An Education in Settler Colonialism
Helpful Tips Before You Attend Occupy
First printed Sept. 2023.
NYU Abolition Lab is a collection of NYU-affiliated persons dedicated to researching and articulating practices of surveillance, policing, erasure, and profit-accumulation on NYU's "global campus." More of our work and resources can be found at at: linktr.ee/nyuabolitionlab
Our work is oriented towards democratizing and spreading information and knowledge as a means of counteracting the harmful, and often violent, cultural and physical work that NYU and all systems of policing and property accumulation participate in. We want many people to be able to read the information contained in this zine. Please reprint and share freely.
Connect with us on instagram @nyuabolitionlab or in person at our events.
What's it going to be like?
“I definitely enjoyed the apartheid Tel Aviv attitude most about my experience. After being accustomed to the mere 15,000 security cameras used by the NYPD, and the 1300+ on NYU's campus, it was such a refreshing change of pace to be in a "smart city" that has ensured the quality of its surveillance by subjecting Palestinians to the constant terror of cameras, drones, and now Biometric scanners!”
-definitely real NYU student
“Because Israel ensures that most of the Palestinian descendants of those who lived in Tel Aviv prior to 1948 cannot enter, I can enjoy the newly-whitewashed culture of the Mediterranean with a thriving cafe culture and easygoing vibe.”
-absolutely realistic NYU student
1
What's it going to be like?
All other students, continue below.
Will I feel safe?
To protect you from understanding the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, NYU has located its study abroad program as far away as possible from Palestinian towns and villages in the Occupied West Bank.
From a safe distance, NYU students will enjoy the illegal border wall and 600+ checkpoints that keep Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank from accessing their former homelands. This settler colonial infrastructure ensures that you have will have no contact with Palestinians who are daily terrorized by the state of Israel. As an NYU student, you will experience a freedom of mobility that is absolutely denied to Palestinian students in the West Bank and Gaza!
2
What will I learn there?
As of 2009, Tel Aviv University had participated in no less than 55 joint technological projects with the Israeli army, particularly in the field of electro-optics.
TAU also housed the Operational Theory Research Institute... which pioneered IDF’s urban warfare strategy that led to the massive destruction of civilian housing and essential infrastructure in Jenin and Nablus in 2002. (MLA Report, 2016)
"
...so much of this extraordinary innovation which has created these extraordinary companies which have done so well doesn’t come so much from their education system but comes from their military. And their military continues to be truly first rate."
-- Michael Steinhardt
Will I be involved with the community?
If you are Palestinian, please disregard the above. All other students, continue below.
While strangers in Israel may be interested in you, you will be actively prevented from learning about the Palestinian towns and villages that were destroyed in order for Israel to be established. In fact, almost all signs of those villages have been erased!
NYU Tel Aviv's absence of engagement with Palestinian students at Tel Aviv University (TAU) means that you'll get the most controlled colonial version of what life is like for Palestinian life in Israel.
While Palestinian students at TAU hold demonstrations against the occupation and are a detained by police for commemorating that Nakba, your experience at NYU-TA will be free of contact with such realities!
NYU is so committed to ensuring you are safe from understanding Palestinian lives and history that "a student who travels into the West Bank may face disciplinary action and possible removal from the program" (NYU Tel Aviv Brochure).
4
It is not illegal for U.S. Citizens to visit the West Bank. But NYU-TA goes above and beyond in protecting students from seeing the violent occupation of Palestine! You can rest assured that this restriction on your access to reality will prevent you from witnessing:
The ongoing dispossession of Palestinian’s homes and land in East Jerusalem and in the West Bank
The exceptionalism of your own freedom of mobility in contrast to the immobility of Palestinians in their own land Checkpoints where Palestinians are routinely harassed and killed by Israeli military and settlers
Most importantly, the rich indigenous Palestinian history on the land and Palestinian resistance to the occupation that defines each village and city in the West Bank
"The Israeli military leader and politician Moyshe Dayan allegedly once quipped that he would
'be more willing to license a Palestinian fighter pilot than a Palestinian tour guide,'
“Asymmetrical Itineraries: Militarism, Tourism, and Solidarity in Occupied Palestine”
demonstrating the profound political importance of the ideological narrative Israel was advancing through tourism"
Jennifer Lynn Kelly
5
Map of Ethnically Cleansed Palestinian Villages
zochrot.org
In reality, NYU Tel Aviv is located near to least two Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias in 1948. Families were evicted from their homes and land, which today are the sites of Tel Aviv University and NYU-TA.
Tel Aviv University is located on what used to be the Al-Shaykh Muwannis, "formerly named after a local religious leader or sheik whose followers settled in the village."
In 1944/45 there were 1930 Arab residents of Al-Shaykh Muwannis. A major source of income for residents was citrus exports. There was a boys and a girls elementary school.
