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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

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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

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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

Download the PDF Document

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

At UC Berkeley’s campus, there will be a senate vote to override the President’s veto, to be held in the following weeks. We expect to win this vote, as only 14 votes are needed to override a veto and already 16 senators have stood against war crimes, Israel’s or otherwise. You can help prevent them from bowing to the pressure of the Israel lobby, which has been fierce and deceitful in its characterization of this bill, by

1) coming to the meeting to override Smelko’s veto (the date will be either April 7 or a following Wednesday – for updates see http://calsjp.org)
2) bringing your supportive friends and student group members
3) writing personal or organizational letters to senators (to senate@asuc.org, including ucbdivest@gmail.com in the bcc) when asked to do so in the weeks to come about why you support divestment as a tactic in general and in the case of Israel specifically (at this point, angry letters to the president do little and are discouraged).

Beyond this there is much to do in the broader public. This movement is not just about a victory for divestment at UC Berkeley. Rather it is more fundamentally about spreading divestment and the notion that all nations and corporations, including sacred cows like Israel, must be held to account for their gross violations of human rights, and that all people, Palestinians included, are deserving of basic human rights such as rights to life, property, freedom of movement, and a right to an education. Spread divestment to your church, your synagogue, your mosque, to other schools, to other institutions. And speak up in the press. Write a letter to the editor or an op-ed. Make the media know about the success at Berkeley and the successes to come. We’ll be in touch with next steps in the near future. Thank you so much for your solidarity.

Cal Students for Justice in Palestine

Today, two movements for the promotion of human rights in Sudan and Palestine seek to emulate the successful role played by boycotts, divestment, and sanctions in achieving democracy and equality in South Africa. The two movements, however, have received radically different receptions on Capitol Hill. This double standard testifies to official Washington’s selectivity when it comes to promoting human rights around the globe and its tendency to overlook the faults of its allies while using human rights as a pretext to punish its adversaries.

On December 31, President Bush signed into law the Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007, which was passed unanimously by Congress earlier in the month. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Chris Dodd, authorizes state and local governments to divest their holdings from corporations that profit from dealings with the Sudanese government and immunizes mutual fund managers from lawsuits for doing the same.