Open Letter to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents
Regarding Investments in Israel
In adopting Regent Policy 97-1 on March 7th 1997 (Res.7406), the University
of Wisconsin Board of Regents officially recognized that the investment of
university money carries with it the responsibility to be responsive to ‘public
concerns regarding corporate policies or practices that are discriminatory (as
defined by 36.29[1] Wis.Stats.) or cause substantial social injury, and it will
take this factor into account’ in considering the viability of its investments.
The notion of substantial social injury is defined to 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.’
As concerned members of the University Community, we wish to inform the Board of
Regents that maintaining investments in companies that do business with the
State of Israel and its Armed Forces is a clear violation of policy 97-1.
Since its founding in 1948, the state of Israel has been engaged in a sustained
and systematic effort to forcibly expel the Palestinian people from their
homeland and by actively preventing their return, to destroy their existence as
a national group living in their own territory. Where the direct implementation
of this policy has failed to yield the desired result of an exclusive Jewish
State encompassing the whole of historical Palestine, alternative regimes and
measures have been enforced as a means to the same end. These include the
imposition of a 37-year-old military occupation and apartheid regime on the
Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and severe social
discrimination against Palestinian living in Israel. Under these conditions,
Israeli expansionism and the dispossession of the Palestinians has continued
unchecked. These policies are not only discriminatory; they are grave violations
of international law and constitute severe deprivations of the basic human
rights enshrined in internationally recognized treaties and covenants.
As a policy of Apartheid, the treatment of the Palestinians differs from the
treatment of black South Africans in two respects. First, the level of violence
employed by the Israeli army against the Palestinians far outstrips anything
seen under the South African Apartheid regime. Second, Black South Africans
could avoid outright removal from the country provided they acquiesced to the
policies of the regime whereas the extreme violence of Israeli Apartheid
directly serves the goal of expelling non-Jews from Palestine. All of these
atrocities have been recognized and documented by the United Nations, major
human rights organizations and NGO’s. The collective and individual rights of
the Palestinian people – including their right to a political settlement
consistent with the demands of reparative justice - are guaranteed by
International law and human rights conventions.
Several companies in which University of Wisconsin funds are invested directly
contribute to and sustain these practices. To take one example, the Caterpillar
Corporation supplies the Israeli Army with specially manufactured armored
bulldozers designed to destroy Palestinian homes, farmland, olive groves, fruit
orchards, businesses and the basic infrastructure that supports daily life.
Israeli human rights groups such as B’tselem and the Israeli Committee Against
House Demolitions report that since 1967, almost 10,000 Palestinian homes have
been demolished in the West Bank and Gaza Strip alone. Amnesty International
reports that in the past three and a half years, over 3000 homes, hundreds of
public buildings and private commercial properties, and vast areas of
agricultural land have been destroyed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Within Israel, only Palestinian citizens are affected by this policy, 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 of the policy of house demolitions 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 the Jewish State.
This extreme form of Apartheid denies an entire national community its basic
rights on racial or ethnic grounds and separates them from the privileged
ethnicity by incorporating racial exclusivity into the very infrastructure of
the colonizing state.
In the Palestinian occupied territories, this has included the construction of
illegal fortified ‘Jewish-only’ Israeli settlements on confiscated land
connected by a ‘Jewish-only’ system of roads, and the heavily subsidized
transfer of hundreds of thousands of the colonizing state’s own civilian
population into these settlements in violation of article 49 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention.
As a people universally recognized to be under military occupation by a foreign
power, the Palestinians are protected by international law and human rights
covenants. In the text of its recent resolution to divest, in principle and
practice, from Israel, the National Lawyers Guild stated explicitly that
‘additional to the Geneva Conventions, as well as other international covenants
and the general humanitarian principles of international law, these acts
constitute war crimes, and in some cases crimes against humanity.’ By knowingly
supplying the Israeli army with equipment used to implement these criminal
policies, Caterpillar Corporation, General Dynamics, Northrop-Gruemman, Boeing,
Lockheed-Martin, and Raytheon are implicated in the commission of war crimes. As
Principle VII of the Nuremberg Tribunal makes clear, ‘complicity in the
commission of a ...war crime, or crime against humanity is a crime under
international law.’
For example, enabling the destruction of houses or other private property
belonging to individuals residing in occupied territory is explicitly forbidden
by Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes collective
punishment (Article 33). In addition to frustrating the enforcement of
international law, these practices violate domestic laws such as the U.S. Arms
and Export Control Act and 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 a recent letter to
Caterpillar CEO James Owens, the office of the U.N. Commissioner on Human Rights
noted these concerns and reminded Caterpillar that dealing with the Israeli Army
is also a violation of its own code of business conduct.
An international consensus is now crystallizing around opposition to these
practices. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel's Wall
violates international law and the fundamental human rights of the Palestinians.
The wall is a tool of colonization and apartheid. It extends deep into the West
Bank effectively annexing 60% of the remaining Palestinian lands. Discriminatory
administrative measures augment the conditions created by the wall and will
eventually lead to the confinement of the entire Palestinian people in
disconnected Bantustans ruled by Israel. 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.
In the same way that Apartheid South Africa was boycotted and isolated
economically, socially, and politically until the racist regime came to an end,
the severity of Israel’s violations necessitates a boycott until the demands of
reparative justice for the indigenous inhabitants of Palestine are met,
including the end of military occupation and apartheid, the return of the
Palestinian Refugees to their homeland, and equality under the law for all -
irrespective of ethnic or national origin. 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 and will continue to
urge the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to recognize that divesting
its holdings in companies that do business with the Apartheid state of Israel is
a moral imperative and an act that signifies a commitment to basic human rights,
international law, human freedom and flourishing. Our campaign will continue
until these ends are achieved.
We hope the Board of Regents can take our position into consideration.
Sincerely,
Mohammed Abed
Al-Awda: The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition
and Alternative
Palestinian Agenda
1948 - 2005 Copyright Al-Awda (The Palestine
Right to Return Coalition) at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
All Rights Reserved.
