The project was aimed at educating Princeton students and drawing attention to the experiences of Palestinians and immigrants to this country.
By Ricki Heicklen
For The Times of Trenton
PRINCETON - Student activists at Princeton University came together last week to construct "The Wall," an intersectional art installation meant to represent both Israel's West Bank barrier and the Mexico-United States barrier.
The project is a collaboration between the Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) and DREAM Team, both student-run immigrant rights advocacy groups.
Each group designed and painted one side of the structure, which was on display Monday through Friday this past week on McCosh Walk, a central part of Princeton's campus.
The Wall stood 8 feet tall and 20 feet wide and was decorated with artwork, quotes, and statistics aimed at educating Princeton students and drawing attention to the experiences of Palestinians and immigrants to the United States alike.
"We're trying to give Palestinians a voice," said Mohamed El-Dirany, a sophomore and leader of PCP. "They're very persecuted and in many ways they are the voiceless, so we want to be able to give them a voice."
Maria Perales, a member of DREAM Team, emphasized that one of her goals was to humanize the conversation about immigration.
"People are talking about [immigration], but it's very political and dehumanizing, just talking about groups of people in large numbers," Perales said. "It takes away from seeing people as individuals. They have histories and they have families and we really wanted to embody that."
The primary project organizers were El-Dirany, Sarah Sakha, and Kyle Dhillon from PCP, and Peralas, Marlyn Bruno, and Alejandra Rincon from DREAM Team. Approximately 20 students worked on the planning, design, and assembly of the final product.
The Wall has been in the works for months, according to Sakha, with the bulk of the work happening over the past few weeks. PCP reached out to DREAM Team in November, and the two groups met together three times over the course of the following months before beginning construction on The Wall.
The Wall (Ricki Heicklen) PCP's inspiration for the project came from mock Apartheid walls at other colleges across America, including Rutgers, Loyola, and Ohio State, Sakha said.
The Wall was modeled in part after a similar structure in southern California, which travels between different college campuses there.
El-Dirany had initially wanted to bring the traveling Apartheid Wall from California, but for logistical reasons the group eventually decided to build their own instead.
The Wall cost about $500 to build, and the bulk of it came from the Lewis Center for the Arts, with additional support from the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Davis International Center, and the American Studies Program.
Aamir Zainulabadeen, a sophomore member of PCP whose poetry is featured on The Wall, remarked that there is "an astounding intersectional element" between "the U.S.-Mexico wall and the Israel-Palestine wall."
"Both [America and Israel] are examples of very well-recognized states and their bureaucracies," Zainulabadeen said, where "there is human suffering that is happening as a direct result of the way these states are constructed and the way these bureaucracies are operating."
The natural alliance between PCP and DREAM Team began to form last year, when DREAM Team supported PCP's Divest campaign, which called for university divestment from companies that maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, according to Sakha.
According to project leaders, reaction to The Wall has been mostly positive. But some students have contested the project, arguing that it offers only one side of the narrative.
Eli Schechner, a sophomore and president of Princeton's Israel advocacy group Tigers for Israel, wrote an opinion piece in the Daily Princetonian in response to The Wall highlighting security concerns for the Israeli people.
He cited the significant drop in terror attacks after the construction of the barrier, and argued that trust, understanding, and coexistence are prerequisites for the wall dividing Israel and the West Bank to safely come down.
Schechner called for nuance in the discussions of violence and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Misleading demonstrations like the PCP's libelous walls and incendiary rhetoric do not bring us closer to the day when Palestinians and Israelis can freely and safely coexist in their respective states," he wrote.
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