Hillel student group protests U.N. conference

Students walking down Locust Walk midday on Wednesday were greeted with cries such as “Are you against racism?” and “Do you support human rights?”

In light of the United Nation’s Durban III conference that will be held today, Penn Israel Sector, a Hillel umbrella group, organized a sit-in to “protest unfair targeting of Israel by the UN,” said College sophomore Brian Mund, who helped organize the protest.

Students in Penn Israel Sector feel that the Durban Conference — whose original purpose was to combat racism —“has become a forum for Jew and Israel bashing,” said Mund, a Daily Pennsylvanian contributing writer. Both Israel and the United States are boycotting the conference this year.

At the first Durban Conference, held in South Africa 10 years ago, the only declaration passed stated that Zionism was racist, said College sophomore Noah Feit, who also helped to organize the event.

At the second Durban conference in 2009, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke out against Israel, he added, although he is a “violator of human rights” himself.

Speakers at the these conferences called Israel a “racist, Zionist entity,” Mund said. “We are not saying that Israel is perfect, but to call Israel racist is international dishonesty.”

The sit-in was “all the students’ idea,” Sharona Kramer, an Israeli fellow at Hillel, said. “They want Israel’s voice heard.”

Although students will not be traveling to New York to boycott the conference today, Feit said that the Penn Israel Sector wants students to “boycott the ideas” of the conference.

“Students have a perception that the UN is legitimate because world consensus indicates legitimacy,” Feit said. “We want to show students that the Durban Conference is morally backwards and unfair.”

However, other Penn students do not share the view that the United Nations is biased against Israel.

“The UN hasn’t technically recognized Palestine,” College sophomore Samantha Lee, who is a member of Penn’s Model United Nations, said.

“Inviting Ahmadinejad to speak just shows that the UN is bipartisan,” Lee added. “If anything, the UN is pro-Israel, not anti-Israel.”

Students of Penn for Palestine disagreed with the sentiments that Penn Israel Sector espoused on Locust.

“I think calling Israel’s policies racist is legitimate,” College and Wharton senior Besan Abu-Joudeh, who is Palestinian, said. For example, Israel has “selection committees,” which reject potential residents from communities and “clearly discriminate against certain populations such as blacks, gays and Arabs,” she added.

Israel “pursues policies that,— in effect — amount to ethno-religious discrimination,” the presidents of Penn for Palestine, College junior Humna Bhojani and College sophomore Omar Kalouti, wrote in an email. However, they added that their group “does not necessarily support the discourse and parameters of Durban III.”

One student, College sophomore and Undergraduate Assembly representative Ernest Owens, said he participated in the sit-in although he isn’t Jewish because the protest was about “human rights, race and religion.”

“This is not just a Jewish issue. It is an international issue,” Owens said.

“Any time a member of the Penn community is threatened we must come together and protect each other,” he added. “I’d expect them to do the same for me.”

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