Comment on Anti-Israel divestment push gains traction at US colleges

Anti-Israel divestment push gains traction at US colleges

[...] the current academic year is seeing an increasing number of divestment drives on campus. Since January alone, student governments at four universities have taken divestment votes. The boycott-divestment-sanctions movement grew from a 2005 international call from Palestinian groups as an alternative to armed struggle over control of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and Palestinians seek for an independent state. BDS advocates say the movement, based on the campaign against South African apartheid decades ago, is aimed at Israeli policy, not Jews, in response to two decades of failed peace talks and expanded Israeli settlement of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Two more, Santa Cruz and Davis, did the same, but the votes were thrown out over procedural issues. Since December, divestment also won the backing of the labor union representing thousands of teaching assistants and other workers for the entire UC system, UAW2865, and the University of California Students Association, which represents student government bodies statewide. Fund director Dima Khalidi said her group received 230 requests for help in 2014, and about 70 percent came from college students and faculty who said they were being harassed or unfairly punished by school administrators.

 

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