Adalah NY, February 28 2011

Folk music legend Pete Seeger has come out in support of the growing Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel as a program for justice for Palestinians and a route to peace in the Middle East.

Seeger, 92, participated in last November’s online virtual rally “With Earth and Each Other,” sponsored by the Arava Institute, an Israeli environmental organization, and by the Friends of the Arava Institute. The Arava Institute counts among its close partners and major funders the Jewish National Fund, responsible since 1901 for securing land in Palestine for the use of Jews only while dispossessing Palestinians. Although groups in the worldwide BDS movement had requested he quit the event, Seeger felt that he could make a strong statement for peace and justice during the event.

During a January meeting at his Beacon, NY home with representatives from the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and Adalah-NY, Pete Seeger explained, “I appeared on that virtual rally because for many years I’ve felt that people should talk with people they disagree with. But it ended up looking like I supported the Jewish National Fund. I misunderstood the leaders of the Arava Institute because I didn’t realize to what degree the Jewish National Fund was supporting Arava. Now that I know more, I support the BDS movement as much as I can.”

Jeff Halper, the Coordinator of ICAHD, added, “Pete did extensive research on this. He read historical and current material and spoke to neighbors, friends, and three rabbis before making his decision to support the boycott movement against Israel.” Seeger has for some time given some of the royalties from his famous Bible-based song from the 1960s, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” to ICAHD for their work in rebuilding demolished homes and exposing Israel’s practice of pushing Palestinians in Israel off their land in favor of development of Jewish villages and cities.

The November virtual rally “With Earth and Each Other” was billed as an apolitical effort to bring Israelis and Palestinians together to work for the environment. Dave Lippman from Adalah-NY noted, “Arava’s online event obfuscated basic facts about Israel’s occupation and systematic seizure of land and water from Palestinians. Arava’s partner and funder, the JNF, is notorious for planting forests to hide Palestinian villages demolished by Israel in order to seize their land. Arava was revealed as a sterling practitioner of Israeli government efforts to ‘Rebrand Israel’ through greenwashing and the arts.”

Currently, the JNF is supporting an Israeli government effort to demolish the Bedouin village of Al-Araqib in order to plant trees from the JNF that were paid for by the international evangelical group GOD-TV. The Friends of the Arava Institute’s new board chair has recently published an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post that only cautiously questions some activities of the JNF, an organization whose very raison-d’etre is to take over land for Jews at the expense of the Palestinian Arab population.

Pete Seeger’s long-time colleague Theodore Bikel, an Israeli-American known for his life-long involvement with Israeli culture, recently supported the Israeli artists who have refused to perform in a new concert hall in Ariel, a large illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Seeger joins a growing roster of international performers who have declined to whitewash, greenwash, or in any way enable Israel’s colonial project, including Elvis Costello, Gil Scott-Heron, Roger Waters, Devendra Banhart, and the Pixies.

Daniel Ming and Aaron Glatz, The New York Times Bay Citizen, February 3 2011

Hundreds of people, mostly Arab-Americans, are expected to gather Saturday in downtown San Francisco to support anti-government protests in Egypt, and a large contingent of Jews representing a Bay Area peace-advocacy group will join them, one of its leaders says.

“We are deeply inspired by their push for democracy and freedom,” said Cecilie Surasky, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, based in Oakland.

Ms. Surasky said she hoped a new political order in Egypt would help speed the end of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories, which her group opposes. The group’s views differ markedly from statements about the Egyptian protests coming from the Israeli government and many other Jewish-American organizations, which caution that the demonstrations in Cairo could ultimately threaten Israel.

The unrest in Egypt is merely the latest issue to pit a number of Bay Area activists against prominent Jewish organizations, as well as against some Israelis who have come to see the Bay Area as a locus for Jewish opposition to Israel’s government.

One prominent Israeli research organization, the Reut Institute, recently described the Bay Area as “one of the very few geographic locations that drive a global assault on Israel’s right to exist.” In October, the Anti-Defamation League placed Jewish Voice for Peace — which has called for an international boycott of companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories — among “the top 10 anti-Israel groups in America.”

The divisions have heightened tensions among Bay Area Jews. During one altercation last year, a pro-Israel activist attacked two representatives of Jewish Voice for Peace with pepper spray. Last March, Rabbi Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun, a bimonthly Jewish magazine based in Berkeley, received death threats, and his home was plastered with signs accusing him of “Islamo-Fascism,” after he announced that he planned to give an award to a United Nations official who led an investigation into Israel’s 2008 invasion of Gaza.

