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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Israeli article on impact of divestiture movement |
Current rating: 0 |
by haaretz, via gehrig
(No verified email address) |
17 Jul 2002
Modified: 18 Jul 2002 |
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Relevant quote: "They note that while campaigns against South African investment in the mid-1980s drew little opposition, the anti-Israel petitions are spawning counter-petitions that may out-number the originals." One activist: "Our goal is to collect 10-30 signatures against divestiture for every pro-divestiture signature." |
Wednesday, July 17, 2002 Av 8, 5762
Battles rage on U.S. campuses for and against investments in Israel
By Oded Hermoni
An editorial in the Daily Bruin, the University of California-Los Angeles campus, last week called for the university to get rid of all its investments in Israeli companies and American companies that invest in Israel.
"The UC's investment portfolio is not independent of its social responsibilities," said the editorial. "In 1984, the UC divested from South Africa because it, too, was clearly violating human rights during apartheid."
The editorial is the latest item in a battle underway at some of the most prestigious universities in the United States. Petitions on the same theme as the UCLA student newspaper has been circulating at universities like Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Princeton, and University of California campuses. Counter-petitions have followed. Hundreds of faculty members have signed the pro-divesting petition and so have 6,000 students.
A number of Israelis, who belong to faculties in America well as in Israel, have added their signatures, including Prof. Immanuel Farjun from Hebrew University and MIT Prof. Yosef Grodzinski, of Tel Aviv University, and Ben-Gurion University Prof. Naomi Shir.
Jewish and Israeli faculty members at American campuses this week said it is still too early to judge the influence of the petitions on their institutions' long-term investment policies. They note that while campaigns against South African investment in the mid-1980s drew little opposition, the anti-Israel petitions are spawning counter-petitions that may out-number the originals.
Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, for example, has issued a statement saying the university does not intend to withdraw its investments in companies connected to Israel. Princeton University's board raised the issue for a preliminary debate, ruled that the petitioner's claims were not sufficient, and dropped the issue from its agenda.
A university spokeswoman said at this stage there's no point even examining the issue. "There has to be a consensus on the campus to make such a decision. There was a short discussion, and we've decided not to continue it," she said.
Even if universities were to undertake a serious examination of the issue, it could take as long as two years before any decision would be made. "Nonetheless, and although the chances are slim, the petitions could lead to a situation in which the universities decide to relate to the matter and conduct a comprehensive examination of their investments in Israel, which would require the university administrations to explain their position," said one American university source.
The petition against investment in Israel began at Berkeley in May, after Operation Defensive Shield. A group of students and faculty members demanded that the university divest $6.4 billion it had invested in giant companies doing business with Israel, like Cisco and Hewlett Packard. Later, 165 faculty members from MIT and Harvard joined, as did 42 faculty members at Princeton. In the last month, more signatures have been added to the petition, including 125 teachers from the University of California system.
In response, pro-Israel faculty and students at several universities have come up with their own petitions against divestiture. So far 5,000 signatures have been collected at Harvard and MIT, says the Hillel House at MIT, and at UCLA, some 2,000 signatures have been added.
A leading campaigner for the anti-divestiture petition is Steven Spiegel, a former aide to President Clinton on Middle East affairs. He told Ha'aretz the petitions against the investment are more anti-Israel than they are pro-Palestinian. "This petition is making academics from the entire political spectrum unite against it. I expect that the University of California system will indeed discuss the petition and then reject it. Our goal is to collect 10-30 signatures against divestiture for every pro-divestiture signature." |
See also:
www.haaretzdaily.com
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Comments
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Gehrig..more news to piss you off. |
by Marat
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Jul 2002
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Alrighty. If the excerpted Ha'aretz article was enough to infuriate those apologists for Israeli apartheid..like our friend Gehrig here, - which is why he reposted it..again, then this should leave them apoplectic, although Palestinians should take heart.
The movement against Israeli apartheid is growing rapidly in the US, despite the increasingly hysterical efforts made by AIPAC, ADL and other Zionist flack outfits to try and suppress it. This fall, expect the battle to be joined.
History of the Divestment Campaign against Israeli Apartheid - taken from the University of California Divestment Campaign website.
http://www.ucdivest.org/campaign.php - University of California Divestment Campaign
During the drafting of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, the Palestinians carefully studied the American Declaration of Independence as well as the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic. As can be seen from the text of their Declaration , the Palestinians deliberately patterned their Declaration upon America’s Declaration. In other words, the Palestinians purposefully sought to communicate with Americans in terms the Palestinians thought the Americans could readily comprehend and sympathize with. There are good grounds to believe that their message has finally gotten through and been well received.
