Rutgers University holds millions of dollars in investments, mostly through the endowment fund of its semi-public/semi-private investment arm, the Rutgers University Foundation. This Foundation-which solicits grants from alumni and invests those grants in order to raise money for operation and expansion of University academics and student life-is responsible for the investment decisions of the University, and operates in a semi-private matter, yet reports to the Board of Governors and the Board of Trustees of the University. Rutgers, as a public institution, is also largely funded by the State of New Jersey and is thus directly involved with the investments of the state government. As a state government, New Jersey has a responsibility to its citizens, and as a university, Rutgers has a responsibility to its faculty, students, staff and alumni, and all New Jersey residents, to use their investment power to benefit the state, the university, and society-rather than to promote social harm and international injustice. However, in light of the state of Israel's continued occupation of Palestinian land and oppression of the Palestinian people in violation of United Nations resolutions and international human rights law, these bodies are not upholding their responsibilities by continuing to invest either directly in Israel or in companies doing business with Israel. In order for the University and the state to fulfill its responsibilities and promote socially responsible investing, they must immediately pursue a strategy of divestment from Israel and Israeli-affiliated corporate securities. The human cost of these investments far outweigh any possible economic gain; it is time for a positive change and a new direction in investment-toward human rights and international justice.
MOVEMENT HISTORY
Across the country and around the world, voices for social justice are gathering together to declare that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory and oppression of the Palestinian people cannot continue. Israel's continual violation of human rights and international law, its egregious and racist restrictions upon Palestinian life, and its remorseless war against a civilian population should rightfully earn it the title of "rogue state." Instead, however, over $13 million daily in direct aid reaches Israel from the United States government-that is, from the pockets of American taxpayers. Israel, a country with high per capita income and developed industry, receives more financial assistance than any other country; indeed, US aid to Israel is six times the total of all aid to Africa. Many more billions are given in loan guarantees; while much of Latin America, Asia and Africa are trapped in a devastating cycle of debt and austerity programs, Israel's loans from the United States are most often forgiven. Much of this aid is direct military aid-Israel has access to the most advanced weaponry the U.S. offers, and its most notorious destructive weapons are US-made: Apache helicopters and F-16s.
United States support for Israeli occupation and oppression, however, reaches beyond the confines of government. One of Israel's most infamous weapons is not provided by the Pentagon, but by an American civilian corporation-the D-9 Caterpillar bulldozer, responsible for the destruction of numerous Palestinian homes and, most iconically, the flattened center of Jenin refugee camp in April 2002. From Coca-Cola, to Intel, to Caterpillar, to Starbucks Coffee, United States corporations do business in Israel-opening franchises and factories, selling products on the public market and directly to the Israeli government. Israeli-manufactured products are sold in the United States, under their own labels and as subsidiary branches of US-based corporations. These corporations-Israeli and American-are ones in which many institutional investors hold shares, as part of funds and through direct holding of securities. Pension funds and universities hold a large number of shares in corporations engaged in business with Israel. In addition, many public or institutional parties hold Israel bonds-directly supporting the Israeli government-including the State of New Jersey. Many states, including New Jersey, run special Israel trade commissions-unlike those that exist for any other country-encouraging, in their official position, trade with Israel.
All this occurs despite Israel's open existence as an exclusionary state, subjecting Palestinian citizens of Israel-those Palestinians who remained within the 1948 borders of the newly-created state of Israel-to repression and distinctly unequal citizenship; its repeated violations of dozens of United Nations resolutions of both the General Assembly and Security Council; its violations of human rights law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention; its continuation of both a brutal, illegal military occupation and the annexation of territory through illegal "settlements"; and its continual denial of the now more than four million Palestinian refugees their right to return to their homes and properties under international law. In the past, such states-sanctioned by official U.S. foreign policy and corporate investment-have been the target of mass grassroots campaigns for economic justice, socially responsible investing, and divestment from regimes that perpetrate crimes against humanity.
