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CounterPunch
October
3, 2002
The New Anti-Apartheid
Movement:
The Campaign
to Divest from Israel
by WILL YOUMANS
What do you get if you take the Palestinian uprising,
add the socially responsible investment principles of globalization's
critics, and mix in the memory of the last major successful social
struggle - the movement to end Apartheid in Israel?
The end result is the most dynamic organizational
framework activists working for Palestinian rights have seen
in this country.
The new divestment campaign began nearly
two years ago in Berkeley. Its goal is to end universities' financial
links to Israeli Apartheid. This is much more tangible than prior
efforts, which merely sought to educate the public. Activists
could not get past the frustrating apathy of the majority. It
was difficult to tell whether opinion was changing or not without
advanced polling techniques. Divestment lays out a clear goal.
Divestment's underlying logic is compelling
as it is simple. South Africa's Apartheid government operated
a partite system of administration: one component of the government
privileged whites exclusively and fundamentally because they
were white, while the other subordinated blacks. This was on
the basis of race. In the same way, Israel clearly privileges
humans of Jewish ancestry over those of Palestinian descent.
The movement's logic is bolstered by
the historical and experiential proximity between the black South
Africans and the Palestinians. In 1999, CNN reported that Nelson
Mandela told the Palestinian assembly, "the histories of
our two peoples correspond in such painful and poignant ways
that I intensely feel myself at home amongst my compatriots."
South African activists are leading what
one group calls the "International Anti-Apartheid Movement
Against Israel." The Palestine Solidarity Committee launched
the "new Anti-Apartheid Movement" at the World Conference
Against Racism on August 31, 2001, in Durban, South Africa. Their
mission states that their "own victorious struggle against
apartheid, provide(s) them a unique solidarity with the Palestinian
people." One of their spokespeople, Na'eem Jeenah, is currently
touring the country.
Now over 50 petitions are calling for
divestment at universities all over the country, according to
this week's Time magazine ("A Campus War over Israel "
10/7/02). At Harvard and <M.I.T>., a petition garnered
over 500 signatures. Around 200 University of California faculty
have signed on to a similar one targeting the more than $6 billion
the UC invests in companies doing business with Israel. The first
national conference devoted to divestment was at Berkeley this
past February. It attracted over 450 activists.
One way to measure the potential success
of the campaign is to look at the response of Pro-Israeli advocates
and their stooges.
This past summer while most students
traveled, worked, or studied, Israel's lobby and friends worked
behind the scenes to counter divestment activities. When UCLA's
student newspaper editorial board called for divestment in July,
US Congressman Henry Waxman objected in a letter to the editor
published in the following edition.
A month later, 71 State of California
Legislators introduced a bill against divestment into the California
legislature. It called on the University of California to "reject
calls to divest its pension funds that are invested in companies
with ties to Israel."
California Governor Gray Davis did not
miss his chance to cash in. He claimed that the Students for
Justice in Palestine's takeover of a campus building was an anti-Semitic
hate crime. A month later he rejected divestment explicitly,
stating, "as long as I am governor of this state, we will
continue to stand side by side with our friends in Israel, both
in business and friendship." Especially in business. Israel
is California's 22nd largest trading partner. Israelis invest
over $162 million in California and Israeli companies have over
200 offices there, mostly in Silicon Valley
Last June, the Anti-Defamation League
put out a press release condemning divestment. Jonathon Bernstein,
the ADL's Northern California director claimed it rested on "the
propagation of a false and odious comparison to Apartheid-era
South Africa." This re-affirmed my suspicion that they are
not really against all defamation. The press release as well
as the ADL's website fail to demonstrate how the analogy is "false
and odious." We are just supposed to take their word for
it, despite their history of spying on anti-Apartheid activists
(see Counterpunch's "The ADL Snoops").
Recently, Harvard University's Larry
Summers claimed that advocates of divestment are "anti-Semitic
in their effect if not their intent." This hypocrite chased
Cornel West away from Harvard because he was mixing politics
and work Here he is taking a political position in his capacity
as an administrator. As a side-note, he must have sharpened his
talent for hypocrisy as a member Clinton's cabinet and as the
Chief Economist for the World Bank before that - two positions
you get by moving in motion with the dominant political currents.
Currently, pro-Israeli activists are
scurrying to delay, counter, and infiltrate the upcoming divestment
conference at the University of Michigan, to be held October
12th-14th.
The Jerusalem Post depicted it as a Zionism
as Racism conference in an September 30th article. Pro-Israeli
activists at U-M took a note from Campus-Watch and submitted
a dossier in an effort to ban the conference. It alleged that
the conference was anti-Semitic. One of its pieces of evidence
was that in a picture on the sponsoring organization's website,
an Israeli soldier has his arm raised in the "heil Hilter"
position. It charged that SAFE used this to imply a comparison
between Nazism and Zionism. This absurd claim characterized the
tone of and shaky evidence in the rest of the dossier. The rest
of it used cut-and-pasted attacks on some of the speakers.
Last week, an e-mail spoof was sent claiming
to be from an organizer of the conference, Fadi Kiblawi. The
e-mail's from-address was his, but he did not write it. It went
to every faculty member, and claimed to be a pitch for the conference.