The origins of the movement to divest from Israel can be traced to a public lecture at Illinois State University in Bloomington-Normal. On 30 November 2000, Francis A. Boyle, speaking at behest of Political Science Chair Jamal Nassar, issued a call for the establishment of a nationwide campaign of divestment/disinvestment directed against Israel. This call was later put out on the internet. In response, the Students for Justice in Palestine of the University of California at Berkeley launched a divestment campaign against Israel there. Then the City of Ann Arbor Michigan considered divesting from Israel. Next, the Palestinian Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (advised by Boyle) launched an Israeli divestment campaign there. As of last count, over 30 campuses in the United States have organized divestment/disinvestment campaigns against Israel. This grassroots movement is taking off!
Concerned citizens and governments all over the world must organize a comprehensive campaign of economic divestment and disinvestment from Israel along the same lines of what they did to the former criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. This original worldwide divestment/disinvestment campaign played a critical role in dismantling the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. See my Defending Civil Resistance under International Law 211-81 (Transnational Publishers: 1987). A worldwide divestment/disinvestment campaign against Israel will play a critical role in dismantling its criminal apartheid regime against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine as well as in Israel itself.
For much the same reasons, a worldwide divestment/disinvestment campaign against Israel can produce an historic reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians – just as it successfully did between Whites and Blacks in South Africa.
This new divestment/disinvestment campaign should provide the Palestinians with enough economic and political leverage needed to negotiate a just and comprehensive peace settlement with the Israelis – just as it did for the Blacks in South Africa. Today the Republic of South Africa stands as a Beacon of Hope for Peoples and States all over the world. The same could be true for Palestine and Israel.
-Text provided by Prof. Francis A. Boyle, University of Illinois
The most recent development in the divestment campaign are several faculty-initiated petitions. Faculty at other universities, including Princeton, Harvard, MIT, Cornell, and Tufts have taken it upon themselves to say they cannot be complicit in Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine and its apartheid policies. Based on the first faculty petition adopted at Princeton, Harvard and MIT Faculty announced the launch of their campaign for divestment from Israel in early May 2002. This website and the UC Faculty-led initiative signal a new level of support for the growing divestment campaign.
- Other Faculty Divestment Campaigns
Harvard - MIT Divstment Campaign: http://www.harvardmitdivest.org
Princeton Divestment Campaign: http://www.princetondivest.org
Cornell Divestment Campaign: http://www.israel-divest.org/Cornell
Tufts Divestment Campaign: http://www.israel-divest.org/Tufts/petition.html
http://www.ucdivest.org/campaign.php
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Divestiture movement |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Jul 2002
Modified: 01:52:34 PM |
"Alrighty. If the excerpted Ha'aretz article was enough to infuriate those apologists for Israeli apartheid..like our friend Gehrig here, - which is why he reposted it..again, then this should leave them apoplectic, although Palestinians should take heart. "
The existence of a divestiture movement is no secret to any regular IMC reader, and your post leaves me not apoplectic but sad at the amount of energy some good-hearted people are preparing to expend on a cause which strikes me as, if not DOA, then not far from it.
What I thought was interesting enough to make this article worth reposting when I saw it in Ha'aretz was its assessment of what _policy impact_ the campaigns have had. We've already seen the divestiture side of the story here on the IMCs (and http://www.uofidivest.org) but without much indication of context and actual impact on university policies. Statements of solidarity are a dime a dozen, but -- as anti-Chief-Illiniwek-ites like me can assure you -- don't mean a thing to the Board of Trustees.
The article divides campuses into two groups: those, like Harvard and Princeton, where action has been taken, and other campuses where no official action has been taken. When action _has_ been taken, it has been against divestiture. Based on the Ha'aretz article, the best you can say about secondary divestiture from Israel is that it hasn't lost everywhere yet.
I am writing from a campus with a well-organized Jewish presence. Were it to come to battle of the petitions, any pro-divestiture petition would likely be matched, signature for signature, by an anti-divestiture petition. Matched if not swamped. There would be no campus-wide agreement on divestiture here, as there was on South Africa. (Chairman Arafat, as you may have noticed, ain't no Nelson Mandela, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is no ANC.) The Board of Trustees would have no distinguishable mandate by consensus to change their investment policy. And -- as we have seen on the Chief -- the Board is not likely to take the lead on a controversial subject with financial overtones.
Additionally, the governor of this state recently (maybe two months ago) signed a bill allowing the state treasurer to invest for the short term (i.e. within a budget year) allocated but unspent funds in foreign bonds. The accompanying press release from the Office of the Governor specifically mentioned Israel bonds, and I seem to recall the figure being something like ten million dollars. The bill enabling this passed the House by a three-to-one margin. With the State itself investing _directly_ in Israel, I have a hard time seeing the Board of Trustees deciding to punish, say, Coca-Cola (which has an exclusive campus contract) for nothing more than daring sell Coke in Israel.
Maybe the situation is different on other campuses, but here, pragmatically, all that seems likely to come out of the divestiture movement is some consciousness raising about Israeli abuses in the Occupied Territories -- something that could be done more effectively and more efficiently directly, without the dubious analogy and without tilting at Trustee windmills.
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