Al-Shaykh Muwannis was located just beyond the borders of Tel Aviv and was targeted for attack early in the Arab-Zionist war. Although a truce had been agreed upon between village leaders and one Zionist paramilitary organization, this did not prevent a different militia from kidnapping its leaders and terrorizing residents.
Tod me no She her bui
Present-Day TAU 8
NYU T d rough asin AlGarbi
In 194 Garbi. The fi alo breed distin
The villagers earned their living primarily by raising buffalos, marketing their meat and milk in Jaffa, and using the beasts as draft animals. In addition to animal husbandry, they cultivated fruits, especially citrus.
AI-Jammasin al-Gharbi was probably taken by Zionist troops some time before the end of the British Mandate on 15 May 1948.
Present-Day NYU Hostel
9
You will get very Smart <3
Tel Aviv is recognized as a Smart City due to the number of security cameras in place.
Smart City technologies have been developed in the Occupied Territories and in towns like Hebron. For the 750 illegal settlers living in Hebron, there are 800 Israeli soldiers.
Cameras are used to track who enters and leaves homes, log residents routes, and "allow soldiers to identify and sort family members based on security ratings the military assigns to Palestinians."
Photos and biographical information are stored in a databased called Blue Wolf.
"Companies working with the Israeli military to prototype and refine new technologies on Palestinian civilians in places like Hebron...are exported abroad, with little regulation to keep them in check."
Bader
10
11
You’ll see more of Tel Aviv than the average Palestinian!
"Right now I'm specifically looking at comparative legal studies of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Syria. Usually after my internship I just walk to my bike and ride back towards the academic centers or the dorms.” (NYU Tel Aviv Student Testimonial)
"As an American who grew up in the Midwest, just the overwhelming amount of militarism, and military presence, in the West Bank was really shocking. And the idea that I've seen more of Palestine than a large portion of the Palestinian population." (Maggie Goff, solidarity tourist, qtd. in Kelly)
Because Palestinian students are often denied entry into Israel, the NYU Tel Aviv Campus violates NYU's "own policy on ethics regarding nondiscriminations, mutual respect, and diversity. Israel's law of entry makes it impossible for all of our students, faculty, and staff to access the Tel Aviv site." (NYU Department of social and Cultural Analysis, Statement on Solidarity with Palestine)
"The program’s extensive co-curricular programming will allow you to explore the great city of Tel Aviv and afford you opportunities for interacting with Israel’s varied population. A particular course may include a visit to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, or let you participate as part of a co-curricular activity in a series of discussions with Jewish and Arab Israeli students." NYU Tel Aviv Website
"We were taken on eye-opening excursions to experience and learn from the different communities in Israel. We visited Ethiopian Jews in Gedera, Palestinians in Bethlehem, ultraOrthodox communities in Jerusalem, and even flew to Cyprus to gain a different angle on binational conflict control." NYU Student, "I studied at NYU Tel Aviv"
12
Apartheid is totally normal and good!
Discussions and excursions of this kind described above only normalize the ongoing occupation of Palestine by relativizing it as a subjective experience. At best, they present Palestinian knowledge of the Israeli settler colonial project as one “perspective” of a “varied population” rather than as a fact.
In actively preventing students from traveling to the West Bank, they ensure that students will never learn the actual history of the Palestinian liberation struggle as it continues today.
When NYU-TA does introduce students to Palestinian students, it is through a framing controlled by the colonizing force of Israel. In these narratives, students are encouraged to see Palestinians either as the original aggressors or as helpless victims.
It doesn't have to be this way. There are many alternative possibilities for engaging with Palestinian students and faculty within the West Bank.r-colonial project from within their own communities.
For instance, Palestinian-led solidarity tours described by Jennifer Lynn Kelly do not "encourage tourists to embark on a disaster tour that results in tourists asking 'What can we do?'." Rather, they require visitors to experience the reality of U.S.-funded apartheid as citizens of the U.S.
Tourists are asked to "reenact and perform the very practices of apartheid" and to embody the asymmetries of movement and power that define U.S. citizenship and the U.S. support of an apartheid state.
This requires U.S. citizens to reflect on the dismantling of a global racist and settler-colonial project from within their own communities.
13
instead of attending NYU
Tel Aviv participating in the ongoing settler occupation of Palestine, you can:
Become familiar with U.S.-based student solidarity with Palestine at National Students for Justice in Palestine: https://www.nationalsjp.org/
Learn more about education under Israeli occupation through the Right to Education Campaign: https://www.birzeit.edu/en/right2edu
Learn more about boycotting study abroad programs in Israel: https://usacbi.org/boycott-study-abroad-inisrael/#pledge
If you are interested in visiting Palestine check out one of the many anti-colonial possibilities for visiting. These include:
Alternative Tourism Group: https://atg.ps/about-us
Zochrot: https://www.zochrot.org/tours/all/en
Green Olive Tours: https://greenolivetours.com/
14
