BDS


Volume [7]	No. [1]	June 2010
Newsletter Home Page		NORCAL ISM Homepage

The Berkeley Divestment Veto: a Minority Opinion Prevails

By The Editor May 2010

The U.C. Berkeley student union made news recently with its vote to divest ASUC funds from two companies that supply the Israeli military with weapons used for occupation and war crimes. Although the ASUC senate voted overwhelmingly to divest, its president vetoed the measure. Unfortunately there were not enough votes to override his veto. However, we should not look upon this as a defeat. The debates and the resulting publicity are nearly as important as the outcome of the vote. Many more people heard the arguments for divestment and learned about the issue. With enough education and outreach, the measure will pass the next time it is introduced.

Divestment initiatives like the one at U.C. Berkeley are part of the BDS movement that is gaining momentum and visibility in many areas of the world. Although they will not succeed every time, activists for Peace and Justice in Palestine can have a great impact by organizing and participating in BDS actions.

BDS: Boycott, Divest and Sanction

Boycotts, divestment and sanctions have been highly successful at influencing the course of many human rights struggles. The end of Apartheid in South Africa, and the repeal of Jim Crow laws in the southern U.S. are two examples of how these tactics can succeed.

Types of boycotts include Academic, Cultural, Consumer and Sports. Divestment initiatives seek to encourage and pressure individuals, financial institutions and companies to shed their investments in a country. Sanctions are diplomatic, legal or governmental penalties or injunctions placed upon a country to pressure against occupation and human rights violations. The most effective measures are defined in a way that is appropriate to the situation, in order to ensure the best chance of success. The Berkeley divestment measure, for example, was specific to two companies that sell arms to Israel (and other nations that violate human rights) and did not single Israel out.

Origins of the Israel BDS Movement

The Israel BDS movement was launched in Palestine in 2005 with the initial endorsement of over 170 Palestinian organizations. A broad consensus among civil society had developed there about the need for a broad and sustained non-violent resistance campaign that would attempt to sanction and penalize Israel in financial terms for its ongoing occupation and human rights abuses. The signatories to this original call represent the three major components of the Palestinian people: the refugees in exile, Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the subjugated Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state. ISM Palestine endorsed the BDS call.

Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are still at the forefront of this effort. For example, in April 2010 the Palestinian Authority issued a law banning trade in goods made in settlements, and began a campaign to urge European nations to boycott goods from settlements as well.

In the U.S., BDS activism picked up significantly after a meeting in September 2009, when approximately 300 groups that make up the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation voted in favor of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. NorCal ISM members who attended that meeting intend to propose a resolution to expand this to an economic boycott, as well, at a future meeting.

Israel's Response to the BDS Movement

Israel, as well as its advocates in the U.S and other countries, are taking the BDS movement very seriously. However, Israel is struggling to find an effective way to counter BDS because its usual tactics of violence and repression aren't effective against a movement that is being enacted by students, cultural workers, unionists, churches, progressive governments and sports fans all around the world.

Even though Israel can't bomb this campaign away, it is using increasingly repressive measures against Palestinians in the OPT who participate in the BDS movement. For example, Mohammad Othman, a prominent BDS and anti-Wall activist from Jayyous, was arrested and held for over 4 months without charges when he returned to the West Bank after traveling to Norway to meet with officials there about divestment. Here in the U.S., AIPAC reacted to the Berkeley divestment measure by announcing that they will “take over Cal student government.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported in March that forums have been held in the U.S. and in Israel about how to combat the BDS movement.

How to Get Involved

Support existing consumer boycotts and divestment initiatives. Are you patronizing or investing in companies that profit from the Occupation? Find out by checking the website http://www.whoprofits.org/

Learn more about the goals and reasons for the BDS movement. The Global BDS Movement http://bdsmovement.net/ website is an excellent resource that contains links to groups in various locations that you can connect with.

Why BDS is Bound to Succeed

A paradox of Israel is that it fears world perception as an apartheid society even as it pursues increasingly misguided policies that make this perception inevitable. Soon it will be impossible for all but Israel's staunchest supporters to deny its inherent injustice. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert stated this as well as anyone when in 2007 he declared: “If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished.” More recently, making a similar point, Ehud Barak, Israel’s defense minister, said “as long as between the Jordan and the sea there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic . . . If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a bi-national state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.”