Informational pickets start to gather Left - acbi campaigners Sasan Fayazmanesh, Vida Samiian, Dennis Kortheurer; right - David Klein and Edit Pistolesi
USACBI campaign members were joined by 15 members of Anti-Racist Network, USC SJP, Women in Black, the National Lawyers Guild and assorted individuals to protest recognition of settler colonial Ariel University by ISIS (International Society for Iranian Studies). Despite an ongoing campaign, including a Joint Letter by 120 academics, ISIS refused to drop the Ariel University identification of a settler colonial speaker.
Their signs said it all, as the picketers stood behind a brick apartheid wall and lined two sides of the hotel driveway; and they laid out their argument in fliers distributed to incoming ISIS conferees.
ACBI Organizing Committee Members Edie Pistolesi (l) and Sherna Gluck (r) With NLG supporter Carole Smith in middle Wall and signs by acbi sign maker, Edie Pistolesi
Hearing the buzz inside the conference registration area, many of those who had arrived the previous day came out to the informational picketers to get the prepared literature and talk.
Former ISIS president Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak came out with a TV camera crew and talked with some of the organizers of the ISIS campaign.
Afshin Matin-Asgari (middle) Vida Samiian (r)
In a 30 minute exchange, Karimi-Hakkak claimed he opposed occupation and argued that the matter was being reviewed by ISIS. He was clearly upset by the public accusation that ISIS supported apartheid.
USACBI Organizing Committee members confront a former ISIS president
Although he refused to admit that ISIS would have ignored the entire issue had it not been for the campaign, he did acknowledge that the hastily constructed panel to with UCLA Zionist zealot Judea Pearl was added did not follow normal protocol. That, too, is being investigated. So, perhaps taking a lesson from the Obama administration, ISIS is handling controversy by appointing “commissions.”
As Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA) southern California correspondent, Pat Twair, commented, “BDS has given Israel notice that no more dirty tricks will go unseen.”
Bernie Eisenberg behind bars
NLG Executive Director Jim Lafferty negotiating with Santa Monica police
Reza Pour behind bars