Most well-known of these campaigns-which have included various tactics, from institutional divestment to product boycott-is the 1980s divestment campaign against apartheid South Africa. The South African white/Afrikaner settler government, a colonial legacy imposed against the will of the Black African majority, held power through its rigid structures of separation, creating an impoverished class of laborers and shantytown dwellers with no representation, subject to the economic, political and social power of the white minority government. Despite the crimes of apartheid and the mass resistance of the African population to these structures of injustice, the United States government and U.S corporations for years pursued strategies of accommodation with South Africa, justifying human rights violations on South Africa's wealthy white class and its usefulness as an anti-Communist power in the Cold War. In response to the government and corporations' willful blindness to the conditions of South African apartheid, crusaders for social justice in the United States and internationally built a movement calling for divestment from South African apartheid. They organized corporate boycotts and calls for institutional divestment-the use of the economic power of institutional investors like pension funds and universities to remove investments from corporations that continued to do business in apartheid South Africa.
Most universities were initially heavily resistant to these calls for divestment. Some argued that the investment arena was not appropriately a site for political concerns; others refused to recognize the serious human rights issues implicated by South African apartheid. However, through these movements of students and other concerned citizens, the plight of the majority population of South Africa and their struggle for justice, civil rights and national liberation was brought to public attention. An African movement that had long been scorned as Communist-led and influenced and denounced for its militancy-the African National Congress-became an internationally-recognized symbol of just resistance to oppression. Its imprisoned leader, Nelson Mandela, became the foremost international icon of political prisoners struggling against an unjust regime. And slowly, universities began to divest-and corporations began to change their policies toward doing business with apartheid South Africa. Pepsi-Cola, for one, even found it fortuitous to promote itself on the university market by advertising its adherence to the boycott of South Africa, in contrast with Coca-Cola. This economic resistance to apartheid-soon sanctioned by law in the face of the developing and successful movement-had an impact, not only in direct financial terms, but also in demonstrating the international community's solidarity with Africans struggling against oppression. In the early 1990s, the apartheid regime crumbled and Nelson Mandela was soon president of a reborn South Africa.
From that movement, we take inspiration and tactical guidance. The government of Israel has long established itself as a violator of the most basic of human rights and the most sacred of international law, and the United States government, as well as corporations and institutional investors, has done nothing in response but to increase aid and support to Israel. In the wake of the South Africa divestment movement and other movements for justice, many universities and institutional entities developed policies for socially responsible investing. By pursuing investments in corporations that do business with Israel, these funds are violating any standard of social responsibility. It is time for our institutions, and specifically Rutgers University and its Rutgers Foundation endowment fund, to take a stand for socially responsible investing, and to use its monies in a way that promote the ideals of a university-human rights, freedom, and international justice. This means, at a basic level, refusing to continue to fund Israel's illegal occupation and oppression-divestment again, this time from Israeli apartheid.
THE CASE AGAINST ISRAEL
Illegal occupation: Since the establishment of the United Nations at the close of World War II, international law has officially recognized the unacceptability of the acquisition of territory by war. In 1947, the U.N. passed a resolution - 181 - providing for a partition of historic Palestine to create a Jewish state and an "Arab state." The Palestinian people quite rightly saw this as unjust-their British colonizers, not them, were consulted in the creation of the state of Israel. In 1947, the Jewish population of Palestine-including Palestinian Jews who had no part in the Zionist movement seeking to re-colonize historic Palestine-owned 3% of Palestinian land; the Palestinian population objected to a plan that effectively deprived them of half of the land that had always belonged to them, without their consent. In fact, the armistice lines at the end of the 1948 war were drawn giving greater boundaries to the state of Israel than those in the original partition plan. The war of 1948 is also known as al-Nakba: the catastrophe - the ethnic cleansing, through massacres, terror, and forcing people to flee, of approximately one million Palestinians, who became refugees. Today, there are eight million Palestinians in the world; half are refugees. Nevertheless, the Palestine Liberation Organization, recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, has recognized not only the partition borders in Resolution 181, but also recognized the armistice borders established at the end of the war-despite the fact that it leaves the Palestinian population of historic Palestine with only 22% of what was their land. Israel, on the other hand, has not withdrawn nor offered to withdraw to the borders prescribed in Resolution 188, nor has it agreed to recognize a Palestinian state in the remainder of historic Palestine. In the 1967 war, Israel conquered the Gaza Strip (under Egyptian control), the Sinai (Egyptian land) the West Bank of the Jordan River (under Jordanian control) and the Golan Heights (Syrian land). Despite common allegations to the contrary, the 1967 war was not a defensive war for Israel-Israel launched strikes against Jordan and Egypt to begin the war. At the time, it immediately annexed East Jerusalem and illegally expanded the borders of Israeli-held Jerusalem, and took control of the entirety of these occupied territories. