ucla

Representatives from across the UCs Call on Regents to Divest from Human Rights Abuses

For Immediate Release
March 14, 2018

Representatives from UCs Call on Regents to
Divest from Human Rights Abuses

 

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) across the Universities of California (UC) statewide and allies call for Divestment During Today’s Regents meeting at UCLA

Los Angeles, CA — Today, students, campus workers, and allies from across the University of California system are in Los Angeles to call on the UC Regents to listen to student voices and divest university funds from corporations that profit from human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. Following the UC Regents’ signing of the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investments in 2014 and clear votes in support of divestment by the University of California Student Association (UCSA), UC Graduate Student Worker Union (UAW 2865), and Student Governments on eight out of nine UC campuses, students are demanding the UC Regents ensure that the UCs reflect the values we all hold dear: freedom, justice, and equality.  

The UCs are invested in the following corporations profiting from rights abuses, as documented by reputable human rights organizations:  Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Caterpillar, Cemex, HP, General Electric, 3M, Perrigo Company, Atlas Copco, Ford and Hyundai. Lockheed Martin, for example, manufactures Apache helicopters that have killed Palestinian civilians, including children, and Caterpillar supplies bulldozers to the Israeli military to demolish the homes of Palestinian families to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Instead of investing in corporations that harm communities, universities should be investing in corporations that do business ethically.

Given the current political climate, it is critical that universities do all they can to support students and hear their concerns. Students, university workers, and allies are tired of their voices being ignored, despite widespread calls for action. The fact that eight of the nine UC campuses as well as the Graduate Student Worker Union and University of California Student Association have voted to support this campaign shows that there is overwhelming support for divestment and Palestinian rights at nearly every democratically elected decision-making body of the UC system.

The challenge now is to persuade the unelected body of UC Regents to heed the voices of the UC system and act to support human rights. Our money is our responsibility, and we are liable for the ways in which the UC invests out tuition dollars, especially if these investments impede upon the fundamental human rights of other people, including the families of Palestinian students on campus. If not us, who else will take responsibility for where our money is going and who it is hurting?

On Wednesday, March 14th, we will be delivering our demands directly to the UC Regents, as well as engaging in a day of education and movement building to strengthen the UC wide call for divestment. We will be there, building lines of solidarity and for the future goals of our united communities.

After student pressure, the UC relented to the call for divestment from companies supporting Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, from companies involved in human rights violations in Sudan in the 2000s, and from some of the worst corporate polluters and destroyers of the environment in the 2010s. We expect that the UC will see the call to respect Palestinian rights in the same terms as those prior calls and cease to invest in corporations whose activity is tied to the violation of human rights in Palestine and around the world. There is no other way to abide by the Principles for Responsible Investments which they signed onto, and no other way to respond to the democratic will of the student governments of the UC system.

We expect the University of California Regents to take action to demonstrate they truly support responsible investment. They have an opportunity to show they value human rights and freedom for all peoples.  

A detailed list of demands is available here.

 

Students for Justice in Palestine is a grassroots student-led organization that advocates for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality.

 

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Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA Hails Divestment Victory, Thanks all Supporters

November 19, 2014

Divestment organizers at UCLA, representing a wide coalition of students from all backgrounds and sectors of campus, celebrated a milestone victory for social justice with the passage of “A Resolution to Divest from Companies Engaged in Violence against Palestinians.” The resolution, sponsored by Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed, Conrad Contreras, and Manjot Singh, passed by an 8-2-2 margin. It was sponsored by 15 student organizations and endorsed by an additional 17, making for 32 total student groups in support of divestment. UCLA’s vote marks the 6th of 9 undergraduate University of California campuses to have taken a majority vote in support of divestment from corporations that violate Palestinian human rights.

Council members from a variety of political affiliations voted in favor of the resolution, including independents, progressives, and a member of the campus’ moderate party. Before the vote, council members expressed their admiration and respect for the coalition building, education, and outreach by SJP-UCLA during our campaign. Also notable was the positive tone of the hearing and discussion, wherein most council members affirmed their support for one another regardless of their votes.

The resolution could not have been successful without the support of the students from many communities who came out to speak in its favor and who stayed at the hearing until it passed. Alaa Abuadas, the programming director for SJP-UCLA said, “as a Palestinian, I want to thank every single person who helped us pass this bill, for getting us one step closer to a free Palestine.”

