Siddiqui relies on Review to get her message out

To the Editors:

Quite personally, I am not a big fan of personal attacks especially via a medium, in this case, The Oberlin Review. Since I do not know who the individual(s) putting up the Divest from Saudi Arabia and Egypt is/are, I am having to depend on the college newspaper to let them know what is going on in my mind.
First and foremost, it seems to me that the people putting up the divest Saudi Arabia and Egypt signs are trying to “balance” the divestment campaign spearheaded by the Students for a Free Palestine (SFP). If my assumption is right, then I am flabbergasted by the individual(s) lack of knowledge about what divestment is and why SFP is carrying out this campaign.
SFP’s mission in this campaign is to stop international aid, especially the aid provided by the U.S. that is going to Israel for military funding. I am not refuting the fact that Saudi Arabia and Egypt and many more nations are violators of basic human rights, and we need to be critical of their actions as well. But they are also not occupying illegally other people’s lands and have not been violating UN’s Resolution 181 (II) since 1947! Over and over again I have been so frustrated by the rhetoric of this school on peace and violence. Though violence is not justified, neither should the acts of violence be taken out of context.
Saudi Arabia and Egypt are violators of rights, but this is not the context within which their human rights records should be talked about. If we are on the blame game, why not include the United States as well as a nation that continues to violate innumerable international rights, issues concerning sovereignty and discriminates against its own ethnic minorities and indigenous population. Let’s then all divest out of the US and move to Canada!
Also, there is a long list of scholars and activists alike who have presented the situation in Palestine as being equal to if not worse than that of apartheid South Africa. It is exactly these kinds of divestment strategies over the years that played a big role in the final collapse of the apartheid regime. If the international community had been reluctant to single out apartheid South Africa for divestment on the grounds that there are human rights abuses all over Africa and the world, then the apartheid regime would still be in place.
I strongly believe that as we continue with the divestment campaign against the Israeli military occupation, we do need to engage in productive dialogue and programmes to deal with other human rights violations in other countries. But the Palestinian issue is at an outmost critical stage and must be addressed immediately.
Secondly, it came off rather strikingly how the nations mentioned in those flyers by the so-called “Oberlin for Clean Money” group are both Arab nations. The divestment campaign of SFP is not an Arab vs. Israeli or Muslim vs. Jews campaign. These two dichotomies keep appearing over and over again, whereas in reality, this issue is about Palestinian sovereignty supported by people of all different ethnicities, religions and nationalities.
Thirdly, I am tired of seeing kids on this campus writing or putting up signs anonymously simply because these actions hurt actual causes of actual people, who are putting in actual labour. Technically those signs were not anonymous since there was a made-up organization’s name attached to it, but please, who are we kidding, the organization does not exist, and people who did it obviously want to remain anonymous.
I am sure I will receive a whole lot of letters next week saying in our post-post-post modern, horrifyingly theoretical rhetoric how important it is to remain anonymous, but after having been highly politically active on this campus for 3 long years, all I have to say: grow a fucking pair of balls and own up! I don’t care who you are….whether kids who go around writing Zionism=racism or ‘this school is “collony”’ (learn how to spell!) or the recent divest Saudi Arabia and Egypt, grow up, own up learn how to stand for the things you believe in no matter how messed up they may be.

—Shahana Siddiqui
College junior