Women's Studies Center

Activities

• In October 2021, the Women’s Studies Center was a signatory on a joint statement condemning the decision by the Israeli Ministry to designate six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations. According to the statement, “This unprecedented designation is merely the latest escalation in Israel’s widespread and systematic institutionalized campaign that has aimed to silence and discredit any Palestinian individual or organization that dares seek accountability for Israel’s grave human rights violations, war crimes, and crimes against humanity…the international community, especially the European Union and its member states who are key supporters of and donors to Palestinian civil society, should ensure that banks and financial institutions in their jurisdiction are notified Israel’s designation of Palestinian organizations is unfounded and inapplicable.”
• In May 2021, WSC was a signatory on a joint statement to “express[ing] solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel’s racist and apartheid policies.”
• In January 2021, WSC, alongside a number of Palestinian organizations, issued a declaration that the “Vaccine Roll-Out Exposes Israel’s Inhumane Acts of Apartheid.” The NGOs falsely claimed that Israel has “legal obligations” to “ensure that quality vaccines be provided to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and control,” while altogether ignoring that Palestinians residing in Jerusalem are part of the Israeli health care system; that under the Oslo Accords the PA is responsible for health care of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; and that the PA has adopted its own vaccine policy for its population.
• In July 2020, WSC was a signatory on an urgent appeal to the United Nations referring to Israel’s supposed“shoot-to-kill policy” as “contributing to the maintenance of Israel’s apartheid regime of systematic racial oppression and domination over the Palestinian people as a whole, which, embedded in a system of impunity, prevents Palestinians from effectively challenging Israel’s apartheid policies and practices.”
• In June 2020, WSC was a signatory on an oral statement to the UN Human Rights Council calling for the international community to “Recognize and Counter Israel’s Apartheid Regime.”
• In November 2019, WSC endorsed “World Without Walls,” a campaign started in 2017 that has drawn comparisons between “Israel’s apartheid wall on Palestinian land to the US wall of Shame on indigenous land at the border with Mexico.”
• On February 4, 2016, General Director of WSC Sama Awiedah signed a statement declaring support for “Palestinian feminists living under Israel’s system of colonial and racist oppression.”
• In August 2014, WSC, alongside Palestinian Working Women’s Society for Development, the Women’s Legal Aid and Counseling Center, YWCA, and Mada al-Carmel, called for people to wear black to “show your opposition to those who aid Israel’s accumulative genocide against the Palestinian people.”
• In 2007, WSC signed a letter to the President of the Palestinian National Authority, the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and EU and UN Officials, erasing the context of terrorism and alleging that Israel has enacted “sanctions on the already beleaguered Palestinian civilian population… sanctions, which further exacerbate an already dire humanitarian situation, further amount to unlawful reprisals and the collective punishment of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.”

BDS Activities

• In July 2020, in response to the “Report of the Special Rapporteur addressing Israel’s Collective Punishment Policy,” WSC called on “Third States to adopt effective measures to put an end to Israel’s illegal and inhumane policies of collective punishment, including sanctions and countermeasures, to bring the illegal situation to an end” (emphasis added).
• In September 2016, Sama Awiedah presented at a conference held by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) at a panel titled “BDS and the intersection of feminism and national liberation struggle.” The panel discussed how the “BDS campaign against Israel serves as one manifestation of resistance to colonialism and imperialism and towards envisioning an alternative future.”
• On March 8, 2016, WSC was a signatory on the “Palestinian Women’s Call for Worldwide Women’s Endorsement of BDS,” which called on women and feminists to join BDS campaigns as “the Israeli regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid has for decades denied the Palestinian people our inalienable right to self-determination.”
• Signatory to the 2005 “Palestinian Civil Society Call for BDS” that calls for an end to Israel’s “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.”