A group of advocates for Palestinian causes hopes its next event on the Tempe campus will help turn around what it called “mistreated coverage” by the media of its cause at ASU.

The ASU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine aims to promote human rights, liberation and the self-determination of the Palestinian people, said Oday Shahin, the organization’s public-relations manager.

However, the group said its purpose has been misrepresented by local media and is often misunderstood by the community at large, he said.

“Generally speaking, the media has been biased against the Palestinians,” he said. “They underreport, or even misrepresent, [Palestinians] as terrorists, or people who want to eradicate the Jews.”

Shahin, a computer information systems sophomore, said Students for Justice in Palestine has staged several events and protests this year to dispel myths about the Palestinian cause and educate citizens about Israel’s military aggression toward Palestine and what he called “questionable funds” sent by the American government to Israel.

Past events by the organization include: protests in downtown Phoenix during the Gaza conflict last winter, an awareness event where they staged a 60-foot wall mimicking the wall in the West Bank and fundraisers totaling $35,000 in aid money for Palestinian refugees.
But Shahin said these efforts have not been sufficiently respected by some, particularly in local media coverage, including The State Press.

As part of its attempt to provide students with a fuller picture of their cause, Students for Justice in Palestine is showing the movie “West Bank Story” in Murdock Hall at 7 p.m. on Wednesday night.

A serious discussion of facts will follow the film at the event, cohosted with the nonpolitical international aid group New Global Citizens at ASU. Shahin said showing “West Bank Story,” which addresses Palestinian-Israeli issues in a lighthearted manner, will hopefully entertain and engage students.

“We’re trying to present [our cause] in a new type of media, in a youthful way for the community at ASU to understand,” he said.

Shahin said inconsistent coverage of the Gaza conflict by national media has left Americans feeling confused about its true nature and hopeless about the conflict’s future.

Many people equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, which Shahin stressed is absolutely untrue and is a key distinction between public perception of Palestinian advocacy and their actual stance.

“I’m not anti-Jewish,” he said. “Our organization isn’t anti-Jewish.”

An ongoing debate

Members from student organizations supporting both sides of the Palestine-Israeli conflict say they’re receptive to at least recognize one another; however, a fully open dialogue between advocates of each cause has not yet occurred at ASU.

Shahin said he’s tried to contact pro-Israeli groups on campus and would be “more than happy to shake hands and open a dialogue about this conflict.” However, he stopped short of saying he would accept the state of Israel as it exists today.

“I do not have a problem with any state that treats the Palestinian state with respect, but Israeli Zionism inherently treats non-Jews as second class,” he said.

ASU Students for Israel president Andrew Gibbs said he doesn’t feel his or other pro-Israel groups on campus have misrepresented the Palestinian cause, and that his group is more focused on higher sanctions against Iran and increasing foreign aid to Israel than engaging in verbal warfare with Palestinian advocacy groups on campus.

Gibbs, a political science freshman, said his organization and its members hold no resentment against the Palestinian people or an independent Palestinian state. He said, though, that a solution cannot be found until Palestinians have a group of leaders that is willing to sit down to peace talks with Israel, and “Hamas obviously is not that group.”

“[ASU Students for Israel] is not anti-Muslim, or even anti-Palestinian,” he said. “We are an antiterrorism group, and that’s what we intend to stay.”

Putting people over politics

Many on-campus humanitarian groups have chosen to eschew the conflict’s political element while still providing aid to Palestinians.

Cameron Bean, co-president of New Global Citizens, said his organization raises money and awareness to provide artistic programs to refugee children in the West Bank.

Bean, a sociology and political science freshman, said he and his organization believe people still need to “put aside political beliefs” and “recognize the human suffering in this crisis.”

Danielle Bäck, treasurer of Women Beyond Borders at ASU, said the group held an open-mic night on Tuesday outside the Memorial Union to raise funds and awareness for Palestinian women affected by the Palestine-Israeli conflict.

But the choice to work with a group in Palestine was not motivated by politics, Bäck said.

“Fundamentally, its an issue of human rights,” she said. “We’re not trying to help one specific group [in the conflict] — we’re just promoting human rights.”

Bäck, an economics freshman, said she feels pro-Palestine and pro-Israel viewpoints are pretty equally represented on campus. She said it would be interesting for the opposing sides to host a debate together to inform people about this complex issue.

However, the current splitting of viewpoints between events hosted just by one group or the other doesn’t provide the ASU community with a “full spectrum of information,” Bäck said.

Reach the reporter at trabens@asu.edu.