MIT Protest Targets Israel

Over 60 people gathered by MIT’s Stratton Student Center yesterday afternoon to protest Israel’s continued military attacks against Lebanon.

The event, organized by MIT neuroscience professor Nancy Kanwisher, was sponsored by an ad-hoc group of faculty members and student leaders from MIT’s Arab Students Organization, Lebanese Club, and Muslim Students Association.

Kanwisher, who said afterwards that she had hoped 100 people would attend the event, told the crowd that while the protestors should not condone violence against Israeli citizens, she said that Israel is killing a disproportionate number of Lebanese civilians.

In addition to criticizing what she called Israel’s human rights violations and theft of Palestinian land, she said that the United States must stop contributing weapons to Israel.

“My tax dollars pay for [Israeli weapons],” she said.

Dr. Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and Loai T. Naamani, president of the Lebanese Club and an MIT Ph.D candidate in Information Technologies at MIT, also spoke at the event.

Naamani, who said he has worked to promote economic development in Lebanon, told the crowd that Israel’s attacks would set Lebanon back drastically and demanded an immediate ceasefire in the region.

“The people of Lebanon have been through this before and they will get through it again,” he said. “But the people of Lebanon are angry.”

Naamani had the crowd chant in repetition after him, “We denounce, we condemn Israel’s destruction of infrastructure and killing of civilians just as we denounce the killing of Israeli civilians.”

The health minister in Lebanon told the Associated Press yesterday that the civilian death toll in Lebanon is believed to have reached 600, with 382 confirmed dead and the rest buried under rubble or missing.

The number of confirmed Lebanese deaths—including members of the Lebanese army and Hezbollah guerrillas—is 437, according to the Associated Press, while 52 Israelis have been killed in the conflict.

Roy, who said she spoke from the “Jewish ethical perspective,” said that criticism of Israel’s actions is not contradictory to the Jewish tradition, which welcomes dissent and argument. She appealed to Israeli-supporters, calling for them to “seek justice, not revenge.”

“Are we as a people seeking empowerment or renewal?” she asked the crowd.

Hilda I. Silverman ’60, Kanwisher’s friend and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, collected money from the crowd to send to Palestinian refugee camps that are taking in Lebanese refugees.

She said that the money will be given to two MIT alumni living in Boston who are from Lebanon and Palestine. The alumni will hand deliver the money to Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Silverman said.

Silverman said after the event that over $500 in cash was collected and that others took down information about sending money later.

Harvard’s Pierce Professor of Psychology Ken Nakayama, who supported the Harvard-MIT petition to divest from Israel in 2002, was present at the event.

“Harvard professors should take a more evenhanded view and not just be all pro-Israel,” he said in an interview before the event, holding a poster that read “NO U.S. $$$ FOR ISRAEL AGGRESSION!”

“Most professors keep their mouths shut,” he added.

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.edu.