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Israeli and Jewish Students on UCLA Campus Endorsement of Divestment

2/24/2014

 
We are a group of Israeli and Jewish students at UCLA who officially endorse the divestment bill put forward by Students for Justice in Palestine. We understand that this bill seeks to directly target corporations that are complicit in occupation. The companies, HP, Cemex, CRH, Caterpillar and GE, profit from Israel's human rights offenses. The separation wall supported by Cemex and CRH and checkpoints powered by HP prevent Palestinian people from freely accessing their land and families. GE created necessary parts for the helicopters used during Operation Cast Lead, Israel's 2009 bombing campaign where 1400 Palestinian people died, mostly women and children. Caterpillar bulldozers have illegally destroyed thousands of Palestinian homes since 1967. For these reasons, we believe that divestment is the most simple and ethical form of action and has the potential to disrupt these structures of oppression where other efforts, such as peace talks, have failed.

While there is a very strong opposition which claims to be the only voice of the Jewish community, the reality is that many Jews and Israelis also feel silenced by this opposition. Many of us feel so silenced by the nature of opposition to our free speech that we don't even feel comfortable speaking openly about our principles. There are a wide variety of Jewish voices, identities, histories, and relationships to Israel/Palestine. For Israeli students, it means a censorship of our ability to speak freely about our home country. For Jewish students, it means a conflation of Judaism and militant nationalism. It is not anti-semitic to criticize a state nor is it anti-jewish to target companies that profit from crimes that the state commits. Divestment is a way to embrace the fullness of all our stories.

It is our strong relationships with Palestinian students on campus that lead us to participate in this movement. It is against our Jewish and human values of Tikun Olam to stand by while our Palestinian friends and classmates pay tuition to a university that is invested in the oppression of their communities and family members back home. Divestment is an action we can take to make our campus safe for the Palestinian community. While the opposition claims that this bill is divisive, we believe that taking a stance against these corporations will unite us.

We as Jews and as human beings stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and completely support the divestment effort to help end occupation in Palestine.

Gabriel Levine
2/24/2014 10:25:34 am

KASH Money (without the blood stains of apartheid)
2/24/2014 11:06:17 am

Y'all are doing an AMAZING job! This is well written, well thought out, very inspirational and POWERFUL! Keep up the good work, and know that you have folks at UCSB supporting you! It is our duty to fight for our freedom, it is our duty to win, we must love and respect one another, We have nothing to lose but our chains!

Roii Ball
2/24/2014 12:59:35 pm

As a Jew and an Israeli, I support this post and the UCLA Divestment bill.

Liza Corr
2/24/2014 03:23:28 pm

As a Jewish student, I do not believe that fighting for justice or supporting divestment conflicts in any way with my Jewish identity. To suggest that it does is, quite simply offensive. #UCLADIVEST

David Barlavi, Esq. link
2/24/2014 11:51:29 pm

Mazeltov.

Jeanne LONDE
2/25/2014 05:40:27 am

AM SO PROUD AND THRILLED ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE DOING. WISH I COULD BE THERE TONIGHT. JEANNE LONDE (AGE 92).

Michelle P.
2/25/2014 09:39:02 am

I resist the conflation that to be Jewish means to support violence against Palestinians. Divestment makes sense to me. I support this message!

Ramin Kohan
2/25/2014 02:23:37 pm

I am very proud of you guys. As a UCLA Alumni and a member of the Jewish community here in West Los Angeles I feel that this is something positive and powerful. Thank You and stay strong !

Sarah
2/25/2014 04:39:36 pm

I am a Jewish undergrad at UCLA and I support divestment!!

Sarah Wolley
2/25/2014 04:40:33 pm

Sarah Wolley. For some reason I was having trouble typing my last name.

luca brevi
2/25/2014 04:52:32 pm

Apoiar a causa dos Palestinos para a liberdade desse povo de viver em seu pais como cidadãos, e por direitos inalienáveis de suas terras é um dever de todo cidadão de todas a religiões, e também daqueles que não são religiosos.Caso contrário,nós civilizados estaremos abrindo a mão para a barbárie.

Andrew
2/26/2014 12:35:19 am

The BDS campaign seeks to eliminate the State of Israel entirely because Israel is a majority Jewish country. The BDS campaign is nothing more than a fresh coat of paint on the ugly veneer of racism.

