Jewish group relations)
11. Current trends in Palestinian society and acts of resistance
12. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the UK – discussion about BDS, anti-Semitism and its place in the UK left
13. Conclusion and finding a solution
Sign up to the course at https://babels2019.as.me
!Come to the first session, on 11.3.20, for free, and then decide if it’s right for you
Contact me for questions at https://occupation101.business.blog
======================================================
KCL Action Palestine Society
Letter from KCL Action Palestine to KCL Principal regarding partnerships with Technion.
We do not stand for any normalisation of oppression.
We do not want KCL to play any role in oppression worldwide.
KCL must therefore listen to Archbishop Tutu and cut it’s partnership with the Technion immediately.
Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK
Read full letter below:
===========================================================================
https://www.jns.org/opinion/an-academic-attempt-to-frame-israel-as-a-devious-colonial-enterprise/
An academic attempt to frame Israel as a devious colonial enterprise
Event speakers implied that along with Ethiopians, Israeli Arabs face ceaseless, racist oppression, though provided no evidence for this claim.
By Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy
(July 22, 2020 / JNS) “Educator” Nimrod Evron and groups including King’s College London Action Palestine hosted a virtual discussion on Ethiopian Jews in Israel on July 5 to frame their experience as part of a “global struggle against racial injustice” recently publicized by the Black Lives Matter movement. The key speaker was Efrat Yerday, a lecturer at Tel Aviv University and a leading figure in activism for Ethiopians in Israel.
It was evident from the outset of the meeting that Evron was out to dismiss the reality of Israeli society so as to frame it as a devious colonial enterprise. He guided the discussion with statements such as “Israel is a white, European culture” and “Israel is a white-supremacist society.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise since Evron is the facilitator of the “Occupation 101 Course” that boasts that it does not aim to be “balanced” or “equal” to “both sides” in its history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Yerday supported Evron’s extreme narrative by suggesting that “Ethiopians are sick of being depicted as people who should be grateful to their white ‘saviours’ for … barely qualifying as Jews.” Her rhetoric is a textbook radical attempt to generalize entire identity groups as possessing a monolithic experience and political agenda simply because they are not “white,” and reinforces the myth that non-Ethiopian Jews derive privilege from being “white.” There have been plenty of wranglings between the Ethiopian religious tradition and rabbinic Judaism, but this has generally been associated with theological qualms rather than racism. Ethiopian Jews are visible across Israeli politics, religious life and entertainment, yet Evron and Yerday deliberately presented events through a narrow lens of racial oppression so to misconstrue Israel as being uniquely evil.
As far as the question of “why is there no joint Ethiopian struggle with the Palestinians?” Yerday replied that Ethiopians were fearful of being considered saboteurs for aligning with Palestinian activism. The real answer would appear to be that for all of Israel’s flaws, the Ethiopian community overwhelmingly supports the Jewish state’s right to exist, and their enlistment rate in the Israel Defense Forces can be construed as an example: It is higher than that of the general population.
Why would the broadly Zionist Ethiopian community find common cause with the “Palestinian struggle,” which consistently seeks to dismantle Zionism and Israel violently? It was clear that the purpose of this discussion was not to identify issues with racism against Israeli Ethiopians, but to forge imaginary alliances between communities for the sake of demonizing Israel as an irredeemably racist project, whose crimes necessitate alliances of all who do not form a majority in Israeli society. It was implied continuously throughout the event that along with Ethiopians, Israeli Arabs face ceaseless, racist oppression, although no attempt to evidence this provocative claim was made.
Nevertheless, the recent history of Ethiopians in Israel is a complex one. “Operation Moses” (1984) and “Operation Solomon” (1991), in which the IDF rescued more than 20,000 Ethiopian Jews from famine and civil war in East Africa, was the precursor to today’s Ethiopian community in Israel. As Yerday outlined, discussions in the lead-up to the talk were not unanimous in their support for the Ethiopian migration. World Zionist Organization writer Malkah Raymist, for example, complained that the Ethiopians’ “mental outlook is that of children.” The Israeli government conducted the rescue missions nonetheless, and many incoming Ethiopians exited planes to the greeting of thousands of joyous Israeli onlookers. It is dishonest to define Israel by its counterfactual mistakes.
