Statement of Purpose: Divestment from Israel as a Moral Imperative

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.

The founding of the state of Israel in 1948 was made possible by a campaign of ethnic cleansing that resulted in the destruction of Palestine’s indigenous Arab society. 800,000 Palestinians were uprooted from their homes, deprived of their land and property, and forced into exile where they remain to this day. The founding ideology of Israel is an exclusive ethno-nationalism that defines the state as serving the interests of the worldwide Jewish community and not the concerns of its inhabitants without regard to their ethnic and religious origins.

Since 1948, this has led to the implementation of an Apartheid regime within Israel’s self-defined borders. The legal, social, political, and military aspects of this regime are calculated to create conditions of life that facilitate the expulsion of remaining non-Jewish communities so that their lands and natural resources can be expropriated by the State. Israel’s apartheid system makes the distribution of goods and resources contingent on ethnic origin. Palestinian communities are purposefully de-developed and subject to policies of military rule, house demolition, destruction of agricultural lands, and arbitrary state sanctioned violence that does not affect Jewish localities. Restrictions on the allocation of state land to Palestinians prevents
natural growth and development. Official discrimination in favor of Jews and against non-Jews occurs in many other areas of life, including residency rights, the right to work, and the right to equality before the law. Israel’s ‘law of return’ allows anyone of Jewish origin to become a citizen with all the benefits this entails, while the Palestinians expelled in 1948 are actively prevented from returning to their homeland – in defiance of international humanitarian law. The result of all these policies is that the Palestinians are separate but unequal – just as blacks were in Apartheid South Africa. Their communities are hemmed in by the infrastructure of an apartheid state dedicated to their exclusion and eventual expulsion.

Since 1967, the whole of historical Palestine has come under Israel’s military, administrative, and political control. Israel has implemented a much more brutal and violent form of Apartheid in these more recently conquered areas. Although it controls every aspect of their lives, Israel does not grant 3.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza citizenship. Instead it has implemented policies aimed at the expulsion of non-Jewish communities by force and the colonization of their lands by Jewish citizens of Israel. The egregious nature and specific 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. Israel has extended its apartheid infrastructure into the West Bank and Gaza; in these areas, there are roads, colonies, institutions, schools, hospitals, and organizations that are heavily funded by the state and off-limits to non-Jews. No resources or goods are allocated to Palestinian communities. In fact, their infrastructure is deliberately targeted and destroyed and as non-citizens, Palestinians are not subject to Israeli laws that would afford them domestic protections against such inhumane treatment. 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 and should be resisted by International civil society in the same way that South African Apartheid was.  

As concerned members of the community, we call on the Board of Regents to divest from any company that does business with or in the State of Israel. In particular, we draw the Regent’s attention to investments in Caterpillar Corporation, General Dynamics, Northrop-Gruemman, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon and many others. Since its founding, Israel has been a consistent violator of International humanitarian law, United Nations Resolutions, the laws of war, and international covenants. Any investments associated with Israel subvert the implementation of these norms and stand in glaring violation of Regent Policies 78-1 and 97-1 as well as the U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, 22 USC sec. 2304, which prohibits the provision of security assistance to any country whose government engages in violations of internationally recognized human rights.

We are concerned and conscientious members of the University community but also part of a growing global movement for a principled and just peace in historical Palestine, one that includes equality for Jews and Arabs under the law, constitutional guarantees of minority rights, institutionalized toleration for cultural autonomy in well-defined spheres of life, the basic right of the citizen to live where he or she chooses and the right to take full part in democratic processes. 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.

1948 - 2005 Copyright Al-Awda (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
All Rights Reserved.