|
Parent Article: Israeli article on impact of divestiture movement |
|
Divestiture movement |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
18 Jul 2002
Modified: 02:52:34 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.
@%< |