This resolution’s victory does not mark the end of SJP’s efforts. SJP sees the passage of divestment as a chance to help other communities use this tool as an avenue to attain more political agency. On that note, the organization sees this vote as laying a principled foundation from which students from myriad backgrounds can continue to educate and organize in support of not just Palestinian rights but all causes of social justice.

For more, see: http://www.sjpbruins.com/

SJP at UCLA defeats “anti-divestment” bill

In October of 2013, a bill supporting “positive investments” and denouncing divestment was presented to the UCLA student government. It was eventually struck down by a 7-5-0 margin, preserving the ability of the council to engage on the question of divestment from companies that profit from the occupation of the Palestinian territories. Below is SJP at UCLA’s press release on the issue, as well as the following links to statements and reference materials:

1. Op-Ed in Daily Bruin on the irrelevance of “positive investment”

2. Berkeley president DeeJay Pepito’s solidarity statement

3. Irvine External Vice President Melissa Gamble’s solidarity statement

4. Stanford Students for Palestinian Equal Rights solidarity statement

5. Sam Bahour letter to UCLA regarding positive investment

6. Letter from Jewish solidarity activists

7. Letter from JVP-LA activist Estee Chandler

 

STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OCTOBER 23, 2013
SJPUCLA1 @ GMAIL.COM

ANTI-DIVESTMENT RESOLUTION DEFEATED AT UCLA UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT COUNCIL
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

With 7 votes against and 5 in favor, the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council voted last night to defeat a resolution that threatened the ability for students to pursue divestment from companies tied to the Israeli occupation.

The resolution, entitled “A Resolution In Support of Positive Steps Towards an Israeli-Palestinian Peace” framed divestment as a source of tension on campus, while also calling for “positive investment” in a basket of companies loosely affiliated with both Israelis and Palestinians.

Over a hundred students attended the hearings, which lasted until 3am on October 23rd. Over the course of two and a half hours of public comment, over 40 students from a variety of campus communities spoke against the bill, arguing that its claims to support community engagement were hypocritical given the exclusion of SJP from the bill’s writing process; wide ranging criticism by Palestinians of “positive investment,” and criticism of the attempt to bar divestment from public debate. Two council members admitted to having taken free trips to Israel sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, which has actively opposed divestment bills at the University of California system and campaigned against SJPs.

Council members responded by systematically removing clauses that spoke on behalf of Palestinians or limited their ability to engage in divestment activism. Eventually the bill lost support and failed when put to a vote. Students for Justice in Palestine board member Angélica Becerra commented “I am very happy with tonight’s outcome. It shows great resiliency on the part of SJP and that our community support is very strong.”

Members of SJP expressed hope that efforts to prevent debate around divestment would continue to be unsuccessful, while the statewide campaign against efforts to remove university investments from companies enabling the occupation would continue to gain momentum across the state.

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA was founded in 2005 and is a coalition of students working in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. 

UCLA Student Council Leaders write pressure letter against UCSD Divestment

Download the original PDF here

March 5, 2013

Associated Students of the University of California, San Diego Associated Students Department
9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0077
La Jolla, CA 92093-0077

To the Council of the Associated Students of the University of California, San Diego:

As elected officials of UCLA’s Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC), we are writing to you to urge you to reject the “Resolution in Support of the University of California, San Diego Corporate Accountability through Divestment from Corporations Profiting from the Illegal Occupation, Siege, and Blockade of Palestine” on March 6, 2013.

We deem this resolution inappropriate and unacceptable because, based on over four hours of public comments made last week, it is clear that the resolution is not representative of the views of the majority of the student body and marginalizes a significant number of your constituents. As your students explained, the resolution contains many accusations about Israel that are factually incorrect, taken out of context, and can be regarded as genuine attacks on institutions many UCSD students value. Furthermore, this resolution explicitly delegitimizes aspects of Jewish and pro-Israel students’ identities. The adoption of this resolution sends a clear message that these students are unwelcome on such a respected institution’s campus.

In response to UCSA’s September 17, 2012 “A Resolution Regarding California Assembly Bill HR 35,” sixty undergraduate elected student officials across the University of California signed a letter to the UCSA Board of Directors about the divisiveness and harm that such resolutions cause amongst students.

As elected officials ourselves, we understand the careful balance between doing what is right for our campus and making our constituents feel safe. We understand that each campus is different and it is your decision as to what is best for your students. However, we strongly urge you to take into account the opinions of many of your constituents and fellow UC elected officials who feel the resolution at hand is not appropriate.

