15 mar 2016
New documents seen by The Electronic Intifada, obtained under freedom of information laws, show that the British Council has been quietly working to thwart the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement in support of Palestinian rights.
The revelations about the government-funded program come as the UK attempts to ban local government from boycotting companies complicit in Israeli human rights abuses.
The Electronic Intifada has also discovered that Nathan Kirsh, a billionaire businessman profiting directly from Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, is a donor to the British Council’s little-known anti-boycott project BIRAX: the Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership.
Facts on the ground
The British Council is a quasi-governmental body which describes itself as making an important “contribution to UK soft power.” It gets approximately 20 percent of its funding from the UK Foreign Office. It administers educational and “cultural relations” projects in more than 100 countries around the world.
In 2008 its Israel office instigated BIRAX jointly with the British Embassy in Israel and private pro-Israel donors.
As the original proposal, published below, states explicitly, BIRAX sought to offer “a practical response to recent calls in the UK for an academic boycott of Israel” — a reference to one of the first major boycott victories in a British trade union, the 2007 vote by the University and College Union which caused international alarm in the Zionist camp.
In response, BIRAX was launched by the prime ministers of Israel and the UK with the aim to “deepen institutional links” between British and Israeli universities. Only later, in 2011, was it decided that BIRAX should focus on regenerative medicine, a scientific emphasis which played neatly into Israel’s public relations strategy to promote itself as a hub of technological innovation.
Through BIRAX, the British Council has so far arranged 15 research collaborations between Israeli and UK universities. With a total value of at least £7 million ($9.9 million), these function as facts on the ground, undermining the campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions by their very existence. The third round of calls is currently open, offering £3 million ($4.2 million) of additional research funding.
Non-political?
In 2012, after the Palestine Festival of Literature spoke out in favor of BDS, its dismayed financial sponsor the British Council ironically justified its own decision to issue a statement opposing the boycott by describing itself as a “non-political organization.”
Yet internal correspondence obtained through a freedom of information request, some of which is published below, shows that behind the scenes the British Council has been making strenuous efforts to track and oppose the boycott.
In an October 2015 email, seen by The Electronic Intifada, British Council staff asked the pro-Israel Union of Jewish Students to keep them abreast of “what’s happening re the boycott on campuses.” In a 12 June 2015 email, published in full below, an employee from the British Council’s Israel office offered assistance to the Union of Jewish Students, saying the organization was considering ways “to support combatting the calls for BDS on UK universities.”
That message was sent soon after the National Union of Students (NUS), which represents 7 million university pupils in the UK, had voted to support BDS on 2 June 2015. Just a day after that vote, British Council employees, apparently monitoring developments with a sense of urgency, sent emails with the subject “BDS” (published below) outlining a range of possible actions in response.
While paying lip service to “the right of the Union to hold and to publicize this position,” in practice, British Council staff – whose names have been redacted – sought to undermine the democratic decision of the NUS.
They enlisted the help of academics, “BIS” (the Department for Business Innovation and Skills) and “Number 10 contacts,” i.e. the prime minister’s office, in the counter-campaign.
The British Council saw fit to intervene yet again when in October 2015, 300 UK-based academics pledged to boycott Israel in a statement published in The Guardian. In an email seen by The Electronic Intifada, an opposing anti-boycott statement was quickly compiled and circulated by the British Council. An academic, whose name has been redacted, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel replied complimenting the swift UK response.
“Anti-BDS activities”
The British Council has also been explicit about its counter-boycott goals when courting donors for the BIRAX project.
In one internal email (published below, 17 June 2015), a staff member suggests a “possible patron” for BIRAX, and shares with a colleague “some recent info about his interest in supporting anti-BDS activities.” Indeed, a specific emailed pitch — under the subhead “BIRAX / BDS appeal” — was even penned to appeal to this funder.
Although the funder’s name was redacted, it is known who many of the donors behind the project are. A few established medical research organizations, like the British Heart Foundation, have recently donated to BIRAX. However, the evidence suggests that most of its benefactors are more interested in combatting the boycott than furthering scientific progress.