“What’s happening is outlandish; the era of civil discourse has disappeared,” said Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce of Congregation Emanu-El, San Francisco’s largest synagogue.

The activists say they are not working against Israel, but against Israeli government policies they believe are discriminatory. In the past week, many of these activists have cast the Egyptian demonstrations as an opportunity to alter the Middle East, including Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.

“When you look at the Middle East, in one way or another it’s all about what’s happening in Palestine,” said Barbara Lubin, co-founder of the Middle East Children’s Alliance, a group in Berkeley that organizes aid missions to Gaza, which remains under an Israeli blockade.

Ms. Lubin said she hoped that if President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt was removed, Israeli policies toward Gaza “would become more lax” and allow her organization to carry out its work in support of the Palestinians.

Rabbi Lerner has been an outspoken supporter of the demonstrators in Egypt. His recent editorial, headlined “Jewish Prayers for Egypt’s Uprising,” was the lead opinion article on the Web site of the television network Al Jazeera on Tuesday. He said in an interview that American Jews had an interest in letting “the people of the Arab world know that a very large section of the Jewish people support the liberation of the Egyptian people and of all Arab people.”

Such views concern Israel’s defenders locally and abroad.

“Nobody defends Mubarak,” said John Rothmann, a talk show host for KGO radio in San Francisco and the former President of the Zionist Organization of America in San Francisco.

Mr. Rothmann added, however, that it was important to remember that Mr. Mubarak had maintained peace between Egypt and Israel for nearly three decades.

“He may be a barbarian, but he’s our barbarian,” Mr. Rothmann continued. “You need to have an alternative, and we have never been able to create one.”

Eran Shayshon, a Reut Institute senior analyst, said in an e-mail that Israelis were watching Bay Area Jewish activists closely because “campus dynamics and consumer trends originating in California often reverberate throughout North America and beyond.”

In fact, Jewish Voice for Peace has grown significantly since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, its leaders say.

The 23-day operation in December 2008 and January 2009, named Operation Cast Lead by the Israel Defense Forces, left 13 Israelis and at least 1,300 Palestinians dead. It drew strong criticism that Israel used excessive force against civilians.

“Cast Lead was a radicalizing moment for a lot of Jews,” said Sydney Levy, director of campaigns for Jewish Voice for Peace. Mr. Levy said Jewish discontent with Israel typically subsided after a conflict ended. That did not happen after the most recent Israeli incursion, he said, “mostly because the siege of Gaza continues today.”

Jewish Voice for Peace’s mailing list has risen to 100,000 from 35,000 since the start of the Gaza conflict, according to the organization; the number of chapters has grown to 27 from 7. From 2008 to 2009, the group’s operating budget, fueled by donations, grew 44 percent.

“We, as Jews, have a unique responsibility to change the viewpoint of the people who are in our community,” said Rae Abileah, a San Francisco resident and advocate for Jewish Voice for Peace’s youth wing.

Jewish Voice for Peace has been at the center of several attention-grabbing episodes.

In November, during a convention of Jewish philanthropic organizations in New Orleans, Ms. Abileah and others drew international attention when they heckled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel during a speech.

“I’m a 28-year-old young Jewish woman, and the settlements betray Jewish values!” Ms. Abileah shouted. One man grabbed her in a chokehold while another tried to gag her by stuffing a seat cover in her mouth.

Much of the recent scrutiny of Bay Area Jewish activists has focused on efforts to impose an international boycott on Israel. The campaign is modeled after the boycott of South Africa in the 1980s over apartheid.

Last spring, students at the University of California, Berkeley, with the backing of Jewish Voice for Peace, mounted a divestment campaign singling out companies that provide “military support for the occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The effort ended after Akiva Tor, Israel’s consul general in San Francisco, came to the campus and held a private meeting with student senators.

By supporting the boycott, Jewish Voice for Peace “puts themselves beyond the pale,” wrote Mr. Shayshon of the Reut Institute, because some leaders of the boycott movement “have explicitly talked about the goal of dismantling Israel.”

Members of Jewish Voice for Peace say they are simply concerned about human rights of all peoples in the Middle East — whether in Israel, the Palestinian territories or the streets of Cairo.