Yerday also highlighted a 2015 incident in which two Israeli police officers assaulted and arrested an Ethiopian-Israeli in IDF uniform as evidence of Israel’s deep racialized corruption. She omitted how the travesty sparked outrage, that the police involved were fired, and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu personally met the attacked soldier and declared that “Israel cannot accept racism.”
Another attendee who offered comment was Glyn Secker, secretary of fringe, pro-former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s “Jewish Voice for Labour” group. He claimed that the “Israeli lobby makes it impossible to criticize Zionism for fear of being called anti-Semitic.” In 2017, he defended former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s comments that “Hitler supported Zionism,” arguing that Livingstone’s “real mistake” was his failure to quote Adolf Eichmann in support of his point.
Yerday was right to highlight the concerns facing Israeli Ethiopians. Yet instances of discrimination and inequity are not evidence of a wholly intolerant society, nor are they reasons to destroy Zionism or Israel but to continue to improve them. Significant resources have been invested in promoting equal opportunities for all Israelis—Ethiopians included. In May 2020, Pnina Tamano-Shata became Israel’s first Ethiopian-born cabinet minister and is drafting plans to allow further Ethiopian immigration to Israel.
The anti-Semitic remarks of several attendees that went unchallenged by the panel suggest that this event was not about discussing solutions for racial harmony. To the contrary, it was an attempt to categorize Israel as an irredeemably racist society by pigeon-holing the experience of thousands of Ethiopian-Israelis into the framework of a fundamentally flawed and virulently anti-Zionist, intersectional ideology.
Georgia Leatherdale-Gilholy is a CAMERA on Campus UK Associate.====================================================
KCL Action Palestine Society
Hey Everyone!
Make sure you check out Apartheid Off Campus. The new front for the Palestinian youth movement in the UK! Check out their website at www.apartheidoffcampus.org to get involved and find out how complicit your university is in Israeli Apartheid.
Despite previous successful divestment efforts, King’s College London still insists to invest over 2.2 million pounds in companies complicity with the illegal Israeli occupation although they have an ethical investment policy which includes ESG issues like human rights. They clearly need to start acknowledging the rights of Palestinians as Human Rights too!
Love from London to Palestine 🇵🇸
KCL Action Palestine Society30 November 2019
If it wasn’t clear enough, it’s time to get #APARTHEIDOFFCAMPUS!!!! After Wednesday’s action, we have released our statement signed by other UoL societies, calling on our universities to go #ApartheidFree 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 https://docs.google.com/…/1HrRfq9J2Tc4FMl9LFFcRqYmDI16DkWHQ…
London Universities Palestinian National Day Of Action Statement
27.11.2019
On Wednesday 27th November, we mobilised to take over 2 of London’s major bridges in what became the largest collaborative student effort to nationally call for universities to end their complicity in the denial of palestinian human rights. Waterloo bridge became the national stage of a call for UK universities to get apartheid off campus which echoed across the UK as 1000s of students and university staff took part in the national day of action to demand an end to their university’s complicity in Israeli apartheid. Adjacent to the House of Commons, we gathered on Westminster Bridge to support the Labour Party’s pledge to immediately seize arms trade to Israel and all those complicit in international law violations.
These protests aimed to draw international attention to damning investigative research gathered by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Despite the majority of UK universities holding ethical investment and procurement policies, the research exposed over $500million of investments by UK universities in companies which finance and support Israel’s arms trade and illegal settlement economy. These investments enable Israel’s systematic oppression of the Palestinian people as a whole, which amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law.
Palestinian students are joined by organisations, academics, fellow students and staff unions who are frustrated at their university’s continued dismissal of human rights. We express our discontent in the implementation of our University’s “Ethical investment policy”, especially when it comes to the oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli Government.