Thank you for your consideration,

David Bocarsly, President
Andrea Hester, Internal Vice President
Kim Davis, Academic Affairs Commissioner Sahil Seth, Financial Supports Commissioner Stephen Kraman, Facilities Commissioner Michael Starr, General Representative 1

UCLA Undergraduate Council Rejects Campus Climate Reports

Earlier in the 2012-2013 academic year, UCLA’s Academic Senate was asked to make a recommendation regarding the Campus Climate Reports. It distributed the reports to its committees for review. The Undergraduate Council’s negative recommendation was recently made public, and is copied below. Shortly after this letter was issued, the Academic Senate dropped its review of the Reports and declined to issue any formal findings.

UCLA Undergraduate Council Response to the Campus Climate Reports

SJP at UCLA Petitions Academic Senate not to Recommend Campus Climate Reports

Click here to download the SJP Letter to Academic Senate

Academic Senate
University of California, Los Angeles

Dear Members of the Academic Senate,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA is a diverse group of students educating and organizing at the University of California in support of Palestinian rights. Our group advocates for the end of the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, for equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and in support of the rights of Palestinian refugees as outlined by international law. As clearly stated in our constitution and in statements we have signed, our group is clearly and unequivocally opposed to all forms of bigotry and hate, including but not limited to racism, sexism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism.

We understand that the Academic Senate has been asked to provide its opinion on the recently released Campus Climate reports. Because the reports have serious implications for the rights of our members, and because we have been largely excluded from the process of generating them, Students for Justice in Palestine would like to take this opportunity to explain our position and urge the Academic Senate not to endorse the report’s dangerous recommendations.

We oppose the Campus Climate reports on two major grounds, first that it constitutes an effort to censor and repress pro-Palestinian speech on campus; and second, that the report was formulated and written in an illegitimate manner that is symptomatic of a biased approach to these issues by the University of California Administration.

• The Campus Climate Report is a clear threat to speech on campus, based on the following recommendations:

– Review policies on sponsorship, neutrality and balance

Efforts to review sponsorship of events or take steps to ensure balance constitute a clear threat to the free speech rights of students and faculty. Which campus administrative body will be in charge of determining which speakers and events are acceptable and which require balancing? Will they enforce this rule for all topics and not just those related to the injustices of Israel’s occupation? We raise these questions not to indicate that we would endorse the recommendation if further elaborated, but to highlight the clear potential for political speech on campus to be monitored, judged, and censored. Moreover, applying these recommenda- tions only to speech advocating for Palestinian rights will render pro-Palestinian students second class citizens at the University of California.

– Adopt a hate speech-free campus policy

We affirm that our speech is not hate speech. We support the equal rights of Palestinians and the application of international law to their situation. We do not engage in or support violence against, the demonization of, or discrimination against any group or people. Our constitution, long track record of opposition to all forms of bigotry, and the absence of any accusations made against our group should confirm that we are not and have not been practitioners of hate. Unfortunately, the report repeatedly fails to distinguish between criticism of Israeli policy and anti-Semitism, raising the possibility that legitimate criticisms of Israel’s human rights abuses will be categorized as hate speech. As such, we are concerned that instead of promoting tolerance, this recommendation will instead have the effect of sup- pressing views critical of Israeli policy. Therefore, while we are opposed to hate speech, we are skeptical as to how it will be defined and the biases that might be present in the processes used to determine it.

– Adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism that may include criticism of Israel

Our student group opposes anti-Semitism and works to clearly define our work as critical of Israeli policy, not critical of any ethnic or religious group. But we are worried that an adoption of a definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticism of Israel will blur the distinction between criticism of state policy with criticism of racial, religious, or ethnic groups. This would be akin to labeling criticism of American policies as anti-American, a possibility that echoes past efforts to stifle free speech in our country. Our concerns stem from the report’s reference to the 2005 working definition offered by the European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (now renamed to the Fundamental Rights Agency). The defini- tion offered by this working group (which has since been dropped) is not problematic in our view, but the examples that accompany that definition clearly include criticism of the State of Israel as examples of anti-Semitic speech. We are extremely worried by the possibility that these examples might be incorporated in a definition of anti-Semitism at the UC.

The working definition reads: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” We endorse this view. But we object to the examples cited, which include criticism of Israel such as “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation,” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Is- raeli policy to that of the Nazis.” While our group is focused on advocating for Palestinian rights and is not engaged in these debates, we believe that if these examples of speech be- come part of a common understanding of anti-Semitism, it will move legitimate, non-bigoted criticism of Israel outside the bounds of acceptable public discourse. If this recommendation were to be adopted and the UC defined anti-Semitism as something which included criticism of Israel, it would effectively label our student group as a hate group and in fact smear many professors and students whose research deals with Israel’s discriminatory policies.