The earliest confirmed backers of BIRAX were the United Jewish Israel Appeal — Britain’s “major fundraising organization for Israel” — and the Pears Foundation. The latter, also the chief financier of Israel Studiesprograms at UK universities, has given £1 million ($1.4 million) to the British Council for the BIRAX project.
Its executive chair, Trevor Pears, is a millionaire property magnate, Conservative Party donor and formerly sat on the boards of both Conservative Friends of Israel and BICOM, a heavyweight Israel lobby group in the UK.
Meanwhile, millionaire Tory peer Lord Stanley Fink, one of the private donors who financed the short-lived pro-Israel propaganda organization Just Journalism and is also vice president of the pro-Israel Jewish Leadership Council, has given £100,000 to BIRAX, according to figures released by the British Council under a freedom of information request.
The Atkin Foundation, whose founders Celia and Edward Atkin have also supported BICOM, gave an undisclosed amount to BIRAX.
Yad Hanadiv — which coordinates philanthropic donations for the Rothschild family, a historically important dynasty in the Zionist movement — also donated an unknown amount, a 2012 letter to the British Council seen by The Electronic Intifada shows.
In both of these cases, the donations were subject to a confidentiality clause. This is why the the amounts were redacted from the documents released under freedom of information, the British Council said.
Though the name Nathan Kirsh had not previously been publicized in connection with the project, unlike other donors, according to a 2012 grant letter from Yad Hanadiv, seen by The Electronic Intifada, the billionaire South African businessman is also a BIRAX donor.
The world’s 435th wealthiest person, according to the 2015 Forbes list, Kirsh is the biggest shareholder in Magal Security Systems, a company which won 80 percent of the original contracts for Israel’s wall in the West Bank in 2002 and has also made millions from building the Israeli fence around Gaza.
In an emailed response the British Council confirmed that the Kirsh Foundation gave £176,000 ($250,000) to Israel’s Hebrew University through BIRAX.
This begs the question whether the project may even be partially funded with profits from Israel’s wall, which the International Court of Justice said violates international law in an advisory opinion issued in 2004.
In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology has invested at least £250,000 ($350,000) in the BIRAX project, according to a 2012 letter seen by The Electronic Intifada.
Apartheid South Africa
The taxpayer-funded British Council is trying to quash a grassroots movement for Palestinian rights supported by an increasing proportion of the British public. But it is also channeling donations from the Israeli government and elite Zionist donors with direct links to Israel’s illegal wall.
The British Council is at least consistent. In an interview with the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz during a visit to Israel, its chair Sir Vernon Ellis noted a historical precedent for his organization’s anti-boycott stance, stating that it “continued working in apartheid South Africa.”
When asked to comment on the efforts of its Israel office to monitor and oppose boycott motions passed by representative student bodies — and the explicit references to stopping the BDS movement in pitches to potential BIRAX funders — a British Council spokesperson said these characterizations were “untrue” and that the entire purpose of BIRAX was “to promote cultural relations and support scientific research.”
When asked if it worked to undermine the boycott movement that helped isolate South Africa and contributed to bringing down the apartheid regime, as it is today working to undermine the boycott of Israel, the British Council did not respond.
The revelations about the government-funded program come as the UK attempts to ban local government from boycotting companies complicit in Israeli human rights abuses.
The Electronic Intifada has also discovered that Nathan Kirsh, a billionaire businessman profiting directly from Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank, is a donor to the British Council’s little-known anti-boycott project BIRAX: the Britain Israel Research and Academic Exchange Partnership.
Facts on the ground
The British Council is a quasi-governmental body which describes itself as making an important “contribution to UK soft power.” It gets approximately 20 percent of its funding from the UK Foreign Office. It administers educational and “cultural relations” projects in more than 100 countries around the world.
In 2008 its Israel office instigated BIRAX jointly with the British Embassy in Israel and private pro-Israel donors.
As the original proposal, published below, states explicitly, BIRAX sought to offer “a practical response to recent calls in the UK for an academic boycott of Israel” — a reference to one of the first major boycott victories in a British trade union, the 2007 vote by the University and College Union which caused international alarm in the Zionist camp.