Rob
2/26/2014 07:36:44 am

First of all, the land is not "occupied". It was won in a defensive war when Israel was attacked (by the way, Jordan had the West Bank and Egypt had Gaza pre 1967, how come no "Palestinians" or Europeans wanted a Palestinian state back then? Why wasn't it considered occupied by Jordan & Egypt). I'll tell you why, because the boycott has nothing to do with helping the Arabs (today called "Palestinians" as of 1964), but everything to do with hatred of Jews and Israel.

If they really cared about the "Palestinians" they would, after 4 generations, get them out of their refugee camps and make them citizens of the Arab countries they currently reside. They don't. They just continue to feed them, give them medical care, educate them to hate Jews and Israel, and then wonder why there is no peace agreement. Israel settled the same # of Jewish refugees from Arab countries after the 1948 war. They've received no compensation from the UN (e.g. food, medicine, education, etc...). Most of their wealth and property were taken from them by the Arabs who started the wars. Where's the outrage on their behalf

David
2/26/2014 09:41:25 am

Reality:

THE 1967 WAR
At 7:45 AM on 5 June 1967, Israel attacked Egypt and thereby, Jordan and Syria who each shared a mutual defense pact with Egypt. The attack took place just hours before Egypt's VP was to fly to Washington for a prearranged June 7th meeting with the Johnson administration to defuse the crisis between Egypt and Israel based on an agreement worked out in Cairo between Nasser and Johnson's envoy, Robert Anderson. In a cable sent to Johnson on May 30, Israel’s PM Eshkol promised not to attack Egypt until June
11 to give diplomacy a chance to succeed. However, on June 4, when it heard about the June 7th
meeting and the distinct possibility that it would rule out war, Israel’s cabinet ordered its armed forces to attack Egypt the next day. In short, the war was
another massive land grab by Israel.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Minister without portfolio in Eshkol's cabinet, while addressing Israel's National Defence College on 8 August 1982: "In June, 1967, we again had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai did not prove that Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him." (New York Times, 21 August 1982)

Meir Amit, chief of Israel's Mossad: "Egypt was not ready for a war and Nasser did not want a war."

David
2/26/2014 09:46:52 am

Re "Jewish refugees from Arab countries."

"Any reasonable person must acknowledge that the analogy drawn between Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews is unfounded. Palestinian refugees did not want to leave Palestine. Many Palestinian communities were destroyed in 1948, and some 700,000 Palestinians were expelled...They did not do so of their own volition. Arab Jews, however, came here under the initiative of Israel and Jewish organizations." (Prof. Yehouda Shenhav, Tel Aviv University, Ha'aretz, 8/10/04)

Avi Shlaim, Israeli historian born into an affluent and influential family in Baghdad: "We are not refugees, nobody expelled us from Iraq, nobody told us that we were unwanted. We are victims of the Israeli-Arab conflict." (Ha'aretz, August 11//05)

Yisrael Yeshayahu, speaker of the Knesset: "We are not refugees.... We had messianic aspirations."

Shlomo Hillel, minister, speaker of the Knesset: "I don't regard the departure of Jews from Arab lands as that of refugees....they wanted to, as Zionists."

Ran Cohen, Knesset member: "I am not a refugee....I came at the behest of Zionism...." (Ha'aretz, 8/10/04)

Also, any legitimate grievances Arab Jewish emigrants may have with Arab governments can be pursued through international law. It must be noted, however, that whereas the expulsion of over one million Palestinians between late 1947 and 1967, was carried out by Jewish forces and the IDF, Palestinians played no role whatsoever in the departure of Jews from Arab countries, i.e., apples and oranges.

Jeffrey Olin
2/26/2014 08:02:01 am

I am so proud of my fellow Bruins. Y'all have done a great thing! End the Occupation! Go Bruins!

Walid
2/26/2014 08:38:43 am

I am an Arab and a Moslem but today I am Jewish! You people are an inspiration and hope not just for peace in the Middle East but peace in the whole world.

Judas
2/26/2014 04:53:58 pm

As a Jew I say: It's a pity Hitler didn't gas your grandparents. Would have saved us the trouble of dealing with you traitors one day.


Comments are closed.

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