Boycott documentary Screening

M.C. Jerome McDonnell, Former Host of Worldview
Q&A Following Movie with: Rebecca Glenberg, Senior Supervising Attorney at Illinois ACLU; and Dima Khalidi, Director of Palestine Legal.

When a news publisher in Arkansas, an attorney in Arizona, and a speech therapist in Texas are told they must choose between their jobs and their political beliefs, they launch legal battles that expose an attack on freedom of speech across 33 states in America. Boycott traces the impact of state legislation designed to penalize individuals and companies that choose to boycott Israel due to its human rights record. 

A legal thriller with “accidental plaintiffs” at the center of the story, Boycott is a bracing look at the far-reaching implications of anti-boycott legislation and an inspiring tale of everyday Americans standing up to protect our rights in an age of shifting politics and threats to freedom of speech. More information about the movie is available at this website.

Oak Park: A Day in Our Village

On Sunday, June 5th 2022, CJPIP joined other Oak Park community organizations at the annual Day in Our Village event where we educated our neighbors and friends about Palestinian life under Israeli occupation and blockade. This event was the launch of a multi-faceted community education campaign that CJPIP will engage in over the coming months.  Inspired by Jewish Voice for Peace and others’ challenge to the notion that one can be “progressive except Palestine,” we will be using events and media to inform people who care deeply about human rights about the situation in Palestine.

Amira Hass Tour

Between April 28th and May 9th 2019, prizewinning Israeli journalist Amira Hass spoke about her personal challenges as a Jew living and reporting in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She painted a grim picture of Palestinian daily life under apartheid living conditions. She also educated listeners about how the enclosure of Gaza foretells Israel’s ultimate plans for the Palestinian areas of the West Bank – which echo the Bantustans of South Africa’s apartheid system.

Eager to hear her first-hand accounts, Hass drew large crowds at 15 public events in 7 cities in Illinois, Iowa, and Indiana. Beginning with a packed room at the Oak Park Public Library, the tour reached other libraries as well as college campuses and churches.  Her special perspective was also amplified by appearances on WBEZ’s Worldview and an interview on Radio Islam.

Jeff Halper - Towards One Democratic State in Israel/Palestine

On February 2, 2019 Jeff Halper, Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize, spoke to nearly 200 people at Euclid Methodist Church in Oak Park. Dr. Halper argued that international protest, resistance, and critique of the Israeli oppression of Palestinians has been important but is not enough.  Every political struggle needs an end game.  Redefining the situation in Palestine as a unilateral settler colonial project (and not a “conflict”), he dismantled the legitimacy of the two-state solution that has driven U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East.  Describing the Israeli-Palestinian struggle as a training ground for militarized policing and the techniques and technologies of repression throughout the world, he argued that the struggle has produced a global system of security politics that is oppressing all of us.

Asserting the failure of the two-state solution, Dr. Halper proposed support for the growing movement toward a single democratic state, which would mandate a thorough decolonization of the entire Palestine/Israel region and establish a constitutional democracy with equal rights for all, the right of return of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, individual and collective rights, and a new integrated civil society.  He offered concrete examples of the movement’s proposed transformational end game and asked for U.S. activists to advocate for a change in the goal envisioned by our movement and ultimately our government.