We view each of these three recommendations as leading down the same dangerous path. Whether outright banning speakers from campus, forcing balance upon events and groups, defining hate speech, or labeling criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic, each of these recommendations has the frightening possibility of both misrepresenting our group and limiting our speech rights on campus. Be- cause these recommendations single out pro-Palestinian speech for special treatment, they would effectively make us second class citizens on campus with fewer rights to free speech than other students. We believe that just as critics of American policy should not be restricted from engaging in free speech on campus by being labelled anti-American or forced to include balance at their events, we too should not be subject to these limitations on our ability to advocate for our beliefs. We have no objections to the other recommendations listed in the report that deal with dietary needs, cultural competency, and religious accommodations and we regret that the legitimate religious and cultural needs of students have been mixed with clear attempts to limit speech that is objected to by other groups on campus.

• Strong objections to the process by which the report was written:

– Jewish Students Report offers no evidence that SJPs can respond to

We wish to point out that the Jewish Students’ Campus Climate Report offers no substanti- ated evidence that SJPs have engaged in hate speech. Considering that the recommendations it makes have the potential to enact sweeping censorship on campus, we would expect that there would be ample documentation backing claims of inappropriate behavior. Rather than this being the case, it is simply asserted as if fact that SJPs have committed offenses. How- ever, we strongly reiterate that we have not been accused of any provable instance of hate speech. We can neither apologize for nor defend ourselves against claims that are not backed by any evidence. We find this to be extremely troubling given the serious consequences that can stem from these accusations.

– Jewish Students Report should not have been chaired by Richard Barton

Richard Barton, one of the co-chairs of the report, is a member of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a political organization that has a record of attacking Students for Justice in Palestine and other organizations in support of Palestinian rights (including other groups that have voiced objection to these reports, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations). In 2010, this organization placed SJP (as a collective national body, which we are not) on a list of the top-10 anti-Israel groups in America. After this inci- dent, SJP chapters, including every chapter in the UC system, took the opportunity to write a joint public statement reiterating our longstanding opposition to all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism, and reiterating our clear and principled stance in support of Palestinian equal rights. Given the ADL’s prior attempt to misrepresent our organization, we are concerned that the appointment of a high ranking member of this group may have brought bias or a political agenda into the process.

– Report knowingly excluded the voices of critical Jewish students

In the same vein, there is ample evidence that the report excluded opinions that ran contrary to its findings. In addition to the serious questions regarding the report’s methodology raised in the attached letter from the Ad Hoc Jewish Committee, Jewish students who did not agree that criticism of the state of Israel’s policies constituted anti-Semitism have also confirmed that the testimony they gave to the report’s authors was omitted from the final report. We also note that, like at other UC schools, our SJP has many Jewish students whose opinions and beliefs were not included or solicited, who also do not believe that criticism of Israel is hate-based, and who would also be censored and silenced by the report’s recommendations.

– Report inappropriately framed as Jewish-Muslim

While the Jewish Students Campus Climate report spent a great deal of time on the Israel- Palestine debate on campus, the Muslim and Arab report was primarily focused on reli- gious and other cultural concerns for those students. The framing of this issue as a Jewish-Muslim problem provides an inaccurate religious connotation to a political disagreement about rights and state policies. Political disagreements about state policies of Israel do not fall uniquely along religious or ethnic lines and they do not represent a shorthand for inter-religious or inter-communal tensions on campus. To frame these oppressions as a disagreement between Jews and Muslims is to inappropriately simplify those religions by condensing their long, diverse, and rich legacies into a contemporary political question that is not representative of those religions, their diverse adherents, or their long histories. It also erases from view Jewish, Christian, Hindu, atheist and other students in our group, something which no campus administration should ever allow to happen.

– Report excluded the opinions of Students for Justice in Palestine

At UCLA, our group was not contacted or consulted about the reports save a small and nowhere near comprehensive online survey briefly posted to our Facebook group. This is no substitute for an engaged interview of SJP members that would allow us to voice our substantive concerns and defend ourselves from what we consider baseless or politicized accusations. More importantly, it is not the place of Muslim and Arab students to represent SJP, to be used as a substitute for our group, or to be asked to administer a survey about our experiences. We can speak on our own behalf, and as a party that will surely be affected by the report, SJP should have been included in this process. The Muslim/Arab report did at times reference issues relevant to SJPs, but this is not equivalent to or an adequate replace- ment for the active involvement of our groups in this process. We are deeply concerned that this exclusion of SJP has persisted through the current UCLA review process, and we at- tach several important documents by the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Middle East Studies Association that we strongly believe that the review should include.