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, citing "the inadmissibility of territory acquired by war," immediately called upon Israel to vacate the territories it occupied in 1967. This was followed by Security Council Resolution 338 in 1973, reiterating these points. Indeed, it has become nearly a ritual for the United Nations to declare Israel's occupation illegal and call for its end. Nevertheless, Israel has continued its occupation. Indeed, it has even constructed numerous "settlements," Jewish-only constructions on occupied Palestinian territory, created by seizing Palestinian land and water and building huge structures with massive military presences surrounding them all around Palestinian cities. The construction of the settlements has encircled Palestinian cities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with a huge ring of seized territory. One-third of the Gaza Strip-already the site of the highest population density in the world-and nearly one-half of the West Bank-have been officially seized for settlement construction and "security zones." Once again, the United Nations has repeatedly declared these settlements illegal and a violation of international law; nonetheless, the Israeli government continues to provide significant economic advantages for those willing to live in a settlement. Contrary to popular belief, these settlements more than doubled in number during the period of the Oslo "peace process", a process that, contrary to Israeli assertions, never recognized the validity of either United Nations resolution 188 or 242. Israel insisted upon a Palestinian "state" broken up repeatedly by Israeli-military-controlled zones, without water rights, or border rights, and encompassing the settlers, their "security zones," and their military guards. The proposal was far more akin to one of the "Bantustans"-pseudo-independent African states surrounded on all sides by South Africa and recognized only by South Africa as legal fictions of apartheid-than any meaningful version of independence, statehood, or the end of the occupation.
Collective punishment: Contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits collective punishment from being used against a population in supposed retribution for the acts of a few, Israel has continually applied brutal collective punishment to the Palestinian people. Palestinian land has been subject to "closure" since 1993; Palestinians, who had once served as a labor army in Israel, now face a rate of 47% unemployment. The entire Gaza Strip has become, in effect, the world's largest prison, enclosed by a fence with its citizens largely prohibited from entering either along 1948 borders or, now, into Egypt. Military checkpoints divide Palestinian territory further; passage from city to city or place to place that once took minutes now takes hours; voyages that once took hours now take days. The Palestinian agricultural trade has languished, with produce and crops rotting at military checkpoints; people are denied medical care while waiting at checkpoints; the entire population goes through this humiliating ritual merely to pass from place to place within their own land. Civilian cities, refugee camps and villages are bombed and subject to military attack; crowded apartment buildings are bombed; civilian homes are demolished; the institutions of civil society have had their records, equipment and material systematically destroyed. Palestinian cities live under curfew-often a twenty-four hour, shoot-to-kill curfew, in which any Palestinian on the street may be killed by omnipresent Israeli soldiers. Palestinian education has been attacked, first by curfew preventing students from ever reaching school, and specifically through the repeated closure of Palestinian universities. These measures are the face of collective punishment in Palestine; every Palestinian is subject to indignity, imprisonment, torture and death. Rather than "dissuading terrorism," such tactics serve only to perpetrate a war against millions of Palestinian civilians
War crimes: Most recently, Israel denied a United Nations investigatory team access to the Jenin refugee camp, the site of horrific destruction in the battles of the Israeli reoccupation of April 2002. Despite Israeli assurances that the army did nothing wrong in Jenin, the utter demolition of a huge area of a highly populated refugee camp indicates in itself a severe lack of recognition of Palestinian human rights, and Israel has repeatedly denied independent investigators access to the site. In November 2002, the human rights group Amnesty International issued a report on Israeli actions in Jenin and Nablus charging "clear evidence" of Israeli war crimes, including the targeting of civilians, political assassinations, the use of human shields, and the demolition of homes. However, Israeli war crimes did not begin with Jenin and Nablus. Most infamously, in Lebanon in 1982, now-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon led Israeli troops in Lebanon who stood aside to allow Phalangist Lebanese armies access to the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila. Thousands were brutally murdered at Sabra and Chatila; Israel's own investigatory commission, the Kahane commission, found Ariel Sharon personally responsible for the staggering war crimes in Lebanon. Nonetheless, Sharon sits today as Prime Minister of the state of Israel, honored rather than prosecuted for his war crimes. Israeli war crimes in Lebanon continued throughout its invasion; in 1996, Israel blocked an investigatory panel similar to that planned for Jenin after its bombing at Qana that killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians. Israel has repeatedly sought to evade prosecution or investigation for these crimes; in August 2002 it made a bilateral agreement with the United States that both countries would protect the other from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.
