[Peace-discuss] Fwd: Palestine Solidarity Movement Target Universities With Israeli Investments

Wed Aug 28 16:18:46 CDT 2002

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>Reply-To: amira_nuha at hotmail.com
>From: "Amira Nuha" <amira_nuha at hotmail.com>
>To: akagan at uiuc.edu
>Subject: Fwd: Palestine Solidarity Movement Target Universities With 
>Israeli Investments
>Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2002 14:06:25 +0000
>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 20 Aug 2002 14:06:26.0092 (UTC) 
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>----Original Message Follows----
>From: Pan-African News Wire <ac6123 at wayne.edu>
>Subject: Palestine Solidarity Movement Target Universities With 
>Israeli Investments
>Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 17:58:02 -0400
>
>Activists hope divestment campaign can spur peace in Middle
>East
>
>By DONNA BRYSON, Associated Press
>
>JERUSALEM (August 19, 2002 12:57 p.m. EDT) - E-mail by e-
>mail, teach-in by teach-in, students and professors at
>institutions like the University of California, Harvard, MIT
>and Princeton are backing the Palestinian cause by
>campaigning to get U.S. universities out of stocks that do
>business in Israel.
>
>They are modeling their effort on the divestment movement
>that helped topple apartheid. They have run into strong
>opposition on campus. The Anti-Defamation League sees an
>attempt to "demonize Israel, through the propagation of a
>false and odious comparison to apartheid-era South Africa."
>
>Francis A. Boyle, a University of Illinois professor of
>international law and an early advocate of divestment from
>Israel, said in a telephone interview: "It worked once to
>produce peace, justice and reconciliation, and I believe it
>can work again."
>
>To date, no university has moved to divest. Harvard's
>president has said his institution will not. Boyle said
>campaigns were under way on 40 campuses, but there is no way
>of gauging how representative the movement is of college
>opinion as a whole.
>
>Jeff Rubin of Hillel, the U.S. Jewish student organization -
>an opponent of divestment, says he expects the campaign to
>continue spreading in the new school year. "We are taking it
>seriously," he said.
>
>In the Gaza Strip, Palestinian human rights activist Jabr
>Wishah points to Jewish settlements separated from crowded
>Palestinian refugee camps by wide stretches of no man's land
>and sees a parallel to South Africa. In his lobby, a poster
>in the colors of the Israeli flag calls Israel "the state of
>apartheid."
>
>Wishah recalls chatting with Nelson Mandela, the South
>African who went from prisoner to president, when he visited
>Gaza three years ago. Wishah, who served 15 years in Israeli
>prisons, said he compared notes with Mandela on Israeli and
>South African interrogation tactics, he said.
>
>He applauds the divestment campaign, saying: "If in South
>Africa they reached a peaceful solution, it can be achieved
>here as well."
>
>The Israeli government says the apartheid comparison ignores
>Mideast complexities.
>
>"Things here on the ground look very different than when
>you're sitting far away on campuses making parallels to other
>situations," said Tzipora Rimon, North America specialist at
>the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
>
>"We are coping with terrorist activities, attacks, even
>suicide bombers. First we have to deal with this situation of
>the security of the citizens who are facing this terrorist
>attack, and then we would like very much to go back to the
>negotiating table," Rimon said.
>
>The petitions on U.S. campuses call for divestment to
>pressure Israel to withdraw from territory captured in the
>1967 Arab-Israeli war; return to peace talks; stop building
>settlements; and treat the Palestinians better. Divestment
>lists circulated on the Internet include names such as AT&T
>and McDonald's, Hewlett Packard and General Electric.
>
>Khader Shkirat, a Palestinian lawyer, said South Africans
>will join him and other Palestinians to discuss the
>divestment campaign and other nonviolent tactics drawn from
>the South African experience on the sidelines of the Earth
>Summit beginning in a week.
>
>In a pro-divestment column published in U.S. newspapers in
>June, South African Nobel laureate and former Archbishop
>Desmond Tutu drew parallels between Palestinians under
>occupation and blacks who lived in segregated districts
>during apartheid.
>
>In the United States, a national pro-divestment students'
>conference is scheduled at the University of Michigan this
>fall. Boyle, who has given legal advice to South Africans and
>Palestinians, has signed a contract for a handbook laying out
>legal arguments for divestment.
>
>Boyle said he raised the divestment strategy in a speech to
>students in Illinois two years ago, at the start of the
>latest wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence. He said he
>expected the campaign to be difficult because Israel has firm
>friends in the United States.
>
>Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi said she was
>encouraged. "It will begin to get people to question their
>assumptions," Ashrawi said, noting American Jews were among
>the "people of courage and wisdom" who have signed divestment
>petitions.
>
>One is Karen Brodkin, a UCLA anthropologist. She said in a
>telephone interview she did not condone Palestinian violence,
>but believed "the more powerful of the two sides has a
>responsibility to do something."
>
>Ilan Pappe, a Jewish Israeli political scientist, sees clear
>parallels between his country and apartheid South Africa.
>
>"The only thing that can end the Israeli occupation is
>outside pressure," Pappe said.
>
>
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>Amira Nuha
>www.staff.uiuc.edu/~mgdavis
>
>"Educate a man & you educate an individual.  Educate a woman & you 
>educate a nation."
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-- 

Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
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e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu