sabra

On February 1, 2017, the Associated Students of UC Riverside passed the following resolution in opposition to the presence of Sabra products on campus – due to the company’s associations with the Israeli military and its role in violence against the Palestinian people:

 

WHEREAS, ASUCR is committed to diversity, justice, inclusion, fairness, and opposes racism, colonialism, and more; and,

WHEREAS, ASUCR Senate has passed resolutions addressing a number of student concerns, among those being resolutions in support of divestment from prisons in order to counteract the prison industrial complex, fossil fuel industries, and divestment from companies complicit with the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories; and,

WHEREAS, the Strauss Group, parent company to Sabra Dipping Company, LLC is a company that is known to have considerable ties to the Israeli military, which is known to be responsible for violation of the Palestinian people’s basic human rights through racist and colonialist policies internationally recognized as illegal; and,  

WHEREAS, institutions, activist organizations, and university students worldwide have campaigned against the sale of Sabra for its ties to the Israeli military; and,  

WHEREAS, dining at the University of California, Riverside has independently, without coercion, previously made the decision to remove Sabra at the request of some students; and,

WHEREAS, UCR’s administration replaced Sabra, on the shelves in April 2015 without demand from the UCR community; and, 

WHEREAS, ASUCR considers administration’s decision to have been intended to satisfy external, off-campus, non-UCR related special interests; and,

WHEREAS, ASUCR considers UCR admin’s decision to be part of a larger trend of UC administrations prioritizing loyalty and obedience to pro-Israel interests rather than the interests of their students, faculty, and overall campus community, especially when involved in pro-Palestine activism; examples of which include the suspension of a student-run class on Palestine at UC Berkeley, the draconian punishments leveled against the Irvine 11, and the UC president’s support for a restrictive interpretation that attempted to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism; and,

WHEREAS, 239 UC faculty have signed a petition spearheaded by Jewish Voice for Peace condemning consideration of the State Department definition of anti-Semitism “which conflates the critique of Israeli state policy with bigotry and discrimination against Jews”

RESOLVED, That the Associated Students of University of California, Riverside,  

1. Declares its supports for the discontinuation of the sale of Sabra at UCR
2. Condemns UC administration’s disregard for free speech, obedience to external pro-Israel interests, and bias against pro-Palestine activists; demanding stronger administrative statements condemning all forms of repression of Palestine solidarity activists on campus and commitment to principles of inclusion and diversity based on ideas of social justice, racial equality, free speech and civic engagement.

 

SJP UCR Sabra Press Release