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DIVEST FROM ISRAEL |
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by Urbana-Champaign Unity & Struggle Email: ucusnow (nospam) hotmail.com (unverified!) |
22 Feb 2002
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TODAY (Fri, 22 Feb) you will find an AD in the DAILY ILLINI (pg 3, below campus events) requesting that the University of Illinois divest from companies that have significant dealings with or within Israel.
Urbana-Champaign Unity and Struggle (UCUS), is spearheading this campaign at the U of I. The University should not morally associate itself with the Israeli apartheid/colonial economy nor the weapons
manufacturers who supply one of the most powerful armies in the world. U of I should withdraw its financial support for Israel. |
TODAY (Fri, 22 Feb) you will find an AD in the DAILY ILLINI (pg 3, below campus events) requesting that the University of Illinois divest from companies that have significant dealings with or within Israel.
Urbana-Champaign Unity and Struggle (UCUS), is spearheading this campaign at the U of I. The University should not morally associate itself with the Israeli apartheid/colonial economy nor the weapons manufacturers who supply one of the most powerful armies in the world. U of I should withdraw its financial support for Israel.
The attacks on the very social fabric of the Palestinian people in Palestine/Israel demands that we, as students and community members in the United States, mobilize in word and deed to show that we will take this no longer. We cannot rely on moral appeals to the State Department, the Israeli government, the Arab governments or the United Nations. The status quo serves their interests and it is time for a people-to-people foreign policy in Israel/Palestine and the wider Middle East.
It was the role of students in the 1980s that helped end South Africa's apartheid system. Today it is our role to do the same to end Israeli apartheid. Divestment is one political tool that was used during the previous anti-aparthied movement. It is grassroots organizing to pressure large institutions, such as the U of I, to sever any financial ties to the state of Israel through the companies in which it invests.
By divesting we shame companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, Caterpillar and AT&T that openly deal with oppressive regimes. We force companies to question whether they will do business that profits from a state that practices racism and all the brutal policies that follow. As Israel becomes more internationally isolated, Israel will have to come to the negotiating table as a peer, not a dictating power than can impose any solution it wants to on the Palestinian people.
Currently, only the University of California and the University of Illinois have been asked to divest. We also join the city residents of Ann Arbor, Michigan in their divestment efforts and the national boycott of Israeli goods in Britain. Recently, UCUS returned from a national conference on divestment and Palestinian solidarity, attended by representatives of 25 universities around the United States and Canada. As the new "Palestinian Solidarity Student Movement", we expect new divestment campaigns to begin at many other universities in the comingmonths.
We hope that you will express your support for this advertisment in the coming days to your friends, neighbours and colleagues and on the opinions pages of the Daily Illini and other local papers.
If you wish, please join us or stop by and say hello on the Quad today, and every Friday, from 11:50 to 1PM as we hold a silent picket in recognition of the over two dozen Palestinian dead and hundreds wounded this week.
Urbana-Champaign Unity and Struggle |
See also:
http://www.uofidivest.org |
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