Sept.-Oct. 2005:
Activist Editorial
Israel Divestment
Drummond, Merchant of Death
Student-Farmworker Alliance
Judith Pasternak
Letters
Activist Reviews

Homepages:
War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

Building Palestinian Solidarity
Demanding Divestment

By Ora Wise and Mohammed Abed

ivestment—the withdrawal of investment funds from a state or corporation to induce it to change its policies—and boycotting helped bring down the apartheid government of South Africa a decade and a half ago. Today, Palestinian solidarity activists are hoping that boycotts of Israeli products and divestment from Israel and corporations that aid and abet Israel can do as much for the people of Palestine. On July 9, more than 170 Palestinian groups inside and beyond the Occupied Territories called for a widespread boycott and divestment campaign. Of the two strategies, divestment campaigns are more developed in Europe and the United States, where student groups and religious activists have for several years been pressuring their respective colleges and churches to shed their investments in Israel and corporations that benefit from the Israeli occupation.

Governments and transnational institutions have not created the conditions for a just peace in Palestine. Divestment and boycott on the other hand, can be effective tools for generating social and political pressure necessary to rise above the limitations of this state-dominated political process. As Kymberlie Quong Charles of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation put it, “We don’t need the U.S. government to divest from Israel or even have a good and just policy toward the conflict in order to get U.S. institutions to divest from companies that profit from occupation and war.”

There are two possible approaches to divestment. “Selective divestment” targets companies that supply the Israeli army with weapons or profit directly from the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “Comprehensive divestment” targets any company that does business with or in Israel.

Selective Divestment
Activists working toward selective divestment claim that the limited scope and political pragmatism of the approach makes it more likely to generate the broad grassroots support that can achieve concrete short-term successes. The foremost proponents of selective divestment have been various Protestant denominations around the world. The trend was initiated by the U.S. Presbyterian church in the summer of 2004 when it called for “phased selective divestment” from companies that benefit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This summer, the church selected five companies with which it is seeking constructive engagement regarding this issue. If the companies fail to address their involvement in the occupation in a satisfactory way, divestment will be implemented as a last resort. Of the church groups that followed suit, many adopted the very same formula used by the Presbyterians.

The most powerful and significant organization calling for divestment has been the World Council of Churches, the largest assembly of non-Catholic churches in the world. Pax Christi of New Zealand, the Anglican/Episcopal church, and the New England Methodists have all adopted resolutions calling for selective divestment. The U.S. Methodist church will be considering a divestment resolution at its 2008 national convention and the Evangelical Lutheran church recently passed a resolution condemning the wall Israel is building in the West Bank.

This past July, the United Church of Christ (UCC) adopted a resolution that went beyond selective divestment. It included advocating the reallocation of U.S. foreign aid so as to constrain the militarization of the Middle East, making positive contributions to groups and partners committed to nonviolent resolution of the conflict, challenging the practices of corporations that gain from the continuation of the conflict, and divesting from those companies that refuse to change their practices of gain from the perpetuation of violence, including the occupation.

Selective divestment has also been adopted by several groups working within city councils in Somerville, Seattle, and Dearborn and by labor unions in Oakland, CA, and Amherst, MA. The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals has called for divestment from corporations that supply the Israeli military with weapons and equipment. Faculty and student governments at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Wayne State, and the University of Michigan have also passed strongly worded divestment resolutions along the same lines.

Comprehensive Divestment
Comprehensive divestment, on the other hand, targets Israel’s ethnic exclusivity, seeing the occupation as only one part of this system. This strategy is chosen because it works by applying cultural rather than economic pressure on a perpetrator state, making actual divestment from corporations not as important a criterion of success. The goal is to articulate a vision of political equality for all Israelis and Palestinians that is more likely to generate the cultural pressure necessary for social change.

Comprehensive divestment is the basic strategy of the national network of student Palestine solidarity groups in the United States. Several political parties and non-governmental organizations, such as the Massachusetts Green Party, the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.N. Conference of NGOs, have also passed strong resolutions addressing political issues beyond the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, while not specifying the range of corporations divestment should encompass.

Comprehensive goods boycotts have also been spearheaded by labor unions in Denmark and Norway and by several grassroots initiatives in both Europe and the United States. More limited versions that focus on goods manufactured by Israeli and foreign companies in the Occupied Territories have been attempted in the United States, particularly in California. QUIT (Queers United Against Israeli Terror), for instance, has been targeting Estée Lauder, whose CEO publicly calls for ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Academic boycott organ- izing is happening throughout Europe, the most significant example being the passage of a resolution at the annual convention of the Association of University Teachers, the largest faculty union in Great Britain. The resolution called for the boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities; the former for limiting the academic freedom of Ilan Pappe, a public critic of Israel’s policies; the latter for running a degree program in occupied territory. The resolution was subsequently overturned after a systematic propaganda and intimidation campaign by pro-Israel groups.

Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has joined SUSTAIN (Stop U.S. Tax Aid to Israel Now) and many other Palestine solidarity groups in pressuring Caterpillar, the Illinois-based manufacturer of farming, construction and demolition equipment, to stop selling weaponized bulldozers to the Israeli army (see NVA, May-June). Finding it impossible to change the minds and policies of U.S. congress members, JVP considers the CAT campaign a more effective strategy for changing the U.S. role in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:

“Now, in every news article written about house demolitions, Caterpillar is directly referenced, thus we’re framing the debate!” say Liat Weingart and Cecilie Suraski of JVP. “[O]ne might think it’s highly unlikely that CAT will stop selling bulldozers to the IDF. [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice even told them they can’t stop. But … we’re educating so many people … We are leveraging a common brand name because it gets people and the media interested. In this capitalist country, it’s an ideal mechanism when you’ve given up on influencing your political representatives—it’s the American way.”