“Egyptians deserve a democracy just as Americans do, just as Israelis do, just as Palestinians do,” Ms. Surasky said.

Nancy Kricorian and Rae Abileah, Mondoweiss, January 13 2011

Yesterday was quite a lively day!  On January 12th, representatives of Canadian retailer The Bay acknowledged that the chain was no longer carrying cosmetics products from the Israeli company Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories, but said the “de-listing” was purely a business decision and not in response to any organized boycott. Whatever the reason for the decision, the Stolen Beauty (www.stolenbeauty.org) Ahava boycott campaign and human rights supporters around the world applaud the fact that The Bay will no longer be supporting Ahava and its occupation profiteering.

In January 2011, Canadians for Just Peace in the Middle East (CJPME, http://www.cjpme.org/) selected Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories settlement products as their consumer boycott target for the month. Previously Tadamon (http://www.tadamon.ca/) had organized protest actions against Ahava at The Bay in Montreal.

In response to the announced CJPME month-long boycott of Ahava, a local coalition calling itself “Buycott Israel” (http://buycottisrael.ca/alerts/actions/urgent-buycott-israel-alert-shop-ahava-at-the-bay/), apparently including such partners as the Canada-Israel Committee and The B’nai B’rith of Canada, called for January 11th to be a day on which its members would purchase Ahava products. When the “buycotters” arrived at The Bay’s retail outlets, they discovered that shelves were bare of Ahava.

We are encouraging supporters of the boycott to send thank you notes to The Bay’s President and CEO Bonnie Brooks, Chairman Richard Baker, and Director of Beauty Products Shelley Rozenwald (see http://bit.ly/hO9HG5).

So what’s wrong with Ahava products?

Ahava has been the subject of an international boycott campaign since June 2009 because the company manufactures its products in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.  Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories is an Israeli cosmetics company that has its manufacturing plant and visitors center near the shores of the Dead Sea in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mitzpe Shalem in the Occupied Palestinian West Bank. All Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law. The company is 44% owned by Mitzpe Shalem and another settlement, Kalia, so that the company’s profits are subsidizing these illegal colonies. Although its goods are manufactured in the West Bank, Ahava labels them as “products of Israel,” a practice that is illegal under European Union law and is currently being investigated in the UK and Holland.

The growing influence of the international boycott campaign

Since its launch in July 2009, the Stolen Beauty Ahava Boycott has scored a number of successes. The first victory came after pressure on Oxfam, an international human rights organization, which had publicly condemned all Israeli settlement products, to suspend its Goodwill Ambassador Kristin Davis from publicity work for the duration of her contract as Ahava spokeswoman. Davis, best known for her work on HBO’s Sex and the City, allowed her contract with Ahava to expire a few months later. Abroad, coalition partners in London engaged the UK’s Camden Trading Standards Office to investigate the legality of Ahava’s labeling. Dutch activists and a Minister of the Parliament succeeded in convincing the Dutch Foreign Ministry to launch its own investigation of Ahava’s business methods. Partners in Paris have recently filed suit against the cosmetics chain Sephora for carrying Ahava products.

Part of a growing international movement

Modeled on the worldwide campaign against apartheid-era South Africa, the movement for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel was created in 2005 in response to Israel’s many violations of Palestinian rights.  The BDS movement has grown and achieved significant successes, particularly following Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in 2009, which killed over 1400 Palestinians. The Stolen Beauty campaign is a part of this growing international movement.  Ahava means love in Hebrew, but there is no love in occupation. The Stolen Beauty Boycott is a part of the grassroots effort to bring about a just peace for both Israelis and Palestinians.

Nancy Kricorian is a writer and activist in New York, she is the campaign manager for CODEPINK‘s Stolen Beauty Ahava boycott (www.stolenbeauty.org) and can be reached at nancy[at]stolenbeauty.org.

Rae Abileah is a Jewish-American of Israeli descent and is a national organizer with CODEPINK and the Stolen Beauty Ahava boycott.  She lives in San Francisco, CA and can be reached at rae@codepink.org.

Or Kashti, Haaretz, January 9 2011

Some 155 university and college faculty members have signed a petition calling for an academic boycott of the Ariel University Center.

In the petition, the lecturers state their “unwillingness to take part in any type of academic activity taking place in the college operating in the settlement of Ariel.” Furthermore, the petition states that “Ariel is not part of the sovereign state of Israel, and therefore it is impossible to require us to appear there.”

