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Muslim Students Stage "Occupied Territories" on Maryland Campus
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Students set up checkpoints similar to ones in the Occupied Territories on a U.S. campus.
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By
Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Washington Correspondent
COLLEGE
PARK, Maryland, May 1 (IslamOnline) - In an effort to educate fellow
students about the situation of Palestinians under Israeli occupation,
Muslim students at the University of Maryland in College Park set up
"The Occupied Territories" in a campus courtyard, complete
with cardboard Israeli tanks and white balloons to indicate murdered
Palestinians.
"Welcome
to the Occupied Territories," one Muslim student read into a
microphone, repeating a list of facts about Israel - such as
"Israel stands in violation of 69 U.N. resolutions," -
repeatedly during the course of the morning.
On
a stairwell going down into the mall area of the campus, students
belonging to the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and the Organization
of Arab Students (OAS) set up a table representing a
"checkpoint," with signs pointing to either side indicating
that Israelis and Palestinians had to go through separately.
A
similar effort took place last year at the University of
California-Berkeley, where students set up an actual checkpoint at the
campus gates, according to student reports.
"The
event… served to educate the campus population about the plight of
the Palestinian people," said junior Nashiah Ahmad, president of
the campus's Muslim Women of Maryland organization, "something
many students are grossly unaware of, given that their main sources of
information are limited to American media."
A
crumbling gray wall the students had constructed on one side of the
mall represented the Jenin refugee camp; in the center, four boards
displayed laminated pages of information about the Palestinian
struggle for independence and justice.
Some
students walked around the mall and near the student union wearing
painted cardboard Israeli "tanks" - provided by SUSTAIN, an
organization campaigning to end U.S. military aid to Israel - bearing
phrases like "Honk if you love Apartheid" and "Brought
to you by the American taxpayer."
Another
wore a cardboard bulldozer, labeled with the title
"Caterpillar" for the American company that manufactures
bulldozers used by Israel to demolish Palestinian homes.
Imad
ad-Dean Ahmad, a professor at the university and director of the
Minaret of Freedom Institute in Washington, addressed passersby
briefly about the history of the conflict, starting with the expulsion
of the Jews from the land of Israel two millennia ago and ending with
the Al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising, which was sparked in September 2000
by the visit of the now-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, accompanied by
more than 1,000 armed guards, to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third
holiest site in Jerusalem.
The
daylong event featured Muslim students walking around the mall with
posters displaying quotes and facts about Palestinian deaths and
Israel's illegal actions, resulting in several confrontational
arguments with Jewish students who were walking by the event and
disagreed with the facts laid out.
Nashiah
Ahmad said the event intended only to present the facts, "again
something that a majority are unaware of, proven by the discourse
yesterday between our students and the students who support
Israel."
Many
of the pro-Israeli students who engaged Muslims in conversation tried
to argue against their effort, saying that the setup of the event -
including a large banner that declared "Israel is a terrorist
state" and "Zionism=Racism" - was "not an
invitation to peace."
Others
argued against Palestinians; many told the Muslim students that
Palestinian parents train their children to hate Jews and that they to
want (their own children) to die. One Israeli girl said that the only
reason Palestinian children were dying was because the Palestinians
put them in front of Israeli bullets.
Another
Jewish student told IslamOnline that the number of Palestinians who
had been killed was much lower than it should be, because the Israeli
government should have responded to the Palestinian uprising the same
way U.S. President George W. Bush responded to the September 11 terror
attacks - by bombing Afghanistan.
However,
some other students engaged in more productive dialogue, emphasizing
the fact that the killing of innocent people on both sides was a
terrible thing, but pursuing their belief that the "suicide
bombing" had to stop first.
The
Israeli girl who accused Palestinian parents of murdering their own
children told IslamOnline, "Thank you for reinforcing my
beliefs," but many of the Muslim students felt that overall the
event was successful.
One
student, Fariha Khan, told IslamOnline that it was more successful in
terms of the attention it drew throughout the day.
"I
think it was successful considering that nothing like this has been
conducted on campus before, neither from the MSA, or from the JSU
[Jewish Student Union] from doing their perspective," Khan said.
"I
noticed people stopped by [who] knew very little about the
situation… even if they were just walking through, just rushing to
class."
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