– Report also reflects a biased approach to speech regarding Israel and the Palestinians

UC President Mark Yudof has a record of bias

In his public statements about the formation of the Campus Climate process, Pres- ident Yudof stated that he initiated these reports in response to “the unfortunate events of spring 2010,” one of which was a political protest at UC Irvine, now re- ferred to as the Irvine 11 incident. Framing the Irvine 11 as a problem is an example of the troubling political orientation of the Campus Climate process and the singling out of pro-Palestinian speech for additional scrutiny. Similar protests of government speakers happen regularly, including an identical protest this spring by a student immigrant rights group at UCLA against a speech by US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. We do not view these types of protest as a problem and are therefore troubled by the origin and framing of the reports. Second, in November of 2011, President Yudof made public comments to the Anti Defamation League supporting the backdoor censorship of SJPs at UC Irvine. Third and most recently, President Yudof’s office revealed that he had given strong endorsement to much of HR35, the widely condemned California Assembly resolution that defines terms like apartheid as hate speech when applied to Israeli policy and recommends broad forms of censorship against pro-Palestine groups on campus. For these reasons, we do not have confidence in President Yudof’s ability to administer the Campus Climate process in a fair manner.

Censorship of pro-Palestinian speech at the UC is an ongoing problem

We also wish to call to your attention the many attempts at censorship that have occurred throughout the UC system and at UCLA as well. These have created a climate of intimidation for pro-Palestinian students, summarized with examples in the attached Center for Constitutional Rights letter. In the past year at UCLA, Professor David Shorter of the UCLA World Arts and Cultures Department was the target of a censorship attempt, and last week, a graduate student teach in about Gaza held at UCLA was plagued by repeated calls for censorship. This was a traumatic experience for many students and we foresee this becoming the future for our political speech should the recommendations listed in the Campus Climate Report be adopted.

In summary, we write to express strong objection to several recommendations in the Campus Climate Reports, particularly three that, if adopted, will lead to the censorship and second-class status of pro-Palestinian students at UCLA. We believe that the process by which the reports were written has not been impartial and has not included the viewpoints of pro-Palestinian student groups. We are also deeply troubled that the Academic Senate is entering a review of these reports without consideration of our position on any of these matters. We are afraid that the systematic exclusion of our group, which has the most to lose from this process, will result in an uncritical review.

We attach for your consideration a series of letters and documents which we believe provide im- portant context and support for the positions we have laid out in this letter. We urge you to consider them. Please contact us at sjpucla1@gmail.com with any questions, concerns, or requests for clarification that you may have.

Yours sincerely,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA

 

SJP at UCLA Response to Invitation to Participate in Interfaith Programming

Click here to download the letter

November 26, 2012

Susan Swarts
Office of the Vice Chancellor, Student Affairs University of California, Los Angeles

Dear Ms Swarts,

Thank you for the invitation to participate in the upcoming interfaith dinner and programming meeting. While Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA supports dialogue between religious groups, we strongly believe that our participation would undermine our group’s principles and be detrimental to our goals. Therefore as an organization we must respectfully decline this invi- tation. Our participation in a religious dialogue would only give legitimacy to the incorrect and dangerous myth that the situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory is based on religion or religious differences.

The multiple forms of oppression against Palestinians (their dispossession in 1948, the occupation in 1967, and the ongoing discrimination against them inside Israel) are a political, not a religious issue, and must be dealt with as such. To frame these oppressions as a disagreement between Jews and Muslims is to insult those religions by condensing their long, diverse, and rich legacies into a contemporary political question that is not representative of those religions, their diverse adher- ents, or their long histories. Moreover, this type of framing negates and silences both Palestinian Christians and Jewish critics of Israeli policies. Finally, our student group, and the Palestinian rights movement as a whole, is comprised of individuals from a variety of racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious backgrounds. We take seriously the idea that support for Palestinian rights is a uni- versal human concern, rather than one that is specific to any identity. Thus we cannot send a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Atheist, or Jewish student to this event without undermining that idea and privileging one religious identity over others in our group.