We urge our universities to understand the implications of their investments in said companies on the infringment of the inalianable human rights of the Palestinian people. By not only supporting them financially, but normalizing relationships to those linked to the war crimes committed by the Israeli Government, institutions once seen as temples of progress and strongholds in the fight for human rights are knowingly surrendering to the profit-based motivations of modern higher education and hindering the Palestinian acquisition of freedom and equality.
By signing our pledge to be Apartheid Free, universities and organisations can make an official step to the right side of history by promising the international and local community to prevent their hindrance in the path to peace and relief by standing in solidarity with the palestinian people and commencing the cessation of any form of relationships with those complicit in human rights violations both in Palestine and internationally as part of this global call against any and all forms of oppression and discrimination.
Exist to resist!
KCL Action Palestine, Decolonize KCL, KCL Intersectional Feminist Society, KCL Amnesty International, KCL Iraqi Society, KCL Students 4 Syria, SOAS Palestine Society, SOAS Afghan Society, SOAS Feminist Society, City University Palestinian Society, City AhlulBayt Society, SOAS Syria Society, Westminster Students for Palestine Society, UCL Friends of Palestine, St George’s Palestine Society, QMUL Friends of Palestine Society
====================================================
https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/ame/14/1/ame140105.xml
To Be Black and Beautiful in Israel
in Anthropology of the Middle EastAuthor: Efrat Yerday 1
- 1 Tel Aviv University efratayerday@gmail.com
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3167/ame.2019.140105Keywords: Ethiopian Jews; ethnicity and race; identity; political art; visible minority; women and gender
This article reviews works of contemporary female artists of Ethiopian origin active in the Israeli art field. I analyse the subjects in their work and argue these artists are presenting their attitudes towards the ‘white gaze’. Though constantly subjected to it by the Israeli hegemony and the Western masculine discourse, they are notably decreasing their consideration of it. They broaden the restricted field of action that seems designated for them and alter its boundaries. Drawing on theorists of gender, postcolonial theory and theory of art, I demonstrate how these artists are promoting an agenda that reflects their lives as black women in Israel. Influenced by recent socio-political changes and a decline in representations of black women on TV and in visual arts, these artworks were increasingly exhibited in solo and group exhibitions.===================================================
https://thefriend.org/article/finding-peace-and-justice
Finding peace and justice
9 Jul 2015 | by Lisa Hoyle
Lisa Hoyle writes about a talk given by Nimrod Evron on Israeli state policy
Nimrod Evron is an Israeli citizen who stands in opposition to Israeli state policy and the occupation. He has played a pivotal role in setting up organisations working with youth who oppose conscription and is currently studying for an MA at Birkbeck College, London. The Liverpool Quaker Peace Group invited Nimrod Evron to speak at a public meeting in June.
=======================================
https://www.mcnd.org.uk/2015/06/02/helping-other-voices-to-be-heard-nimrod-evron/
JUNE 2, 2015 BY ANDY MORTON
Helping Other Voices to be Heard – Nimrod Evron
Venue: Liverpool Friends’ Meeting House, 22 School Lane, L1
Time/Date: 19:00 – 21:30, Thursday 18th June 2015
This is a rare opportunity to hear a first hand account of Israeli opposition to the Israeli State’s policies of occupation and oppression. Nimrod Evron is a Jewish Israeli activist and Educator who’s activism includes involvement in New Profile’s Refusal Support Network and Alternative Summer Camp for Youth. He is not speaking as a politician but is offering to share his experiences covering topics which include: Direct action with Palestinians, worker immigration rights, the current situation on the Israeli left, Israel and the international community, international activist engagement with the Israeli public.
Liverpool Quakers are committed to peace by peaceful means – we welcome all to attend.
israel-academia-monitor.com 
One thought on “King’s College London’s Anti-Israel Group “Action Palestine”Recruits Israelis to Besmirch Israel”