In response, BIRAX was launched by the prime ministers of Israel and the UK with the aim to “deepen institutional links” between British and Israeli universities. Only later, in 2011, was it decided that BIRAX should focus on regenerative medicine, a scientific emphasis which played neatly into Israel’s public relations strategy to promote itself as a hub of technological innovation.
Through BIRAX, the British Council has so far arranged 15 research collaborations between Israeli and UK universities. With a total value of at least £7 million ($9.9 million), these function as facts on the ground, undermining the campaign to boycott Israeli academic institutions by their very existence. The third round of calls is currently open, offering £3 million ($4.2 million) of additional research funding.
Non-political?
In 2012, after the Palestine Festival of Literature spoke out in favor of BDS, its dismayed financial sponsor the British Council ironically justified its own decision to issue a statement opposing the boycott by describing itself as a “non-political organization.”
Yet internal correspondence obtained through a freedom of information request, some of which is published below, shows that behind the scenes the British Council has been making strenuous efforts to track and oppose the boycott.
In an October 2015 email, seen by The Electronic Intifada, British Council staff asked the pro-Israel Union of Jewish Students to keep them abreast of “what’s happening re the boycott on campuses.” In a 12 June 2015 email, published in full below, an employee from the British Council’s Israel office offered assistance to the Union of Jewish Students, saying the organization was considering ways “to support combatting the calls for BDS on UK universities.”
That message was sent soon after the National Union of Students (NUS), which represents 7 million university pupils in the UK, had voted to support BDS on 2 June 2015. Just a day after that vote, British Council employees, apparently monitoring developments with a sense of urgency, sent emails with the subject “BDS” (published below) outlining a range of possible actions in response.
While paying lip service to “the right of the Union to hold and to publicize this position,” in practice, British Council staff – whose names have been redacted – sought to undermine the democratic decision of the NUS.
They enlisted the help of academics, “BIS” (the Department for Business Innovation and Skills) and “Number 10 contacts,” i.e. the prime minister’s office, in the counter-campaign.
The British Council saw fit to intervene yet again when in October 2015, 300 UK-based academics pledged to boycott Israel in a statement published in The Guardian. In an email seen by The Electronic Intifada, an opposing anti-boycott statement was quickly compiled and circulated by the British Council. An academic, whose name has been redacted, from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel replied complimenting the swift UK response.
“Anti-BDS activities”
The British Council has also been explicit about its counter-boycott goals when courting donors for the BIRAX project.
In one internal email (published below, 17 June 2015), a staff member suggests a “possible patron” for BIRAX, and shares with a colleague “some recent info about his interest in supporting anti-BDS activities.” Indeed, a specific emailed pitch — under the subhead “BIRAX / BDS appeal” — was even penned to appeal to this funder.
Although the funder’s name was redacted, it is known who many of the donors behind the project are. A few established medical research organizations, like the British Heart Foundation, have recently donated to BIRAX. However, the evidence suggests that most of its benefactors are more interested in combatting the boycott than furthering scientific progress.
The earliest confirmed backers of BIRAX were the United Jewish Israel Appeal — Britain’s “major fundraising organization for Israel” — and the Pears Foundation. The latter, also the chief financier of Israel Studiesprograms at UK universities, has given £1 million ($1.4 million) to the British Council for the BIRAX project.
Its executive chair, Trevor Pears, is a millionaire property magnate, Conservative Party donor and formerly sat on the boards of both Conservative Friends of Israel and BICOM, a heavyweight Israel lobby group in the UK.
Meanwhile, millionaire Tory peer Lord Stanley Fink, one of the private donors who financed the short-lived pro-Israel propaganda organization Just Journalism and is also vice president of the pro-Israel Jewish Leadership Council, has given £100,000 to BIRAX, according to figures released by the British Council under a freedom of information request.
The Atkin Foundation, whose founders Celia and Edward Atkin have also supported BICOM, gave an undisclosed amount to BIRAX.
Yad Hanadiv — which coordinates philanthropic donations for the Rothschild family, a historically important dynasty in the Zionist movement — also donated an unknown amount, a 2012 letter to the British Council seen by The Electronic Intifada shows.
In both of these cases, the donations were subject to a confidentiality clause. This is why the the amounts were redacted from the documents released under freedom of information, the British Council said.
