1. What is divestment and what is the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) Movement?
Divestment is a strategy of nonviolent resistance in which an institution stops investing in organizations that are implicated in social harm. In the case of our campaign’s goal as Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine, divestment means ending our university’s ties with companies engaged in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories and the United States.
The BDS movement is broader in scope. It began after Palestinian civil society issued a call for action on July 9, 2005. They called for “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era” and to pressure “states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel” until Israel “meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
Some members of our coalition have officially endorsed the BDS movement. Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine, as a coalition, is focused on selectively divesting from corporations that profit from violations of international law and human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and United States.
2. Are you calling for divestment from everything Israeli?
No. We are pushing for selective divestment from companies engaged in specific practices that commit human rights abuses and violate international law, both here in the United States and in the occupied Palestinian territories, as a means of changing those illegal and abusive practices.
3. Why does divestment belong in college campuses?
College campuses have historically been leading players in political movements on a range of issues. In fact, campuses played a central role in ending South African apartheid through the very divestment initiatives that we are pursuing against Israel. Furthermore, just last year, our campus voted to divest from fossil fuels. If a movement to reduce pollution through divestment belongs on a college campus, a movement to end human rights abuses through divestment certainly belongs as well.
To that end, our peers at many university student associations, including UCLA, Arizona State University, UC Berkeley, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin, Loyola University, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz have passed resolutions calling for divestment from companies that violate international law and human rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
4. Why would you try to pass divestment through the ASSU Senate? Is the ASSU the appropriate venue?
The ASSU Senate serves an important function in amplifying the voice of students and signaling student concern about particular university policies to the Board of Trustees. A resolution through the ASSU, our representative body, indicates to the Board of Trustees that divestment has student support. The resolution is a necessary intermediary step on route to divestment.
5. Do you really think that Stanford will divest from these companies? You won’t get them to divest, so why bother? Even if they did, why would that even change anything?
We hope to receive a response from the Board of Trustees eventually, but even if they don’t divest, this is an opportunity to use our privilege as Stanford students to raise awareness of the importance of making sure that our institution is not profiting from companies that are complicit in violation of human rights. We hope to use this campaign to contribute to a larger national and global conversation.
As for change, historically, divestment has been one of the most effective tools in pressuring organizations to cease human rights abuses. The most prominent example comes from the campaign to divest from South Africa in an effort to end Apartheid. This effort is remembered as the textbook example of how economic pressure can fuel change in repressive regimes. By targeting certain companies economically, they will be forced to reflect on why they are being targeted for divestment and make an effort to bring about change. In achieving this, divestment becomes a useful tool of nonviolent resistance.
6. Doesn’t divestment hamper progress because it is so divisive? Doesn’t divestment polarize both campus and international communities rather than encouraging dialogue and diplomacy?
Divestment threatens the status quo more than any diplomatic effort has in a long time by taking the profit out of Occupation. The role of boycott and divestment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Apartheid South Africa Movement showed that rather than hindering change, pressure from boycotts and divestment brought political leaders to the negotiating table, not to haggle over whether or not to end oppression, but to figure out how best to do so on the basis of universal human rights and international law. Divestment would help level the playing field to make constructive dialogue and negotiation possible.
7. Why single out Israel? Don’t a lot of Arab countries have equally bad or worse human rights records, especially concerning the status of Jews and women?
We recognize that Israel is not the only perpetrator of human rights violations in the world. However, the United States government is more directly implicated in human rights abuses in Israel than elsewhere in the region. The United States provides Israel with more aid than any other country, and most of this aid funds Israel’s military. As students of an American university, we feel a responsibility to act, given how vital the financial contributions of American companies and the American government are to sustaining human rights violations and oppression in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Multinational corporations also tend to treat Israel differently by disproportionately conducting business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as compared to other conflict areas (e.g. Syria and Iran) where binding law often prevents engagement with human rights violators.
Also, the existence of other unjust regimes does not excuse the unjust practices of the Israeli state nor should it allow us to ignore them. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu notes, “Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent.”
8. The situation seems complex, with both Israelis and Palestinians committing violence. Why are you only blaming Israel and not placing any demands on the Palestinians?
