Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine (WSJP)
Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine (WSJP) extends its unconditional support and solidarity to our siblings in The Wellesley News, who are currently facing malicious smear and intimidation campaigns as a result of the bigoted letter released by the College's president on October 7th, 2022. Dr. Paula Johnson's statement condemns a recent Wellesley News article that stands for the liberation of Palestine. The president's inflammatory statement is not unprecedented as Wellesley has a history of jeopardizing the safety of Palestinian students and their allies, all to serve the interests of the U.S. empire and the violent, oppressive structures that Wellesley College associates with.
This response indicates that the administration lacks a basic understanding of the Mapping Project. The Mapping Project was created to link and track institutions and structures that are complicit and benefit from the genocidal settler-colonial project in Palestine as well as in the so-called “U.S.” The Mapping Project is a “multi-generational collective of activists and organizers on the land of the Massachusett, Pawtucket, Naumkeag, and other tribal nations (Boston, Cambridge, and surrounding areas).” It seeks to “develop a deeper understanding of local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine and harms that [they] see as linked, such as policing, U.S. imperialism, and displacement/ethnic cleansing.” The Mapping Project’s interactive map explores how US imperialism and Zionism inflict harm upon BIPOC communities through oppressive practices and tactics including, but not limited to, counter-terrorism measures, use of surveillance technology, racialized policing, ecological destruction, ableist polcies, and harm to the health of individuals and communities. With regards to Wellesley, the mapping project points out that Wellesley has established ties, complicity, and involvement in organizations and companies that are long-term partners and donors to the occupying entity.
We refuse the weaponization of Judaism and the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism as a deceitful strategy to intimidate us and silence our voices. Though the strategy is outdated and has been debunked countless times by Palestinians and their allies, it is meant to distract from the atrocities that Palestinians endure on the ground. Currently, Palestinians are being murdered by the illegitimate state of “Israel” across the West Bank and all of occupied Palestine. In May 2021, the Wellesley administration remained silent as more than 250 Palestinians were massacred during the “Israeli” aggression on Gaza. Regarding the administration’s false and misleading claims that the Mapping Project “targets” Jewish people, the Mapping Project is an intersectional and decolonial interactive map, out of the 483 entities listed there are only 30 entities that self-identify as “Jewish”. This means that only 6% of the organizations included in the research done by the Mapping Project are described as “Jewish”. Moreover, no self-identified Jewish organization was included in the Mapping Project because it was Jewish. For instance, one of the self-identified Jewish organizations included in the Mapping Project is the Jewish National Fund (JNF). As the Mapping Project notes, the JNF explicitly stipulates that only Jewish people can buy, mortgage, or lease stolen Palestinian land, which has been colonized through a century of violent ethnic cleansing. When Palestinians challenged this openly racist and genocidal JNF practice in the "Israeli" legal system, the JNF stated:
The JNF is not the trustee of the general public in Israel. Its loyalty is given to the Jewish people in the Diaspora and in the state of Israel ... The JNF, in relation to being an owner of land, is not a public body that works for the benefit of all citizens of the state. The loyalty of the JNF is given to the Jewish people and only to them is the JNF obligated. The JNF, as the owner of the JNF land, does not have a duty to practice equality towards all citizens of the state.
A brief look at the Mapping Project's entry and background information on the Jewish National Fund (JNF) makes it abundantly clear that the JNF, besides many other complicit and colonial organizations and entities, is included in the map due to the JNF's nature as an openly racist and colonial organization, not because it is a self-identified Jewish organization
The Mapping Project is vital, for it helps with “understanding ties between settler-colony states like Canada and the USA with suffering in the global south”. This project exposes the deep- rooted connections and directly links how corporations and government spending play a role in the invasion of territory in the global south and the masacre and imprisonment of the people there. Wellesey’s inclusion on the interactive map should have encouraged collective action against the oppressive institutions they are involved in. However, a colonial institution like Wellesley College, naturally feels threatened by grassroot projects that challenge settler-colonialism, imperialism, and land theft. Wellesley itself is built on the traditional, unceded land of the Massachusett, Pawtucket, Naumkeag, among other nations.
As long as the illegitimate occupying state of “Israel'' exists, Palestinians and all other colonized nations and peoples have the inalienable right to resist their oppressor and aggressor by any means necessary. It is the illegitimate settler-colonial state that spends millions of dollars on propaganda to conflate Judaism with the genocidal ideology of Zionism, and not the Palestinians that are suffering the material losses and harms inflicted by Zionism on the ground. The dehumanization of Palestinians has even extended to the point where those in exile are not allowed to grieve the ongoing ethnic cleansing of their families back home. Instead, Palestinians are forced to make disclaimers about the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, which they should not feel obligated to do, as Palestinians did not choose the identity of their oppressor.
We remain steadfast in our support of our fellow siblings' fight against institutional harassment. The Wellesley administration's statement directly inflicted harm upon its students, as seen by the ongoing harassment and bigotry students have been subjected to. We refuse to be intimidated by Wellesley's Zionist administration – which has consistently fostered a hostile environment, to pressure Palestinians and allies into giving up on our principles. We will continue to fight to demonstrate the way that the liberation struggles of the oppressed are intertwined, and the Mapping Project is an excellent tool to visualize these connections and intersections.
From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free