On Wednesday 20 November, an event is scheduled to take place at Goldsmiths that has been organised with the group Together for Humanity, as well as a small number of Goldsmiths staff.
In recent weeks, representatives of Goldsmiths for Palestine (G4P), the Students’ Union (SU) and the GUCU executive committee have been engaging in dialogue and meeting with the organisers of the event. Following these discussions, G4P have called for a boycott of the event. Furthermore, in line with motions passed democratically by their membership, the SU have communicated that they also cannot support the event outlined.
Both organisations have outlined their reasoning for this, which includes the fact that the event organisers have failed to name the ongoing genocide in Gaza, with the suggestion from the organisers that non-participation in this event would be a betrayal of the people of Gaza. For these reasons, the executive committee of GUCU will be joining G4P’s boycott of the event.
This decision has been reached in line with our broader branch position on issues relating to Palestine, which has been shaped through the motions that have been raised and voted on in branch meetings. Most recently, GUCU passed this motion, which is clear and absolutely unambiguous:
“Goldsmiths UCU believes that:
- The military campaign being conducted by the Israeli military over the past year constitutes a new phase in the extreme violence and oppression of the Palestinian people, and this amounts to a genocide.
- The policies of the Israeli state, since its inception, have created a system of apartheid and settler colonialism in Palestine.”
Similarly, in this motion and also this motion our branch has asserted and reiterated its support for Goldsmiths for Palestine:
“This branch believes that:
(…)
6. The actions of Goldsmiths for Palestine over the past year, including the occupation of the CCA, have created an essential and urgent disruption to the ‘business as usual’ activities of the University and Goldsmiths CCA, as Israeli forces and settlers continue to enact a genocidal war against the Palestinian people that extends to dismemberment, disease, dispossession and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.”
“This Branch resolves:
- To unequivocally support Goldsmiths for Palestine (G4P), their occupation of the Professor Stuart Hall building, and their demands.”
Any dialogue that might take place in a meeting such as the one scheduled for Wednesday 20 November, which fails to name not just the genocide in Gaza but the system of apartheid practised by the state of Israel against the Palestinian people, serves only to further normalise them.
Point 4 of the PACBI guidelines for the International Cultural Boycott of Israel focuses on the pernicious nature of the normalisation of the settler colonial violence enacted by the Israeli state against Palestinians, and calls for the boycott of events “that are based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed.”
In order to avoid the kind of erasure and complicity that follows on from this kind of normalisation, the event organisers were asked to name the violence and conditions experienced by the Palestinian people, so that the framing of the discussion would be of ““co-resistance” rather than co-existence.” As the organisers failed to do so, the executive committee of GUCU cannot support this event and are calling for its boycott, alongside Goldsmiths for Palestine.
Just as our branch stated in this motion, we reaffirm our unwavering solidarity with Palestine, now and forever.