Among the signatories are three Israel Prize laureates – professors Yehoshua Kolodny of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Benjamin Isaac of Tel Aviv University and Itamar Procaccia of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

“We, academics from a variety of fields and from all the institutions of higher learning in Israel, herein express publicly our opposition to the continued occupation and the establishment of settlements,” the petition states. “Ariel was built on occupied land. Only a few kilometers away from flourishing Ariel, Palestinians live in villages and refugee camps under unbearably harsh conditions and without basic human rights. Not only do they not have access to higher education, some do not even have running water. These are two different realities that create a policy of apartheid,” the petition also says.

The signatories state that Ariel was an illegal settlement whose existence contravened international law and the Geneva Convention. “It was established for the sole purpose of preventing the Palestinians from creating an independent state and thus preventing us, citizens of Israel, from having the chance to ever live in peace in this region.”

The petition was initiated and organized by Nir Gov of the Weizmann Institute’s Department of Chemical Physics. Unlike other such initiatives, over a third of the list’s signatories are from the natural and exact sciences.

Gov, who started organizing the petition a few weeks ago, said it was important to show that not only people known from other petitions support a boycott of Ariel, and therefore this petition has among its signatories many scholars who are not from the social sciences and the humanities.

“Israeli academia must differentiate itself from the ‘settlement’ academia,” said Gov. “Only significant differentiation can help our supporters abroad who are working against an academic boycott of Israel. This assistance is important, but all in all it is secondary to the principled stand that the goal of the establishment of the college at Ariel was not teaching and academic research, but political. It may be too late, but we felt a need to state in the clearest language that Israeli academia must not be involved in the settlement project,” Gov also said.

Gov said he encountered some colleagues who agreed with the message of the petition but were afraid to sign. He said such fear, “in the current atmosphere, is understandable, tangible. Even if there is no official action against the signatories, we may pay some sort of price.”

About three weeks ago, the Council For Higher Education issued a public statement against calls by Israeli academics for an academic boycott of Israel. The council, which is headed by Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar, said such calls “undermine the foundations of the higher education system.”

However, Gov said there is no contradiction between the council’s statement and the petition. “The council says rightly that there is a danger of delegitimization of the academic system in Israel. We say the source of this danger is Ariel and the settlements.”

Yigal Cohen-Orgad, chairman of the Ariel college’s executive committee, said: “A tiny and bizarre minority of some 150 lecturers is behind the petition, out of 7,000 faculty members. The cooperation between the Ariel University Center and many hundreds of scholars from universities in Israel and many hundreds more from 40 universities abroad, is the response to this petition. We know the heads of the universities oppose the call for a boycott and all it entails. I am sure that academia will continue to cooperate with us.”

Check out these recent flash mobs for BDS!

At Best Buy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVqFqXJh3oQ

At a Dutch supermarket: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1TATFuNc4&feature=related

Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 16 November 2010

The ground really is shifting. Here’s incredible video from Israel of Israeli boycott activists trying to submarine the Cape Town Opera House’s performance of “Porgy and Bess” in Tel Aviv last night. Boycott apartheid! they sing. Note the big turnout of activists, the inspiring songs. Ynet reports 40 activists. Wow. This is inside Israel. And it’s civil society: people of conscience around the world waking up to the humiliation and dispossession and statelessness of the Palestinians– and seeing that they can take action.

Watch:  “Palestine, and the livin’ ain’t easy”

It was with great joy that I learned of the recent 16-4 vote at UC Berkeley in support of divesting the university’s money from companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights. Principled stands like this, supported by a fast growing number of U.S. civil society organizations and people of conscience, including prominent Jewish groups, are essential for a better world in the making, and it is always an inspiration when young people lead the way and speak truth to power.

Despite what detractors may allege, these students are doing the right thing. They are doing the moral thing. They are doing that which is incumbent on them as humans who believe that all people have dignity and rights, and that all those being denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings.

I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.

In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. Students played a leading role in that struggle, and I write these words of encouragement for student divestment efforts cognizant that it was students who played a pioneering role in advocating equality in South Africa and promoting corporate ethical and social responsibility to end complicity in Apartheid. I visited the Berkeley campus in the 1980′s and was touched to find students sitting out in the baking sunshine to demonstrate for the University’s divestment in companies supporting the South African regime.

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, non-violent 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.

