If Daniel Pipes and his organization, Campus Watch, Israel’s sentinel on campus Alan Dershowitz, and numerous pro-Israel college organizations all towing the right wing Zionist line, were not enough, we now hear that AIPAC, the main constituent of the Israel Lobby, intends to get involved in American college campus political activity.
The main target is UC Berkeley where the student government recently passed a resolution for the university to divest from corporations that support the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine. The danger lies in the fact Berkley is renown for lighting the fire under numerous civil and human rights movements, such as bringing down South African Apartheid, sweatshops in Indonesia, the Burmese (Myanmar) dictatorship, political killings in Nigeria, and so on, which have then spread across the country from one university campus to another.
The prospect that the UC Berkeley action will start a tsunami of divestments presents a dilemma for the Israel Lobby. The publicity alone could create a crisis in the Israeli-US relationship.
Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch reports:
Why both with moral persuasion when you can just threaten to take over government… everywhere?
On March 18, UC Berkeley’s student senate voted 16 to 4 in favor of divesting from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation. A week later, in a move oddly predicted by AIPAC’s Jonathan Kessler at AIPAC’s policy conference, the vote was vetoed by the student senate president. (Students hope the senate will overturn the veto next Wednesday.)
When asked about fighting the Berkeley pro-divest initiative, Kessler said, “we’re going to make sure that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote…This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capital. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses.” Kessler is at 3:58 in video below. Student elections are happening now at UC Berkeley and you can bet everyone’s looking for the AIPAC-Manchurian candidate, if such a thing exists.
Naomi Klein wrote an Open Letter to Berkeley Students on their Historic Israeli Divestment Bill, which begins:
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.
The BDS Movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) against Israeli occupation/colonialism is growing in the US and the success of the UC Berkeley divestment action could give it a significant boost. Ergo, AIPAC is paying attention.
