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The city of Berkeley, California, has adopted a resolution to divest from private prison firms, including G4S, a provider of services to Israeli jails where Palestinians are routinely tortured.

In the resolution, approved by the city council on 19 July, Berkeley will be called on to divest from private prison corporations and request that its business partners, including banking giant Wells Fargo, follow suit.

The resolution targets major players in the US’ private prison industry, including the Geo Group, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and G4S.

A community college in Cupertino, California, has become the first educational institution of its kind in the US to support a resolution in favor of divestment from companies that profit from Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

A resolution, which the student senate passed on 15 March, urges the De Anza College’s board of trustees to pull the college’s investments from three US-based corporations that enable Israel’s rights violations – Hewlett-Packard, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar – as well as from G4S, the largest private security firm in the world.

G4S has provided equipment and services to Israeli military checkpoints and inside prisons where Palestinians have been tortured.

Due to mounting international boycott pressure, G4S announced last December that it was exiting most of its businesses with Israel, but remains co-owner of a police training center.

The resolution also calls on the community college to implement a socially responsible investment policy.

In authoring the resolution, members of Students for Justice at De Anza investigated and discussed themes of mass incarceration, state violence and settler-colonialism from the US to Palestine, according to Sara Elzeiny, a Students for Justice member.

The resolution points out that Hewlett-Packard not only provides equipment to Israeli checkpoints which “restrict the freedom of movement of Palestinians, facilitate discrimination against Palestinians, and reinforce a stratification of citizenship,” but also profits from mass incarceration and the detention of undocumented persons in the US.

“You have border patrol and stop-and-frisk [laws] in the US, and in the occupied territories, you have border patrol and checkpoints and the Israeli army,” Elzeiny told The Electronic Intifada, adding that US police and Israeli soldiers have partnered in militarized training exercises.

Students for Justice works on a number of human rights and environmental issues, Elzeiny said, from mobilizing against police violence and resisting military recruitment on campus to campaigning for fossil fuel divestment. They are also joining the movement to resist the Dakota Access pipeline and support indigenous rights at Standing Rock.

The decision to support Palestinian rights was a clear one, she explained.

“Divestment takes a concrete step that pushes against the status quo that says we should normalize military intervention and occupation in a region,” Elzeiny said.

The vote to divest passed 12-1, with four student senators abstaining, according to the campus newspaper.

Growing campaign

The push for divestment at De Anza College is part of the growing student campaign in support of Palestinian rights.

Students for Justice at De Anza worked with other activists, including members of Students for Justice in Palestine at nearby San Jose State University, which in 2015 passed a resolution demanding the university divest from companies that profit from Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

San Jose State became California’s first state university campus to pass a divestment resolution regarding “companies complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine,” while seven out of nine undergraduate campuses of the University of California have passed resolutions urging the UC’s governing body to pull its investments from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation.

Israel-aligned groups, meanwhile, are pushing for state and federal legislation aimed at silencing and criminalizing boycott activism.

Last month, the state senate of New York fast-tracked three separate bills that create a blacklist of BDS activists, prohibit student-led boycott campaigns and threaten academic associations supporting the academic boycott.

Palestine Legal called these bills “blatantly unconstitutional attacks on First Amendment rights to protest and dissent.”

At De Anza, students know they “have a lot of work ahead,” Elzeiny said, as they take the resolution to the college’s financial governing board.

Even if the board rejects the students’ demands, she said that the resolution – and the larger campaign of education on Palestinian rights – starts a necessary conversation on campus.

“Trying to make our organization the face of this discourse has made other activists want to learn about Palestine,” she said.

In 2015, a broad coalition of students brought a resolution to divest all 112 community colleges in California from companies that profit from Israel’s rights violations. The resolution was defeated.

The Electronic Intifada- 07/04/2015

The California Scholars for Academic Freedom, or CS4AF, wish to add our collective voice in support of the op-ed on the topic of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, or BDS, by eight pro-Palestine UC Berkeley faculty members, published in The Daily Californian on Feb. 19.

On the night of January 29, 2015, a historic vote in support of global justice  and racial equality was taken by students at UC Davis as ASUCD passed a divestment resolution (Senate Resolution #9) with a two-third majority vote. The resolution called for the university to divest from American corporations (Caterpillar, Veolia, G4S and Raytheon) that are complicit in the ongoing human rights violations in Palestine, stating that:

About 120 New York University (NYU) professors are calling on the school to divest from companies linked to the Israeli occupation.

Faculty at Pitzer College in California have overwhelmingly voted to pass two motions that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights. As Israel’s attacks on Palestinian education escalate, professors and students are standing up for Palestinian rights.

Earlier this month, Faculty at Pitzer College in California overwhelmingly voted to pass two motions providing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

In the first motion, faculty rejected a decision taken last year by the college’s president and trustees to nullify a Student Senate resolution in support of BDS. This Student Senate resolution, passed in April 2017, resolved to stop any funds for student activities from being used to purchase goods from companies complicit in Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestinian territories.

In the second motion, faculty called on Pitzer College to suspend its academic exchange program with the University of Haifa until Israel stops restricting entry based on ancestry or political speech and “adopts policies granting visas for exchanges to Palestinian universities on a fully equal basis as it does to Israeli universities.”

Daniel Segal, Jean M. Pitzer Professor of Anthropology and Professor of History, explained: ''As Pitzer College faculty, we have overwhelmingly voted to express that it’s unacceptable for our college President and Board of Trustees to violate the Student Senate’s autonomy in controlling its funds, singling out student concerns about the college’s relationship to Palestine and Israel as a basis for interference. This is the first time in the history of Pitzer College that there have been efforts to override students’ autonomy in deciding how to dispense their funds. It’s antidemocratic and unprincipled. The Pitzer Board is trying to apply a “Palestine exception” to free expression. 
What’s important here is not just the outcome, which is clear faculty support for Palestinian rights. What’s also important is that the Pitzer faculty voted after educating itself about the realities of Palestinian lives and the policies and practices of the Israeli state. My Pitzer faculty colleagues have, in short, fulfilled their responsibilities as intellectuals.''

Professor Samia Botmeh, Dean at Birzeit University in the occupied Palestinian West Bank and leading activist with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), said: ''Faculty and students at Pitzer College are standing up for Palestinian rights at a critical time. Israel’s attacks on Palestinian education are not new, but over the last two years, they have been escalating.
I have colleagues with foreign passports, including senior faculty teaching at my university for years, who are being denied visas or visa renewals. Israel is forcing academics teaching in occupied Palestine to abandon their lives and students. Many of them have Palestinian origins, all face the threat of being forced out because of their ethnicity or their commitment to Palestinian education.
Israel is also turning away many of our international students at the borders, preventing them from registering for classes or continuing their studies in Palestine.
Israel’s repression of Palestinian academic freedom and disruption of Palestinian education is part and parcel of its military rule over us and effort to control every aspect of our lives.
It’s heartening to see fellow academics around the world rise to the occasion and make sure that they and their institutions are not complicit in this harm to Palestinian education and life. It’s a professional and ethical responsibility.''

BDS- 27 November 2018

The following press release was issued by Students for Justice in Palestine at San Jose State University:

San Jose State University Students Pass Resolution to Divest from Corporations that profit from the Israeli Occupation.

On Wednesday November 18, 2015, San Jose State University became the first California State University to pass a student government resolution to divest from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This was achieved in a 10-5-0 vote (10 yes, 5 no, 0 abstained).