October 9: Beyond 1967: Respecting the Palestinian Right to Return

Beyond 1967: Respecting the Palestinian Right to Return

“The essence of our struggle is the right of the return for the refugees (+70% of the Palestinian people). They demand their right to return to their homes and they do have the right to do so. If you think that it is not possible then you are really not in solidarity with the Palestinian cause.”
–Maath Musleh, Palestinian youth activist, blogger and journalist based in Jerusalem

Tuesday, October 9th, 7p

John Jay College – Black Box Theater
524 West 59th Street, between 10th and 11th Aves
NYC
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/118754224941174/

IMPORTANT: John Jay requires a list of attendees for security purposes. If you are attending this event, please go to this link to add your name (and make sure you bring ID), otherwise you may not get in: http://bit.ly/ReturnSignUp.

Endorsements are welcome for this event! Please endorse by using the following form: http://bit.ly/EndorseReturn

Speakers: Lamis Deek & Miko Peled

Lamis Deek is a long time member of Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, the Arab Muslim American Federation, the board of CAIR-New York, and the National Lawyers Guild. She is co-founder of the US Palestine Community Network.

Miko Peled is an Israeli writer and activist living in San Diego. His book “The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine” (Just World Books) was published earlier this year.

The Israeli apartheid system is understandably criticized for its occupation of Palestinian territory conquered in the 1967 war. Yet single-minded focus on this occupation often obscures a far bigger crime central to the entire apartheid structure: the ethnic cleansing by Zionist forces in 1948 of more than 750,000 Palestinians to make way for the establishment of the “Jewish state.”

Today, at seven million, the surviving refugees of the 1948 Nakba, or “catastrophe,” and their descendants represent seventy percent of the Palestinian nation. Their right to return to their homeland in the 1948 territories is emblematic not only of the struggle for Palestinian rights, but of the rights of all indigenous peoples resisting colonial dispossession.

For this reason, the Palestinian Right of Return is one of the central demands of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) anti-apartheid campaign against Israel. “Equal rights for Palestinians,” declares  BDS leader Omar Barghouti, “means, at minimum, ending Israel’s 1967 occupation and colonization, ending Israel’s system of racial discrimination and respecting the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their lands from which they were ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Nakba.”

Join us on Tuesday, October 9th for an important discussion of this fundamental principle of Palestine solidarity.

Endorsers (list in formation):
Al-Awda NY | The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Ad Hoc Committee to Defend the Egyptian Revolution (NYC)
American Muslims for Palestine – NY
Labor for Palestine
New York City Labor Against the War (NYCLAW)
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
International Action Center
International Socialist Organization
Middle East Crisis Committee (CT)
Advocates for Peace and Social Justice
JPLO – Jewish People’s Liberation Organization
Delaware Valley Veterans for America
United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC)
US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel
US Palestinian Community Network
National Lawyers Guild – New York City Chapter
United Progressives
Friends of Palestine, Hudson valley
BAYAN-USA Northeast
New Yorkers Against the Cornell-Technion Partnership (NYACT)
Hunter College Students for Justice in Palestine
Brooklyn College Students for Justice in Palestine