First, our criteria does not prevent us from divesting from companies that are guilty of engaging in human rights abuses in the name of the Palestinians. However, it is unlikely that our endowment is invested in such abuses precisely because multinational companies are unlikely to be invested in them. Moreover, while both sides have been violent towards each other, Israel is the occupier in this conflict and has used its advanced military and economy to take over Palestinian land and cause suffering, desperation, and a dehumanization on the stateless Palestinian people. It is difficult to argue the existence of a moral symmetry between the violence that the occupier commits and the violence that the occupied commit. We must remember that the ANC also used violence in its struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. The use of violent means by some Palestinians cannot invalidate their right to freedom or justify Israel’s brutal occupation and use of collective punishment.
9. Doesn’t the Jewish nation have a 3,000 year history in the land of Israel? How is it possible to characterize Israel’s policies as colonization and occupation in light of this ancient connection to the land?
The historic connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel does not justify human rights violations and the maintenance of the occupation, colonization, and apartheid that characterize the current conflict. Our divestment movement does not take issue with the presence of Jewish people in Israel, or seek to negate their ancient ties to the region. Rather, divestment seeks to pressure the state of Israel to comply with international and humanitarian law and recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
10. Is divestment from the Israeli occupation anti-Semitic?
Our only aim is to end Israeli state policies of occupation that abuse human rights and violate international law. We carefully distinguish between these particular Israeli state policies, the Israeli state itself, Israeli citizens, and Jewish people. We strongly condemn anti-Semitism, which is contrary to the principles of equality, justice, and human rights for which we are fighting.
As Jewish Voice for Peace states: “We absolutely reject the accusation that general divestment or boycott campaigns are inherently anti-Semitic. The Israeli government is a government like any other, and condemning human rights abuse as many of its own citizens do quite vigorously, is in no way the same as attacking the Jewish people”.
We also recognize the global prevalence of anti-Semitism and the need to guard against it. We refuse to tolerate anti-Semitism internally, just as we refuse to tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, or bigotry in any form. We are committed to holding our own members and allies accountable to the vision of the just society we are working towards.
Divestment is a strategy of nonviolent resistance in which an institution stops investing in organizations that are implicated in social harm. In the case of our campaign’s goal as Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine, divestment means ending our university’s ties with companies engaged in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian territories and the United States.
The BDS movement is broader in scope. It began after Palestinian civil society issued a call for action on July 9, 2005. They called for “international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era” and to pressure “states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel” until Israel “meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
- Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.“
Some members of our coalition have officially endorsed the BDS movement. Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine, as a coalition, is focused on selectively divesting from corporations that profit from violations of international law and human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and United States.
2. Are you calling for divestment from everything Israeli?
No. We are pushing for selective divestment from companies engaged in specific practices that commit human rights abuses and violate international law, both here in the United States and in the occupied Palestinian territories, as a means of changing those illegal and abusive practices.
3. Why does divestment belong in college campuses?
College campuses have historically been leading players in political movements on a range of issues. In fact, campuses played a central role in ending South African apartheid through the very divestment initiatives that we are pursuing against Israel. Furthermore, just last year, our campus voted to divest from fossil fuels. If a movement to reduce pollution through divestment belongs on a college campus, a movement to end human rights abuses through divestment certainly belongs as well.
To that end, our peers at many university student associations, including UCLA, Arizona State University, UC Berkeley, University of Massachusetts, University of Wisconsin, Loyola University, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, and UC Santa Cruz have passed resolutions calling for divestment from companies that violate international law and human rights in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.
4. Why would you try to pass divestment through the ASSU Senate? Is the ASSU the appropriate venue?
The ASSU Senate serves an important function in amplifying the voice of students and signaling student concern about particular university policies to the Board of Trustees. A resolution through the ASSU, our representative body, indicates to the Board of Trustees that divestment has student support. The resolution is a necessary intermediary step on route to divestment.
5. Do you really think that Stanford will divest from these companies? You won’t get them to divest, so why bother? Even if they did, why would that even change anything?
We hope to receive a response from the Board of Trustees eventually, but even if they don’t divest, this is an opportunity to use our privilege as Stanford students to raise awareness of the importance of making sure that our institution is not profiting from companies that are complicit in violation of human rights. We hope to use this campaign to contribute to a larger national and global conversation.