Though the name Nathan Kirsh had not previously been publicized in connection with the project, unlike other donors, according to a 2012 grant letter from Yad Hanadiv, seen by The Electronic Intifada, the billionaire South African businessman is also a BIRAX donor.
The world’s 435th wealthiest person, according to the 2015 Forbes list, Kirsh is the biggest shareholder in Magal Security Systems, a company which won 80 percent of the original contracts for Israel’s wall in the West Bank in 2002 and has also made millions from building the Israeli fence around Gaza.
In an emailed response the British Council confirmed that the Kirsh Foundation gave £176,000 ($250,000) to Israel’s Hebrew University through BIRAX.
This begs the question whether the project may even be partially funded with profits from Israel’s wall, which the International Court of Justice said violates international law in an advisory opinion issued in 2004.
In addition, Israel’s Ministry of Science and Technology has invested at least £250,000 ($350,000) in the BIRAX project, according to a 2012 letter seen by The Electronic Intifada.
Apartheid South Africa
The taxpayer-funded British Council is trying to quash a grassroots movement for Palestinian rights supported by an increasing proportion of the British public. But it is also channeling donations from the Israeli government and elite Zionist donors with direct links to Israel’s illegal wall.
The British Council is at least consistent. In an interview with the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz during a visit to Israel, its chair Sir Vernon Ellis noted a historical precedent for his organization’s anti-boycott stance, stating that it “continued working in apartheid South Africa.”
When asked to comment on the efforts of its Israel office to monitor and oppose boycott motions passed by representative student bodies — and the explicit references to stopping the BDS movement in pitches to potential BIRAX funders — a British Council spokesperson said these characterizations were “untrue” and that the entire purpose of BIRAX was “to promote cultural relations and support scientific research.”
When asked if it worked to undermine the boycott movement that helped isolate South Africa and contributed to bringing down the apartheid regime, as it is today working to undermine the boycott of Israel, the British Council did not respond.
The Palestinian Office for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement kept record of the success achieved by the boycott-of-Israel campaign, both nationwide and overseas.
In a report, the office said the decisions opted for by the Fifth Extraordinary Islamic Summit to boycott Israeli settlement products and those advocated by the BDS movement have scored golden goals in the international arena over recent months.
It added that as a result of the success of the boycott-of-Israel campaign the Israeli occupation has adopted a series of arbitrary measures to prevent Palestinians’ access to local products, including milk and meat, both in Occupied Jerusalem and 1948 Occupied Palestine.
University College London (UCL) announced its academic boycott of Israeli institutions and colleges. A similar move was made by the British guard company (G4S), which provides services for the occupation army and recruits around 8,000 Palestinian employees.
A Spanish mayor in the Valencia province also decided to join BDS campaign in response to Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights and infringement of international laws.
The Fifth Extraordinary Islamic Summit, concluded in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, called on all member states and the international community to ban the products of Israeli illegal settlements from their markets and to take measures against entities and individuals involved in and/or taking advantage of the advancement of the occupation and settlement regime.
The summit further called for including Israeli settler leaders in the blacklist of terrorists and criminals to be brought before international justice.
The Palestinian Society for Consumer Protection in the West Bank also called on the Palestinian Authority to stop promoting Israeli products in the Palestinian market and to mobilize support, among Palestinian traders and distributors, for the boycott campaign.
In a report, the office said the decisions opted for by the Fifth Extraordinary Islamic Summit to boycott Israeli settlement products and those advocated by the BDS movement have scored golden goals in the international arena over recent months.
It added that as a result of the success of the boycott-of-Israel campaign the Israeli occupation has adopted a series of arbitrary measures to prevent Palestinians’ access to local products, including milk and meat, both in Occupied Jerusalem and 1948 Occupied Palestine.
University College London (UCL) announced its academic boycott of Israeli institutions and colleges. A similar move was made by the British guard company (G4S), which provides services for the occupation army and recruits around 8,000 Palestinian employees.
A Spanish mayor in the Valencia province also decided to join BDS campaign in response to Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights and infringement of international laws.