More Effective Campaigns
One important way to make divestment activism more effective is by providing people, fund managers in particular, with alternative investment opportunities that are both morally sound and fiscally viable. For example, divested funds could be re- invested in fair-trade projects or U.S.-based companies with responsible labor practices, thereby contributing in the long term to the building up of alternative, de-centralized, and egalitarian economies that counter the forces of globalized capitalism.

Additionally, investment projects should be a part of our divestment campaigns. Organizations themselves can invest in Palestinian civil society and joint Palestinian/Israeli projects. For example, while working toward divestment, groups could simultaneously be fundraising for organizations in Palestine or pushing for Palestine Fair Trade Association’s olive oil to be used in college dining halls and local businesses.

Divestment activism can also make it easier to link Palestinian solidarity to other issues. In addition to being a concrete mode of resistance to Israel’s war on Palestinians, divesting from companies that supply the Israeli military with weapons can also be framed as resistance to militarism, unethical corporate practices, and the advance of globalized capitalism.

Student divestment activists in particular have many opportunities to strengthen connections with other movements and learn from them. Black and indigenous student groups throughout the United States have readily supported divestment activism on their campuses. Divestment activists can also gain insight into effective campus organizing from successful national organizations such as United Students Against Sweatshops, which is willing and able to conduct student organizing trainings for divestment groups.

There is a further advantage to building links with other issues. Anti-Zionism/ Palestinian solidarity activism is often equated with anti-Semitism. Where divestment is concerned, such allegations tend to suggest that divestment specifically targets Israel and is thus reminiscent of boycotts of Jewish businesses in the past. Peter Makari of UCC pointed out that, “UCC and other churches have used economic leverage to support other oppressed peoples’ struggles including recently joining the boycotts of Taco Bell and the Mount Olive Pickle Company in support of workers rights here in the [United States].” Palestinian solidarity activism, articulated as such, is part of a larger, global movement against domination of all kinds.

Where Next?
Clearly, the Palestine solidarity movement embraces a wide spectrum of activists, not all of whom share the same broader goals. While churches, unions, and community and student groups have all articulated their divestment campaign demands differently, much of the movement remains focused on solely ending the military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza—not digging deeper and envisioning broader social change in historic Palestine.

The UCC and the Presbyterian Church USA, for example, have supported Palestinians and Israelis in their own states side by side. Many activists also name implementation of international law as the ultimate resolution of the conflict. What kind of framework are we using when we look to a body of laws that includes such categories as legitimate killing and occupation? As a Jew and a Palestinian, the authors of this article are both challenging our communities to re-evaluate and think beyond these “solutions” that have been articulated for us thus far. We ask that our allies do the same.

The Oslo process as well as subsequent “alternative” proposals, such as the Geneva Accords, took for granted that Israel must remain an exclusive Jewish state. This necessitates continued discrimination against non-Jews, which in turn generates resistance and further conflict. Defining the end of military rule and Israeli withdrawal to the “green line” as the solution equates peace with ethnic separation while ignoring the original issues: the expulsion of almost a million Palestinians from their homeland and the creation of an exclusionary Jewish state. We believe that Palestine solidarity activism must resist normalizing the two-state program and contribute, indeed demand, more creative and transformative ideas based on restorative justice and coexistence.

While the two-state concept may give activists freer access to an international law framework, it obscures the fact that the conflict is a clash between a colonial state and the indigenous people it expelled from their lands. Although the colonizers developed a national identity that is now deeply rooted in the territory they colonized, safeguarding their individual and collective rights is not synonymous with maintaining the oppressive regime that claims them as citizens.

The reality is that, whereas the right of return is a basic human right, an ethnically homogenous state is not. Recently, activists—particularly in North America—have begun to make work on the right of return a priority. Emphasizing the right of return is a significant move in the right direction; it shifts the discourse from a conflict “management” or “containment” paradigm to a “reparations” paradigm. Rather than requiring an abrogation of Israeli rights, all the return requires is a shift from ethnic nationalism to an alternative political arrangement.

At the present time, the divestment and boycott movement consists of decentralized initiatives operating within local institutional and political constraints. Selective divestment and boycott can be important tools that help groups negotiate these constraints. However, the movement should also be sensitive to the will of the Palestinian people themselves. Just as the ANC demanded a comprehensive boycott of apartheid-era South Africa in the 1950s, Palestinian civil society has issued a call for the comprehensive boycott of Israel. To be responsive to this call, activists should build educational and outreach programs that make the case for comprehensive divestment/boycott and draw attention to the root causes and character of the conflict in Palestine. Selective divestment may still be a useful strategy but campaigns should focus on the institutional causes of Israeli policy, rather than occupation. The language we use should be sensitive to the moral and political shortcomings of the two-state solution and it should relate the Palestinian struggle to more familiar or local histories of oppression. Without an inspiring vision of return, restitution, and true Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian equality, the movement is unlikely to build significantly on the successes it has already achieved.

Ora Wise teaches at two progressive synagogues in New York City and is getting her master’s in Jewish Education. She is now a part of the Palestine/Israel Education Project, which develops and facilitates interactive workshops for U.S. high school students connecting the Palestinian struggle to their daily lives. Mohammed Abed is a Palestinian refugee and a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin, where he works with the student divestment campaign.