Last Tuesday, 48 tenured Princeton professors published anopen lettercalling on the University to divest from companies that profit from or contribute to the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and siege on Gaza. The purpose of this piece is to open apetitionsupporting this call to the wider University community and to clarify the facts surrounding divestment.
Both the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and siege on Gaza flagrantly violate Palestinian human rights. In Gaza, the Israeli military’s sealed borders, total control of airspace, and naval blockade — anact of warunder international law — confine1.8 millionpeople to a massive open-air prison. Repeated Israeli military engagements in Gaza have drawninternational condemnationfor their disproportionate use of violence against civilians. This summer, Israeli air strikes and shelling killed at least1,486 civilians, including 513 children, while six Israeli civilians were killed. In the West Bank, the Israeli military deniesfreedom of movement with checkpoints and walls. The occupation “judicial” system robs Palestinians of basic rights throughmassandarbitrary incarceration, military courts with a99.7 percent conviction rateandextrajudicial executions. In addition, the occupation inflicts a continuous campaign of violence through home demolitions and brutal crackdowns on peaceful civilian protest; on average, a Palestinian child was killed by Israeli forces every three daysbetween 2000 and 2013.
It is essential to understand that Israel benefits concretely from its military occupation of the West Bank, which extends its control over ever more water, land, and resources. There is insufficient incentive for the state or companies invested in the occupation to change this. Even after 20 years of failed negotiations, the human rights situation has onlyworsened. While perhaps well-intentioned, negotiations have veiled further entrenchment of the occupation; since the beginning of the “peace process” in 1993, the number of Israeli settlers relocated to illegally seized territory in the West Bank has grown from262,000to over600,000, in violation of theFourth Geneva Convention. To quote one Palestinian negotiator last year, “It is impossible to negotiate over a pizza while one party is eating it.”
This power imbalance motivated Palestinian civil society in 2005 tocallfor the international community to adopt the nonviolent tactics of boycott, divestment and sanctionsfollowing the example of the successful anti-apartheid South Africa campaign. The University, an institution with an enormous endowment and a reputation as a global leader, has set a strong precedent of divesting from companies complicit in human rights violations, including inDarfur in 2006.
This divestment campaign aims to discourage companies from contributing to human rights violations and to undermine the occupation’s material means of support. The goal of divestment is not only to cause a downward spiral of decreasing stock value that makes future investment risky, but also to compel these companies to review and change the practices for which they are being targeted.
The most common objection to divestment is that it unfairly singles out Israel while other human rights abuses are committed around the globe. On the contrary, the State of Israel has been singled out as the recipient of unparalleled amounts of unconditionalU.S. military aid, andAmerican diplomatic supporteffectively exempts Israel from compliance with international law. The purpose of divestment from the occupation is to hold human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza to the same moral standard as human rights violations committed by any other nation. The authors of this article and many supporters of divestment at the University are actively committed to upholding these same principles of justice worldwide through our work on environmental justice, immigration reform and human rights in Syria, to name only a few. Many governments violate human rights, but in few other cases do Americans and American institutions have such leverage to enact positive changes on the ground.
To reiterate, this campaign does not aim to “boycott Israel,” but focuses exclusively on companies complicit in the occupation of the West Bank and siege on Gaza. Nonetheless, some apologists for the occupation have charged that divestment from these companies is in some way anti-Semitic. Regardless of the intent behind them, such accusations offensively equate Judaism with a brutal military occupation and do not contribute in any way to thoughtful, productive discussion.
Our University community has the opportunity to align its investments with its most basic values. Failure to divest amounts to sustaining the military occupation of the West Bank and the siege on Gaza, and this institution has a better moral compass than that. We therefore encourage everyone at Princeton — students, faculty, staff and administration — to stand up for human rights and to sign thispetition.
Kyle Dhillon ’16
Katie Horvath ’15
Mason Herson-Hord ’15
Debora Darabi ’18
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