The Fifth Extraordinary Islamic Summit, concluded in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, called on all member states and the international community to ban the products of Israeli illegal settlements from their markets and to take measures against entities and individuals involved in and/or taking advantage of the advancement of the occupation and settlement regime.
The summit further called for including Israeli settler leaders in the blacklist of terrorists and criminals to be brought before international justice.
The Palestinian Society for Consumer Protection in the West Bank also called on the Palestinian Authority to stop promoting Israeli products in the Palestinian market and to mobilize support, among Palestinian traders and distributors, for the boycott campaign.
14 mar 2016
Over 1,000 Israeli sociologists have declared their intention not to attend a conference to be held by the university of Ariel in the West Bank because the institution is located outside Israel's boundaries, according to Maariv newspaper on Monday.
Head of the Israeli sociological society Uri Ram told the Israel army radio that members of the society would also sever all academic ties with Ariel University since it is not located in Israeli territory.
"We will not cooperate with the institute known as Ariel University, which is not located within the bounds of the state of Israel," Ram said.
This was not the first time Israeli academics announced plans to shun the university. In 2011, 165 Israeli academics had issued a petition in which they vowed not to take part in academic activities at the university because it lies across the Green Line.
Head of the Israeli sociological society Uri Ram told the Israel army radio that members of the society would also sever all academic ties with Ariel University since it is not located in Israeli territory.
"We will not cooperate with the institute known as Ariel University, which is not located within the bounds of the state of Israel," Ram said.
This was not the first time Israeli academics announced plans to shun the university. In 2011, 165 Israeli academics had issued a petition in which they vowed not to take part in academic activities at the university because it lies across the Green Line.
11 mar 2016
Following concerted BDS campaigns, G4S to exit the Israeli market and Ahava to relocate from the West Bank to inside the Green Line.
On Thursday morning, G4S, the British-Danish private security giant pledged to sell its Israeli subsidiary in 12 to 24 months. The company explained the decision as part of a “continuing portfolio management program.”
The Israeli subsidiary of G4S conducts $142 million in business, annually. It provides security equipment, control rooms and surveillance technology to Israeli prisons, checkpoints, police training centers, and military compounds.
G4S has been the focus of sustained international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, due to its collusion with Israel’s incarceration, torture and oppression of Palestinians. The company has lost millions of dollars, thanks to such efforts. Recently, a major restaurant chain in Colombia and UNICEF, in Jordan, ended their contracts with the company, as did the Gates Foundation when it divested its $170 million stake in G4S, in 2014.
Samidoun Prisoner’s Solidarity Network described the announcement as “a clear recognition of the growing strength and power of the international BDS movement targeting G4S in response to calls from Palestinian prisoners and civil society organizations.”
Sahar Francis, the Director of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, however, highlighted the limited significance of G4S’s decision for the thousands of Palestinians currently being held in Israeli prisons to call for more concerted action:
The latest reports that G4S will sell its subsidiaries in Israel is welcome news, but this has no immediate effect on those facing human rights violations inside Israel’s prisons today. At a time when Israel is stepping up its campaign of mass incarceration as a way of repressing Palestinian society, G4S should end its role in Israel’s prison system immediately, as well as its role in maintaining Israeli checkpoints and illegal settlements.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee has pledged to continue to pressure G4S until its Israeli subsidy is actually dissolved.
In the same announcement, G4S pledged to end contracts with the UK Utility services, US Youth Justice Services and UK children’s services.
G4S is also complicit in human rights abuses by supporting detention and deportation systems at the US/Mexico border and in Canada, and running juvenile detention facilities in both the U.S. and the U.K.
The same day, Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company, reported that it will move its plant from Mitzpeh Shalem, in the West Bank, to Kibbutz Kin Gedi, an area close to the original plant but within the Green line. The construction of the new site will take approximately two years.
BDS campaigns have advocated boycotting Ahava (see: Code Pink's Stolen Beauty campaign) because it exploits natural resources in the occupied West Bank and operates a factory in it.
In his column, Richard Silverstein describes the decision as “solely a business matter,” considering a Chinese company’s purchase of the company. “Likely,” he adds, “the new Chinese corporate owners, who purchased the company last September for $75 million, didn’t want the headache of constant protests around the world and having their name dragged through the ‘mud.’”