As for change, historically, divestment has been one of the most effective tools in pressuring organizations to cease human rights abuses. The most prominent example comes from the campaign to divest from South Africa in an effort to end Apartheid. This effort is remembered as the textbook example of how economic pressure can fuel change in repressive regimes. By targeting certain companies economically, they will be forced to reflect on why they are being targeted for divestment and make an effort to bring about change. In achieving this, divestment becomes a useful tool of nonviolent resistance.
6. Doesn’t divestment hamper progress because it is so divisive? Doesn’t divestment polarize both campus and international communities rather than encouraging dialogue and diplomacy?
Divestment threatens the status quo more than any diplomatic effort has in a long time by taking the profit out of Occupation. The role of boycott and divestment in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and Anti-Apartheid South Africa Movement showed that rather than hindering change, pressure from boycotts and divestment brought political leaders to the negotiating table, not to haggle over whether or not to end oppression, but to figure out how best to do so on the basis of universal human rights and international law. Divestment would help level the playing field to make constructive dialogue and negotiation possible.
7. Why single out Israel? Don’t a lot of Arab countries have equally bad or worse human rights records, especially concerning the status of Jews and women?
We recognize that Israel is not the only perpetrator of human rights violations in the world. However, the United States government is more directly implicated in human rights abuses in Israel than elsewhere in the region. The United States provides Israel with more aid than any other country, and most of this aid funds Israel’s military. As students of an American university, we feel a responsibility to act, given how vital the financial contributions of American companies and the American government are to sustaining human rights violations and oppression in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Multinational corporations also tend to treat Israel differently by disproportionately conducting business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories as compared to other conflict areas (e.g. Syria and Iran) where binding law often prevents engagement with human rights violators.
Also, the existence of other unjust regimes does not excuse the unjust practices of the Israeli state nor should it allow us to ignore them. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu notes, “Divestment from apartheid South Africa was certainly no less justified because there was repression elsewhere on the African continent.”
8. The situation seems complex, with both Israelis and Palestinians committing violence. Why are you only blaming Israel and not placing any demands on the Palestinians?
First, our criteria does not prevent us from divesting from companies that are guilty of engaging in human rights abuses in the name of the Palestinians. However, it is unlikely that our endowment is invested in such abuses precisely because multinational companies are unlikely to be invested in them. Moreover, while both sides have been violent towards each other, Israel is the occupier in this conflict and has used its advanced military and economy to take over Palestinian land and cause suffering, desperation, and a dehumanization on the stateless Palestinian people. It is difficult to argue the existence of a moral symmetry between the violence that the occupier commits and the violence that the occupied commit. We must remember that the ANC also used violence in its struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. The use of violent means by some Palestinians cannot invalidate their right to freedom or justify Israel’s brutal occupation and use of collective punishment.
9. Doesn’t the Jewish nation have a 3,000 year history in the land of Israel? How is it possible to characterize Israel’s policies as colonization and occupation in light of this ancient connection to the land?
The historic connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel does not justify human rights violations and the maintenance of the occupation, colonization, and apartheid that characterize the current conflict. Our divestment movement does not take issue with the presence of Jewish people in Israel, or seek to negate their ancient ties to the region. Rather, divestment seeks to pressure the state of Israel to comply with international and humanitarian law and recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.
10. Is divestment from the Israeli occupation anti-Semitic?
Our only aim is to end Israeli state policies of occupation that abuse human rights and violate international law. We carefully distinguish between these particular Israeli state policies, the Israeli state itself, Israeli citizens, and Jewish people. We strongly condemn anti-Semitism, which is contrary to the principles of equality, justice, and human rights for which we are fighting.
As Jewish Voice for Peace states: “We absolutely reject the accusation that general divestment or boycott campaigns are inherently anti-Semitic. The Israeli government is a government like any other, and condemning human rights abuse as many of its own citizens do quite vigorously, is in no way the same as attacking the Jewish people”.
We also recognize the global prevalence of anti-Semitism and the need to guard against it. We refuse to tolerate anti-Semitism internally, just as we refuse to tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, or bigotry in any form. We are committed to holding our own members and allies accountable to the vision of the just society we are working towards.