To those who wrongly allege unfairness or harm done to them by this call for divestment, I suggest, with humility, that the harm suffered from being confronted with opinions that challenge one’s own pales in comparison to the harm done by living a life under occupation and daily denial of basic rights and dignity. It is not with rancor that we criticize the Israeli government, but with hope, a hope that a better future can be made for both Israelis and Palestinians, a future in which both the violence of the occupier and the resulting violent resistance of the occupied come to an end, and where one people need not rule over another, engendering suffering, humiliation, and retaliation. True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. These students are helping to pave that path to a just peace and I heartily endorse their divestment vote, encourage them to stand firm on the side of what is right, and urge others to follow the lead of the youth.

God bless you richly,

Desmond Tutu. Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.

Huffington Post 4/13/2010

**********CALL TO ACTION**********

***************PLEASE DISTRIBUTE WIDELY***************

Blessings Community! We hope our words find you in good health and spirits! As you may all know Berkeley’s Students for Justice in Palestine have been fighting to uphold Senate Bill 118A, calling for divestment from two companies that support the Israeli Occupation of Palestine.

SJP is calling on all supporters to

join us in a DIRECT ACTION!

What: Silent Direct Action!
When: Wednesday April 14, 2010 at 11:30am-2:30pm
Where: Sproul Plaza University California Berkeley

How:

Please Respect the following wishes from SJP Berkeley:

1. Please do not bring any outside literature or fliers for other groups and organizations you may be affiliated with.
2. Please do not engage in any debate or argument with the organizations, student groups, or individuals that will try and engage and antagonize you (they will be there for the very purpose of provoking us we do not want to engage them for any reason!)
3. We ask that you please remain SILENT.
4. We ask that you find one of the three SJP members Dina Omar, Gazi Mahmud, or Mahaliyah Ayla O and they will instruct you when you show up to Sproul at 11:30am

Sincerely in Struggle,

CAL SJP

*As special thanks to the Middle East Children Alliance, Jewish Voices for Peace and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center

*****************

In Commemoration of Palestinian Political Prisoners Day

& In Support of the UC Berkeley Divestment from Israel Resolution Join us:

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

6:30 PM

UC Berkeley Boalt Hall 105

Palestinian Political Prisoners in the Context of Colonial Occupation

& Resistance, Displacement and the Struggle Against Israeli Apartheid

Speakers:

Lena Meari: belongs to a Palestinian refugee family from Al-Birweh village which was destroyed in 1948. Born and raised in Haifa and later worked and lived in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Graduated and worked in the Institute of Women Studies at Birzeit University. Currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at the University of California- Davis. Conducted her research on the interrogation encounter between Palestinian political activists and the shabak.

Ziad Abbas: a Palestinian refugee from Dheisheh Refugee camp in the West Bank. He is the cofounder of the Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh where he served as Co-Director from 1994 to 2008. Ziad is also a journalist who has worked with Palestinian and international media and has participated in the production of several documentary films. He recently completed his Master of Arts in Social Justice in Intercultural Relations from the School for International Training Graduate Institute. Ziad is the Associate Director of the Middle East Children’s Alliance in Berkeley.

Following the event we will be attending the UC Berkeley Senate meeting where they will vote on the Divestment Resolution.  We encourage all to attend and support the efforts the Students for Justice in Palestine.

Sponsored By:

Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Al-Juzoor, Al-Awda SF, Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid, Free Palestine Alliance, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Muslim Student Association – Berkeley, Palestine Youth Network (PYN), Students for Justice in Palestine – Berkeley, Sunbula: Arab Feminists for Change, US Palestine Community Network (USPCN), Voices of Middle East and North Africa-KPFA

For more info:  www.freepalestinianprisoners.com

**********************

ASUC Senate Debate on Divestment: Round II
Wednesday 4/14/2010  7th floor Eshleman Hall UC Berkeley

This Wednesday night you have a chance to stand up for universal human rights standards and to object to Cal’s profiting from war crimes and occupation. Following the veto by the ASUC President’s of a 16-4 vote in the student senate in support of the “UC Divestment from War Crimes” bill, there will be a vote to override the veto this Wednesday night starting at 7:00 PM on the seventh floor of Eshleman Hall. The bill calls for the removal of ASUC and UC investments in companies that supply the Israeli government with weaponry used to commit violations of international law, human rights law, and, in the judgment of the UN, war crimes. It also establishes an ASUC committee to look into a comprehensive divestment policy targeting companies that enable war crimes throughout the world. Come speak and show your support.