He adds that the profits of the $75 million purchase will go to the current Israeli owners of the company, most of whom are settlers in the West Bank, as well as the Livnat family, members of which enjoy enormous political and capital power in Israel, and profit from Israeli occupation.
Nevertheless, the move is another a sign that BDS campaigns are gaining traction.
For AIC links and info, see original article.
SEE! A week of Israeli occupation at AIC official.
On Thursday morning, G4S, the British-Danish private security giant pledged to sell its Israeli subsidiary in 12 to 24 months. The company explained the decision as part of a “continuing portfolio management program.”
The Israeli subsidiary of G4S conducts $142 million in business, annually. It provides security equipment, control rooms and surveillance technology to Israeli prisons, checkpoints, police training centers, and military compounds.
G4S has been the focus of sustained international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaigns, due to its collusion with Israel’s incarceration, torture and oppression of Palestinians. The company has lost millions of dollars, thanks to such efforts. Recently, a major restaurant chain in Colombia and UNICEF, in Jordan, ended their contracts with the company, as did the Gates Foundation when it divested its $170 million stake in G4S, in 2014.
Samidoun Prisoner’s Solidarity Network described the announcement as “a clear recognition of the growing strength and power of the international BDS movement targeting G4S in response to calls from Palestinian prisoners and civil society organizations.”
Sahar Francis, the Director of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, however, highlighted the limited significance of G4S’s decision for the thousands of Palestinians currently being held in Israeli prisons to call for more concerted action:
The latest reports that G4S will sell its subsidiaries in Israel is welcome news, but this has no immediate effect on those facing human rights violations inside Israel’s prisons today. At a time when Israel is stepping up its campaign of mass incarceration as a way of repressing Palestinian society, G4S should end its role in Israel’s prison system immediately, as well as its role in maintaining Israeli checkpoints and illegal settlements.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee has pledged to continue to pressure G4S until its Israeli subsidy is actually dissolved.
In the same announcement, G4S pledged to end contracts with the UK Utility services, US Youth Justice Services and UK children’s services.
G4S is also complicit in human rights abuses by supporting detention and deportation systems at the US/Mexico border and in Canada, and running juvenile detention facilities in both the U.S. and the U.K.
The same day, Ahava, an Israeli cosmetics company, reported that it will move its plant from Mitzpeh Shalem, in the West Bank, to Kibbutz Kin Gedi, an area close to the original plant but within the Green line. The construction of the new site will take approximately two years.
BDS campaigns have advocated boycotting Ahava (see: Code Pink's Stolen Beauty campaign) because it exploits natural resources in the occupied West Bank and operates a factory in it.
In his column, Richard Silverstein describes the decision as “solely a business matter,” considering a Chinese company’s purchase of the company. “Likely,” he adds, “the new Chinese corporate owners, who purchased the company last September for $75 million, didn’t want the headache of constant protests around the world and having their name dragged through the ‘mud.’”
He adds that the profits of the $75 million purchase will go to the current Israeli owners of the company, most of whom are settlers in the West Bank, as well as the Livnat family, members of which enjoy enormous political and capital power in Israel, and profit from Israeli occupation.
Nevertheless, the move is another a sign that BDS campaigns are gaining traction.
For AIC links and info, see original article.
SEE! A week of Israeli occupation at AIC official.
5 mar 2016
Forty Columbia University faculty members have signed a petition urging the New York school to divest from companies that “supply, perpetuate, and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people.”
The petition was released Monday morning this week to mark the first day of Israel Apartheid Week, the Columbia Spectator reported.
According to the petition, the signatories “stand with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine as well as with Jewish Voice for Peace in calling upon the University to take a moral stance against Israel’s violence in all its forms.”
“As both scholars and community members, we are professionally, intellectually, and morally invested in our University. We deem it our duty to hold our institution accountable for the ethical implications of its own actions, notably its financial investments and their implications around the world,” the petition said. “In particular, we take issue with our financial involvements in institutions associated with the State of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands, continued violations of Palestinian human rights, systematic destruction of life and property, inhumane segregation and systemic forms of discrimination.”
