Doris Bittar

On May 25, 2017, SJP UH rallied behind convicted Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on hunger strike, by organizing a “symbolic hunger strike” and participating in a Saltwater Challenge. The event organizers wrote on the Facebook event page: “we demand that Israel end its policies of apartheid, colonization, military occupation, displacement, dispossession, and mass incarceration.”

The hunger strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, who was serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in suicide bombings — and shooting attacks that killed five Israelis during the second Intifada. Barghouti led the the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorist Tanzim force and founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Barghouti also financed the guitar-case bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe massacre where 15 civilians were killed and 130 injured.

More than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners participated in the hunger strike — most of whom were also convicted for acts of terrorism.

According to CNN , the “Saltwater Challenge” appears to have been started by Aarab Marwan Barghouti, the son of Marwan Barghouti.

On a webpage for the event, Bittar was quoted stating that “We are holding a vigil to illuminate the plight of Palestinian men, women and children whose humanity is being crushed by the Israeli apartheid regime.”

Promoting BDS

In February 2016, Bittar wrote a letter to the online publication, Hyperallergic, advocating for BDS and condemning efforts against the movement.

In her letter, Bittar wrote that “BDS should be thanked, because it is finally creating the conditions for Israel to be a normal state that is accountable for its actions.”

In 2015, Bittar was one of the initial signatories to a letter, authored by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), calling upon their peers “to sign on as artists participating or attending to pledge non participation in exhibitions and other cultural events that are sponsored or funded by the state of Israel.”

Signatories of the letter expressed that “While we acknowledge the genocide of Jewish communities, we believe that the settlers’ suffering in other lands does not vindicate the displacement, dispossession and killing of Palestinians.”

The letter went on to explain that “The struggle against the Israeli occupation has a proud lineage that connects to five centuries of resistance against religious persecution and settler colonialism around the globe.”

On August 29, 2014, Bittar signed the “Open Letter on Gaza and BDS from the Middle East Caucus of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.”

The letter described “indiscriminate and disproportionate violence that has been waged… by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) against the civilian population of Gaza” which it characterized as “the largest ‘open air prison’ in the world.”

The letter went on to endorse the BDS movement and to conclude that “the violence has taken an unprecedented and savage turn, having reached genocidal proportions.”

On December 5, 2013, Bittar signed the “Campaign to Boycott the Oral History Conference at Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” authored by the BDS movement.

The petition encouraged historians and academics to boycott an upcoming conference at Hebrew University (HUJI), claiming that “while all Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy.”

On October 30, 2012, Bittar signed an open letter to the African National Congress (ANC) whose purpose was to “call on the ANC to support the Palestinian call for BDS as expression of the party‘s solidarity with the struggle of the Palestinian people.”