The previous debate lasted till 3AM, so be prepared.

Information on the original debate and full text of the bill:

http://www.kabobfest.com/2010/03/uc-berkeley-student-senate-passes-divestment-resolution.html

Letter of Support by Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/april112010/desmond-tutu-dt.php

Statement of support from internationally best-selling author, journalist, and cultural critic Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and the Shock Doctrine:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/open-letter-to-berkeley-s_b_520328.html

Where: 7th floor of Eshleman Hall, (near Bancroft and Telegraph), UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley Divestment Task Force
UCB Students for Justice in Palestine

Download the PDF Document

Published on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

On March 18, continuing a long tradition of pioneering human rights campaigns, the Senate of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley (ASUC) passed “A Bill In Support of UC DIVESTMENT FROM WAR CRIMES.” The historic bill resolves to divest ASUC’s assets from two American companies, General Electric and United Technologies, that are “materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories”-and to advocate that the UC, with about $135 million invested in companies that profit from Israel’s illegal actions in the Occupied Territories, follow suit.

Although the bill passed by a vote of 16-4 after a packed and intense debate, the President of the Senate vetoed the bill six days later. The Senate is expected to reconsider the bill soon; groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace are asking supporters of the bill to send letters to the Senators, who can overturn the veto with only 14 votes.

Here is the letter I just sent:

Dear members of the ASUC Senate,

I am writing to urge you to reaffirm Senate Bill 118A, despite the recent presidential veto.

It comes as no surprise that you are under intense pressure to reverse your historic and democratic decision to divest from two companies that profit from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. When a school with a deserved reputation for academic excellence and moral leadership takes such a bold position, it threatens to inspire others to take their own stands.

Indeed, Berkeley–the campus and the wider community–has provided this kind of leadership on many key issues in the past: not only Apartheid in South Africa but also sweatshops in Indonesia, dictatorship in Burma, political killings in Nigeria, and the list goes on. Time and again, when the call for international solidarity has come from people denied a political voice, Berkeley has been among the first to answer. And in virtually every case, what began as a small action in a progressive community quickly spread across the country and around the world.

Your recent divestment bill opposing Israeli war crimes stands to have this same kind of global impact, helping to build a grassroots, non-violent movement to end Israel’s violations of international law. And this is precisely what your opponents–by spreading deliberate lies about your actions–are desperately trying to prevent. They are even going so far as to claim that, in the future, there should be no divestment campaigns that target a specific country, a move that would rob activists of one of the most effective tools in the non-violent arsenal. Please don’t give into this pressure; too much is on the line.

As the world has just witnessed with the Netanyahu government’s refusal to stop its illegal settlement expansion, political pressure is simply not enough to wrench Israel off its current disastrous path. And when our governments fail to apply sanctions for defiant illegality, other forms of pressure must come into play, including targeting those corporations that are profiting directly from human rights abuses.

Whenever we take a political action, we open ourselves up to accusations of hypocrisy and double standards, since the truth is that we can never do enough in the face of pervasive global injustice. Yet to argue that taking a clear stand against Israeli war crimes is somehow to “discriminate unfairly” against Israelis and Jews (as the veto seems to claim) is to grossly pervert the language of human rights. Far from “singling out Israel,” with Senate Bill 118A, you are acting within Berkeley’s commendable and inspiring tradition.

I understand that there is some debate about whether or not your divestment bill was adopted “in haste.” Not having been there, I cannot comment on your process, though I am deeply impressed by the careful research that went into the decision. I also know that in 2005 an extraordinarily broad range of Palestinian civil society groups called on activists around the world to adopt precisely these kinds of peaceful pressure tactics. In the years since that call, we have all watched as Israeli abuses have escalated dramatically: the attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006, a massive expansion of illegal settlements and walls, an ongoing siege on Gaza that violates all prohibitions on collective punishment, and, worst of all, the 2008/9 attack on Gaza that left approximately 1,400 dead.

I would humbly suggest that when it comes to acting to end Israeli war crimes, the international response has not suffered from too much haste but from far too little. This is a moment of great urgency, and the world is watching.

Be brave.

Yours sincerely,

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism , now out in paperback. Her earlier books include the international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (which has just been re-published in a special10th Anniversary Edition ); and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). To read all her latest writing visitwww.naomiklein.org