They include:
The petition was released Monday morning this week to mark the first day of Israel Apartheid Week, the Columbia Spectator reported.
According to the petition, the signatories “stand with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine as well as with Jewish Voice for Peace in calling upon the University to take a moral stance against Israel’s violence in all its forms.”
“As both scholars and community members, we are professionally, intellectually, and morally invested in our University. We deem it our duty to hold our institution accountable for the ethical implications of its own actions, notably its financial investments and their implications around the world,” the petition said. “In particular, we take issue with our financial involvements in institutions associated with the State of Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian lands, continued violations of Palestinian human rights, systematic destruction of life and property, inhumane segregation and systemic forms of discrimination.”
They include:
- Rashid Khalidi, a history and Middle Eastern studies professor who has been a longtime critic of Israel and supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel;
- Joseph Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history who sees Zionism as a racist and colonialist movement;
- Nadia Abu El-Haj, an anthropology professor who received tenure in 2007 following a heated battle over the merits of her work, particularly a book that accuses Israel of manipulating archaeological findings to legitimize its existence.
Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies at Columbia University.
The most heavily represented departments among the signers are Middle Eastern South Asian and Africa studies, or MESAAS, English and comparative literature, and anthropology.
Partha Chatterjee, an anthropology and MESAAS professor at the Ivy League school who signed, told the Spectator in an email that he wanted to protest Israel’s security regime, which “virtually amounts to apartheid.”
“I fully support every effort to put pressure on the Israeli government to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands,” he said.
Dirk Salomons, a signatory who is a senior lecturer at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told the Spectator:
“I’ve always had a feeling as a Jew that a Jewish state should rise slightly above the lack of morality of its neighbors. It pains me to see how a country which I love and which I have visited many times can be so blind to the needs of its neighbors.”
English professor Bruce Robbins, another signatory, compared CUAD’s campaign to efforts in the 1970s and ’80s pushing for divestment from apartheid-era South Africa, noting that many opponents labeled these efforts as “too radical” at the time.
“I have also seen what it’s like for Palestinians on the West Bank to live under the occupation,” Robbins said. “Once you’ve seen that, and you are offered a form of non-violent protest that is also endorsed by Palestinian civil society, it seems like a no-brainer.”
Read the full petition here
However, at the same time, over 600 students, faculty, and alumni have signed a petition condemning what they are calling Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s “dismissal of terrorism as ‘civil disobedience.’”
The petition comes in the middle of Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual event hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine with Jewish Voice for Peace. This year’s awareness week is calling on the University to divest from eight companies that it says profit from and enable violations of Palestinian human rights.
The most heavily represented departments among the signers are Middle Eastern South Asian and Africa studies, or MESAAS, English and comparative literature, and anthropology.
Partha Chatterjee, an anthropology and MESAAS professor at the Ivy League school who signed, told the Spectator in an email that he wanted to protest Israel’s security regime, which “virtually amounts to apartheid.”
“I fully support every effort to put pressure on the Israeli government to end its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands,” he said.
Dirk Salomons, a signatory who is a senior lecturer at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, told the Spectator:
“I’ve always had a feeling as a Jew that a Jewish state should rise slightly above the lack of morality of its neighbors. It pains me to see how a country which I love and which I have visited many times can be so blind to the needs of its neighbors.”
English professor Bruce Robbins, another signatory, compared CUAD’s campaign to efforts in the 1970s and ’80s pushing for divestment from apartheid-era South Africa, noting that many opponents labeled these efforts as “too radical” at the time.
“I have also seen what it’s like for Palestinians on the West Bank to live under the occupation,” Robbins said. “Once you’ve seen that, and you are offered a form of non-violent protest that is also endorsed by Palestinian civil society, it seems like a no-brainer.”
Read the full petition here
However, at the same time, over 600 students, faculty, and alumni have signed a petition condemning what they are calling Columbia University Apartheid Divest’s “dismissal of terrorism as ‘civil disobedience.’”
The petition comes in the middle of Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual event hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine with Jewish Voice for Peace. This year’s awareness week is calling on the University to divest from eight companies that it says profit from and enable violations of Palestinian human rights.