We also note with great concern that administrators at this university and across the larger Univer- sity of California system have continued to perpetuate the misperception that Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights represent a Jewish-Muslim problem. We urge all administrators at the Univer- sity of California to end this harmful and essentializing discourse.

Please feel free to contact us at any time if you have any questions or would like to speak more about this or any other issue.

Yours sincerely,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA

University of California, Los Angeles
sjpucla1@gmail.com

Don’t Talk About Palestine! (UCLA Event on Censorship)

This is the video from the event “Don’t Talk About Palestine,” which highlighted and protested the ongoing censorship of students and faculty whose activism and or scholarship touches on the question of Palestine. The event was held on October 18, 2012 at the UCLA Law School, and featured Rahim Kurwa of UCLA SJP, Yaman Salahi of the NLG, Estee Chandler of Jewish Voice for Peace, and Professor David Shorter of UCLA.

The audio of the event is here.

With a separate clip from David Shorter’s speech.

Resolution defending free speech should be lauded

The UC Students Association should be commended for courageously standing in opposition to HR 35, the recently passed California Assembly bill that equates legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and seeks to censor free speech and political activism across California’s public universities.

It should go without saying that all forms of racism and bigotry, including anti-Semitism, should be vigorously opposed by all members of the University. But one glance at the language of the bill reveals that HR 35 is less concerned with combating bigotry than it is with claiming that criticism of Israeli state policy is anti-Semitic, a position that is strongly opposed by many prominent Jewish groups on both sides of the political spectrum.

HR 35 is an attempt to silence and intimidate the growing student movement for Palestinian equal rights and, more specifically, to stifle the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign against Israel for its continued violations of human rights and international law.

While HR 35 bypasses decades of academic and legal scholarship in order to stifle criticism of Israel at the University (a space whose most intrinsic function is to allow for the free exchange of ideas), groups like Students for Justice in Palestine base their positions on equal rights and international law. We believe that HR 35 is a reaction to the growing public consensus that Israel’s behavior towards the Palestinians is wrong.

The brutal military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the systematic discrimination against Palestinians inside Israel’s own borders and the denial of the right to return for civilians who endured ethnic cleansing in 1948 are objectionable behaviors that increasing numbers of students are standing up against on campuses across the United States.

The effort to stifle criticism of Israel on campuses has already resulted in attacks on the academic freedom of professors at UCLA and other campuses.

And now, as groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and the National MEChA have endorsed calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions, defenders of Israeli apartheid have become so desperate as to support criminalizing free speech.

The UCSA was quick to respond to this, expressing their “strong opposition to HR 35 and expressing the UCSA’s opposition to all racism, whether it be the racism of campus and global anti-Semitism or the racism of Israel’s human rights violations, neither of which our campuses should tolerate, support, or profit from.”

The UCSA isn’t the only group opposed to HR 35 and other attempts to stifle criticism of Israel on campus. California Scholars for Academic Freedom, Jewish Voice for Peace, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement Archives, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Asian Law Caucus, the National Lawyers Guild, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the UC Student-Workers Union, Angela Davis and, most recently, David Myers, chair of the UCLA history department, have all weighed in to criticise HR 35 or other similar efforts.

As UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof put it, “One can object deeply to the policies of Israel. Our students should have a right to protest what they believe to be an unlawful and immoral action.”

When our critics oppose fake checkpoints and mock walls on campus because they make students uncomfortable, we remember that the discomfort felt by looking at the wall or seeing a student dressed up as a soldier is just a fraction of the discomfort felt by Palestinians who face real checkpoints, real walls and real soldiers on a daily basis.

When they argue that boycotts are extreme measures, we reply that boycotts are a tactic that UCLA students have used many times before, most notably to pressure the South African government to abandon its apartheid policies.

And when opponents of Palestinian rights claim that we are singling out Israel for special criticism, we remind them that this was a common claim made by defenders of apartheid in South Africa.

As Desmond Tutu wrote in 2010, “The same issue of equality is what motivates the divestment movement of today, which tries to end Israel’s 43-year long occupation and the unequal treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them. The abuses they face are real, and no person should be offended by principled, morally consistent, nonviolent acts to oppose them. It is no more wrong to call out Israel in particular for its abuses than it was to call out the Apartheid regime in particular for its abuses.”

Hodali is a graduate student in comparative literature and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA.

http://www.dailybruin.com/article/2012/10/resolution-defending-free-speech-sh…