ASUC Senate Still Undecided on Vetoed Divestment Bill
By Allie Bidwell and Nick Myers
Contributing Writers
Last Updated Thursday, April 15, 2010 | 9:46 am
Following a nearly nine-hour discussion that began at 10:30 p.m. Wednesday evening and lasted into Thursday morning, ASUC senators have yet to reach a decision on whether or not they would uphold or override President Will Smelko’s March 24 veto of a controversial bill urging the student government and the UC to divest from two companies that have supplied Israel with materials for alleged war crimes.
After an initial 12-7-1 vote to uphold Smelko’s veto, the senate tabled the bill and will reconsider it next week. Several senators said they would work to alter the bill.
The student who abstained said she just did not feel qualified to vote on the measure, which I think we all can sympathize with. On the other hand, as I’ve written before, the illegality and stark immorality of Israel’s occupation and colonization of occupied Palestine doesn’t take a Middle East expert to ‘get’, in my opinion. Richard Falk (Albert G. Milbank Professor of International Law & Practice Emeritus and Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestinian Territories, UN Human Rights Council), in a letter to the UC Berkeley student senate, states the case for divestment extremely well. It’s not that complicated:
First of all, it has become painfully clear that neither the United Nations, the United States, the actions of other governments, nor world public opinion are willing or able to persuade or pressure Israel to terminate policies that are both violations of Geneva Convention IV, governing occupation, and international criminal law, relating to both war crimes and crimes against humanity. At the same time, there is reason to believe that efforts by Palestinians to wage what might be called the Legitimacy War, are having a strong impact on Israel and elsewhere. . . .
Secondly, we in the United States face a special challenge as our tax dollars, economic and military assistance, and unconditionally supportive diplomacy have shielded Israel from mechanisms of accountability for criminal behavior. . . .
It should be also noted that the people of Gaza have been subjected to an unlawful Israeli blockade that has for more than 32 months limited the entry of food, medicine, and fuel to subsistence levels, with widely reported drastic harm to physical and mental health of the entire population. There are two related points here: the allegations of criminality are abundantly documented, including by a range of respected human rights organization in Israel and occupied Palestine; and the U.S. Government has done its best to ensure the continuation of Israeli impunity and it has been complicit as arms supplier and as a country deferential to the blockade despite its gross and clear violation of the prohibition against collective punishment contained in Article 33 of Geneva IV. . . .
Thirdly, by targeting General Electric and United Technologies for divestment, the Senate shows that it is not acting arbitrarily or punitively, but seeking to take action against corporations that are supplying precisely the weaponry used by Israel to impose its unlawful will on occupied Palestinian territories. . . .
Although most emphasis on criminality has been placed on Israeli policies toward the Gaza Strip, it is also relevant to note that Israeli policies on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem have consistently ignored the obligations imposed on an occupying power by Geneva IV, and have done so in a manner that has consistently undermined hopes for peace. Israel has continued to build and expand settlements, unlawful by Article 49(6) of Geneva IV prohibiting transfers of population of the occupying power to an occupied territory; the scale of these unlawful settlements, with some 121 settlements established on the West Bank alone and over 200,000 Israel settlers now living in East Jerusalem, has produced an aggregate settler population of about 450,000. . . .
A final expression of Israeli lawlessness can be noted in its continued construction of a separation wall on occupied Palestine land despite a 14-1 judgment by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the wall was unlawful, should be dismantled, and Palestinians compensated for the harm done. It is notable that the ICJ is a diverse and respected international institution that rarely reaches such a level of unanimity on controversial issues.
It was dissapointing to find, in the Daily Californian article, that those in favor of upholding the ASUC President’s veto argued not against the substance of the bill — which targets two companies and asks the University of California “to divest from companies that profit from and enable Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, Israel’s illegal settlements, Israel’s illegal wall, and Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes” — but instead took the victim approach:
Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, the executive director of Berkeley Hillel, said he felt overriding the veto would be detrimental to the Jewish student population at UC Berkeley because students told him they would feel unsafe and uncomfortable being a Jewish student on campus.
A majority, or at least a very substantial minority, of those UC Berkeley students most actively in support of divesting from the occupation — no, not divesting from Israel or Jews — are themselves Jewish. Oh well, it’s these deliberately failed distinctions that drive what passes for debate in this mainstream-media-messed-up country.
Let’s hope for a slightly better result when the student senate takes up the bill again next week. Only one vote needs to change for the veto to be overriden. In order to gain that one vote, senators said they are considering modifying the bill. One humble but strategic suggestion I would make — under a heading of ‘keep it simple’ — is to change the name of the measure from ‘divest from war crimes’ to ‘divest from the occupation’.
