FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 19 November 2024
SIGN THIS PETITION IN #SolidarityWithAisha ABDEL GAWAD
SUNY BDS* supports and is in solidarity with Aisha Abdel Gawad and all other educators whose voices are suppressed by US institutions to hide their complicity in “israel’s” genocide of the Palestinians. This is the latest attack on the freedom of speech and expression of Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and our allies in the US. SUNY BDS upholds the rights of our educators, culture workers, and community members to express their solidarity with Palestinians and to hold their institutions accountable.
Aisha Abdel Gawad is an Egyptian-American 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” siege in Gaza, Aisha has also used her voice as a writer to advocate for an end to the genocide in Palestine. Most recently, she privately withdrew from a panel about her novel at a literary festival held at the Writers Institute at UAlbany that she felt would not be constructive and would, instead, be harmful and create more 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.
Pro-“israel” bad actors have reacted to Aisha’s reasonable decision with a growing smear campaign, relentlessly targeting her for exercising her constitutionally protected fundamental First Amendment rights through online harassment and the loss of her writer-in-residence fellowship at a Connecticut public library. Now, her longtime career as a K-12 educator is under attack. Sign this petition in #SolidarityWithAisha Abdel Gawad.
For the past century, and particularly in the last year, supporters of “israel” have waged relentless attacks against those who advocate for a free Palestine. We see the currency and success of these attacks as part of a new McCarthyism that defends “israel” as an agent of US imperialism in the Middle East through the investigation, harassment, and doxxing of those who stand with Palestine. These attacks are anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic in nature and affect members of these communities the hardest…
*Proudly not affiliated with SUNY or NYS
Read the full SUNY BDS Statement in Support of Aisha Abdel Gawad here.
