FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 21 November 2024
SIGN THIS PETITION IN #SolidarityWithAisha ABDEL GAWAD
Jewish Voice for Peace Albany believes that everyone has the right to make their voice heard, regardless of who they are, where they live, or the color of their skin. We know that embracing diversity of thought and our multiracial, ethnic, and religious democracy only strengthens our society.
For the past century, and especially within the past year, supporters of the Israeli government and military have been relentless in their anti-Palestinian racism, Arabophobic, and Islamophobic attacks. As well as extreme harassment of anyone who dares take a principled stance against the genocide in Gaza.
Aisha Abdel Gawad is a writer who fights for the humanity of all oppressed peoples. Her work as a writer is a powerful testament to this. In her award-winning debut novel, Between Two Moons (2023), Aisha explores the experience of Arab Muslim girls in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, coming of age under the specter of post-9/11 surveillance. Since the escalation of the Israeli government’s siege in Gaza, Aisha has also used her voice as a writer to advocate for an end to the genocide in Palestine.
At this year’s annual New York State Writers Institute Book Festival, hosted right here in Albany, Aisha withdrew from a panel about her novel that she felt would not be constructive and would instead create more harmful conflict during a contentious time in our society. We all have the right not to participate in any public forum, especially those that do not uphold our values. Here, the Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric of the panel’s host was incompatible with Aisha’s writing on young women in New York navigating Islamophobia.
Unfortunately, pro-Israeli government bad actors in our own community reacted to Aisha’s reasonable response with a growing smear campaign. While the moderator’s continued snide anti-Palestinian commentary has gone unremarked upon, Aisha has been relentlessly targeted for exercising her Constitutionally-protected fundamental First Amendment rights, targeted for online harassment, and lost her writer-in-residence fellowship at a Connecticut Public Library. Now, her longtime career as a K-12 educator is under attack. Sign the petition in #SolidarityWithAisha Abdel Gawad.
These bad actors’ attacks on our First Amendment rights are part of a New McCarthyism comprised of investigations, harassing, doxxing, violence, misrepresentation of pro-Palestinian voices, and falsely equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. As an organization rooted in our Judaism, we know that Judaism and Zionism are not one and the same and that rhetoric that equates the two only makes Jews less safe. Nonetheless, the perpetrators of this New McCarthyism have attacked people across numerous fields for exercising their First Amendment rights and voicing support for Palestinians, including journalists, nurses, prominent politicians such as Rashida Tlaib and Cori Bush, and, of course, Aisha Abdel Gawad.
The views that led to Aisha’s withdrawal from the Writers Institute Festival are no different than most Americans. In the last year, the Israeli military has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, including 16,500 children by the most conservative estimates. According to June 2024 estimates from the leading medical journal, The Lancet, the death toll likely exceeds 200,000 people.
Despite the overwhelming support for a ceasefire and an end to weapons sales to the Israeli government from Jews and non-Jews alike, with almost two-thirds of Americans wanting to stop arming the Israeli government and the military’s genocide, the actions of the pro-Israeli government’s bad actors here in Albany have underscored a horrifying trend of relentless harassment and violence for anyone speaking out in solidarity with the Palestinian people.
We implore the NYS Writers Institute to publicly apologize to Aisha for the ways that their actions have added fuel to the fire of hateful doxxing Aisha has experienced in the wake of this incident. Whereas the Writers Institute has continued to create privileged platforms for Zionist authors fondly pontificating on the childhood of wanted war criminals, it has been silent on Aisha’s blacklisting. This dangerous double standard has no place in Albany and furthers the erosion of all of our First Amendment Rights.
Each of us has the power to fight against attacks that do not uphold our values, threaten human rights, and undermine our ability to coexist in a multi-racial, ethnic, and religious democracy. We must take action to resist attacks on freedom of speech, thought, religion, or Arab and Muslim people, and in doing so, build together the world we deserve – where all people have the right to speak up on issues that impact us no matter our race, religion, or location.
Make your voice heard by signing this petition in #SolidarityWithAisha Abdel Gawad as she faces a brutal campaign of harassment in her local community and across the country.
