Divestment and International Law: What the Board of Regents Needs to Know

Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition and Alternative Palestinian Agenda

December 2004

Al-Awda, the Alternative Palestinian Agenda and other organizations representing concerned members of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and State of Wisconsin communities calls on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from companies doing business with or in the State of Israel until such time as the State of Israel accepts and facilitates the full implementation of the individual and collective human rights of the Palestinian people as those rights are enshrined in the instruments of international humanitarian law, relevant United Nations conventions, and multiple United Nations resolutions pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Of immediate concern are investments in companies that supply the Israeli military with equipment used to enforce Israel’s 37-year-old brutal military occupation and system of apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza, in violation of international law and United Nations resolutions. Companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon are directly implicated in the implementation of policies that constitute gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, war crimes, and in some cases, crimes against humanity. The effects of these policies have been widely documented by independent human rights organizations, non-governmental organizations, the United Nations, and both independent and government affiliated observers from around the world.

The implementation of Israel’s illegal occupation and expansionist program in the West Bank and Gaza has included the use of live ammunition on unarmed civilians (including men, women, and children); massive and disproportionate use of force including the firing of missiles from Apache helicopter gunships against defenseless civilian populations; illegal mass arrests and institutionalized torture (including men women, and children); the deliberate destruction of agricultural land; the deprivation of water; forced malnutrition with concomitant health consequences including stillborn deaths and irreversible developmental damage to children; the mass demolition of homes and confiscation of land; hostage taking and extra-judicial assassinations; denial of medical service s to the sick and wounded; the use of human shields (including children); the targeting of schools and hospitals; the building of illegal fortified "Jewish-only" Israeli colonies/settlements on confiscated land connected by "Jewish-only" bypass roads, and the heavily subsidized transfer of hundreds of thousands of its own civilian population into these colonies/settlements.

It is our responsibility as concerned members of the community to remind the Board of Regents that it’s own policy regarding investments and social responsibility states that all investments ‘made in any company, corporation, subsidiary or affiliate which practices or condones through its actions discrimination on the basis of race religion, color, creed or sex shall be divested in as prudent but rapid a manner as possible’ (Regent Trust and Fund Policy 78-1). All of the policies outlined above selectively target Palestinians based on their ethnic and religious origin. Within Israel, only Palestinian citizens are affected by policies such as house demolition and the expropriation of land, not Jewish citizens. In the West Bank and Gaza, these measures are directed at Palestinians under occupation and not at illegal Israeli settlers engaged in colonization on behalf of the state.

Palestinians under occupation are not subject to Israeli laws that would afford them domestic protections against such inhumane treatment. The scale and intensity of these policies and the denial of the right to due process and judicial review is a state of affairs calculated to facilitate the expulsion of the Palestinians and the colonization of their lands by Israel. Racial exclusivity is therefore incorporated into the very infrastructure of the state of Israel. This constitutes an extreme colonial form of the policy of Apartheid.

Further, Regent Trust and Fund Policy 97-1 states that in making investment decisions, the Board will take into account ‘public concerns about corporate policies or practices that are discriminatory or cause substantial social injury,’ where substantial social injury is defined include both actions or inactions by a company that ‘violate, subvert, or frustrate the enforcement of rules of domestic or international law intended to protect individuals and/or groups against deprivations of health, safety, basic freedoms or human rights.’

The actions and omissions of the companies mentioned above impede the implementation of international law, United Nations Resolutions, and international conventions including but not limited to the Principles of the Nuremberg Charter and Judgement; The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights; International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights; The Geneva Conventions, in particular, but not limited to the 4th Geneva Convention, the Convention Against Torture, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Protocol 1; UN Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Domestic laws violated include the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 USC sec. 2304, which states that ‘no security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.’ In some cases, according to Principle VII of the Nuremberg Tribunal, in so far these companies are complicit in the commission of war crimes or crimes against humanity, they are themselves guilty of crimes under international law.

Recognizing the injustice of these policies and the harm they cause to both Palestinians and Israelis, civil society organizations around the globe have chosen to take concrete action by divesting their holdings in companies that do business with Israel. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, The National Lawyers Guild, Pax Christi of New Zealand, and The Anglican Consultative Council are a few examples of organizations who have either adopted divestment resolutions or are actively considering doing so.

As concerned and conscientious members of the University community and part of a growing global movement for a principled and just peace in historical Palestine, we urge the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to recognize that divesting its holdings in companies that do business with the state of Israel is a moral imperative and an act that signifies a commitment to socially responsible investment, basic human rights, international law, and the principle that nothing should impede human freedom and flourishing.

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