Defend the Human Rights of Palestinians

We, the undersigned members of the Harvard University community, believe that Israels violation of the human rights of Palestinians is morally wrong.

Israel violates the human rights of Palestinians, both inside its 1948 territory and in the occupied territory seized subsequently, in order to protect that which is morally indefensible: a Jewish state based on the idea that ethnic cleansing and discrimination against non-Jews are justified in order to ensure that a large majority of the Israeli population is Jewish, and that only Jews shall be the ultimate sovereign authority in Israel despite the fact that more than one million of its current citizens are non-Jews.

Powerful and prominent people in the United States accuse opponents of the existence of apartheid Israel of being anti-Semitic. This is a Big Lie that defenders of human rights must refute, especially the Center which gives out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to all graduating students.

The mission of the Harvard School of Public Health Franзois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights includes:

* develop domestic and international policy focusing on the relationship between health and human rights in a global perspective;

* engage scholars, public health and human rights practitioners, public officials, donors, and activists in the health and human rights movement.

To develop domestic and international policy means absolutely nothing worthwhile if it does not include advocating the cessation of policies which violate the human rights of millions of human beings, e.g. the cessation of the Zionist project of maintaining a Jewish state based on ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination.

To engage...activists in the health and human rights movement must include helping activists become clear about why Israels rationale for violating Palestinian human rights (that there needs to be a Jewish state) is a Big Lie.

We therefore call upon the Center for Health and Human Rights to publicly take a stand on this issue. It should declare that, far from being anti-Semitic to oppose the idea of a Jewish state, it is incumbent upon those who embrace the universal values of democracy and equality and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to condemn the idea of a Jewish state and the ethnic cleansing, the denial of human rights and the crimes against humanity which are required to protect it. At the very least the Center should sponsor a public symposium to discuss this and it should make a decision as to how it will respond to these questions.