Of course, it featured anti-Jewish slurs in order to make the
conference appear anti-Jewish. The organizer whose e-mail was
spoofed realized this happened when he started receiving nasty
responses.
The University's information and technological
services were able to demonstrate that it was sent from a different
account.
Kiblawi wrote a letter requesting that
the President of the university clear his name since she has
access to the entire university community. Instead she wrote
a wishy-washy diatribe against divestment and the conference,
in which she asserted, "I do not support this divestment."
She added, "we do not believe political interests should
govern our investment decisions."
She counter-productively addressed the
spoof e-mail towards the end, of the letter:
"We experienced a disturbing incident
when, in violation of University e-mail policy, a message containing
inflammatory language was distributed to many U-M faculty membersThe
authorship and other related circumstances are under investigation
we also have a responsibility to vehemently dispute speech that
is incompatible with our principles and beliefs. The e-mail contained
language that was deeply offensive and hurtful to me and to many
others in our community, and I condemn it ... I ask for your
collective support in maintaining civil and respectful campus
dialogue on important issues."
This was a favor to the hackers. Instead
of condemning those who spoofed the activist's e-mail, she used
the occasion to state her political position and let remain the
mistaken belief that he wrote it. The campus newspaper, the Michigan
Daily, corrected the record several days later with an article
("SAFE spokesperson speaks out on effect of Coleman e-mail"
10/1/02). U-M student Idris Elbakri was quoted as saying, "it
was a mistake to link the hacker's e-mail to our movement. She
did not in any way try to explain to the community that the e-mail
was the act of hackers."
Less positive observers would attribute
the President's letter to malfeasance. I am not sure whether
the President's letter was the result of an agenda or just incompetence.
It is often easy to confuse the two.
Israel's supporters are without a doubt
working behind the scenes to quell talk of divestment. A Public
records request by lawyers representing "the Wheeler 79,"
the students and community members, who were arrested last April
for a sit-in at Berkeley's Wheeler Hall, revealed some interesting
documents. Nearly 16 letters were from donors or potential donors
withholding contributions to the University.
Anyone challenging billions of dollars
a year, be it aid or investment, will be against some powerful
forces. For example, the biggest exporter in Israel is Intel,
which the University of California has $190 million invested
in. One can imagine the pressure that will bear on activists
who want to disrupt this precious relationship.
Despite these odds, the plight of the
Palestinians has become too obvious and even more intolerable
for western activists. The Palestinians are relegated to negotiating
for the West Bank and Gaza, or 22% of their historic homeland.
American Presidents wear the hat of the honest broker, while
American policies and positions categorically advantage the more
powerful party. Israel's military occupation rules too many lives
unfairly and ruthlessly. The physical, mental, emotional, and
psychological suffocation the Palestinians experience has grown
with Israel's military budget. The billions of dollars this country
feeds into that deplorable system through trade violates the
basic ideas of socially responsible investment. That over half
of US Aid goes to Israel while people throughout the world perish
from starvation is cause enough for this movement. Its growth
is inevitable.
As the divestment campaign spreads, there
will be more e-mail spoofs, more charges of anti-Semitism against
Israel's critics, more blunders and trickery by university Presidents
and Regents, and more financial complicity in the murderous policies
that treat the Palestinians as sub-human problems worthy of no
homeland. University decision-makers can save all the work, time,
and energy by divesting now. Of course, that will not happen
so long as powerful political forces oppose it.
University Administrators will find themselves
being between a rock and a hard place. Surely, these hapless
administrators will formulaically bungle their way forward, on
the wrong side of history as they did with South Africa. In fact,
we are beginning to hear recycled jingles about separating politics
and investment, and the harmful effects it would have on the
portfolio, and so on - just as they as the excuses they used
to oppose divestment from South Africa. Is it their fate to always
be a stumbling block to progress? In the end, that is irrelevant.
It is in our hands now.
Relevant websites:
Michigan Divestment Conference: www.divestmentconference.com
SAFE, University of Michigan: www.studentsallied.com
U-M President's Statement on the Divestment
Conference: http://www.umich.edu/pres/coleman/PSC.html
Harvard and M.I.T. divestment petition:
www.harvardmitdivest.org
University of California's faculty petition:
www.ucdivest.org
Palestine Solidarity Committee of South
Africa: http://mandla.co.za/psc/Default.htm
Will Youmans
is a 3rd year law student at University of California, Berkeley.
You can reach him at youmans@boalthall.berkeley.edu
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October 2,
2002
Uri Avnery
Manufacturing
Anti-Semites
October 1,
2002
Benjamin Shepard
On the
Road Again:
IMF/World Bank Protest
Reveal a Revived
Movement for Global Justice
Dr. Susan
Block
Cockfight
at the
Baghdad Corral
Krystal Kyer
Growing Union Opposition
to War
Ron Jacobs
Born Without a Spine
Scott Loughrey
Mysteries
of 9/11
Jeremy Brecher
Collective
Security is Working
Brenda Norrell
Troy
Black Feather on
the American Flag
Sam Bahour
Wake Up
and Smell
the Occupation
Richard Harth
Contrary
to Reason:
Adieu, Hitchens, Adieu
Carol Norris
Rumsfeld
the Surrealist:
Things Related and Not
Ben Tripp
Lists Upon
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30, 2002
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