Denial of refugee rights: All refugees-people forced from their homes during time of war, or caused to flee from their homes by conflict and war-are guaranteed by law their right to return to their homes and homeland. Nevertheless, the millions of refugees created by the wars of 1948 and 1967 are denied their rights to return to their homeland. In United Nations Resolution 194-upon which Israel's admission to the United Nations was predicated-the United Nations declared that the Palestinian refugees must be granted their right to return home, or given the option to be compensated for their loss. Refugees have received no return, no choice, and even no compensation. Instead, the human rights of millions of Palestinians are denied on the basis that their ethnicity and religion pose an existential threat to the Israeli state. Palestinians are cited as a "demographic concern," their human rights denied because of clear racial, ethnic and religious oppression. Refugees do not gain their rights on the basis of ethnicity; rather, they are integral human rights that cannot be denied. Israel has openly defied the terms of its own admission to the United Nations for decades, as it scorns the refugees' right of return. Instead, it has implemented as "Basic Law" a "Law of Return" for any Jewish person in the world wishing to settle in Israel. While people from around the world are granted citizenship, government support, and recognition, Palestinians whose land was stolen in 1948 are recognized not at all. After the war of 1948, refugees' property was officially expropriated under the Absentee Property Law, which declared anyone not present on their land at the close of the war an "absentee landholder" and granted their property to the state. Over 92% of Israel today consists of such land officially stolen, while refugees continue to live in camps, relying on support from the United Nations Relief Works Administration (UNRWA). Refugee repatriation has taken place around the world; most recently in Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo. Palestinian refugees no longer may be denied their rights solely for being Palestinian. Any vision of justice in the Middle East must include justice for the refugees-created by Israel, their land stolen by Israel.
Defiance of United Nations Resolutions: Israel is currently in violation of more United Nations resolutions than any other country in the world. From resolutions demanding that the annexation of East Jerusalem be reversed, to those demanding the end of settlement construction, to those demanding withdrawal to 1967 borders, to those demanding an end to political assassinations, to those requiring compensation to the victims of its military assaults, including Lebanon and Tunisia, over 32 United Nations Security Council resolutions passed between 1968 and 2002 have gone ignored by Israel. At a time in which violations of such resolutions are used as a pretext for war on Iraq, it is strikingly relevant that the State of Israel has faced no consequences for its continual denial of UN resolutions and rights guaranteed in international human rights law. A few basic UN resolutions, 181, 194, 242, and 338, are among the most well-known dealing with the conflict. While various Israeli politicians have claimed to support various of these resolutions, and have even developed their own interpretation of 242 that enables the 1979 peace treaty with Israel to supersede the rights of Palestinians, none of these resolutions have, in reality, been enforced. While the initial partition resolution-181-was a product of colonial attitudes that was deeply unfair to the Palestinian owners and inhabitants of the land, the Palestinian people through the PLO have officially recognized the partition plan, while Israel has never acted to create borders as those shown in the original partition plan, nor has it ever sought to support an "Arab state" as supported by Resolution 181. Although 194 is a General Assembly resolution, Israel's entrance to the United Nations was contingent upon its adoption. This resolution restates the general rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands; Israel has instead denied millions of people their right to return home on the grounds that the "Jewish character of the state" would be threatened by a population not of their preferred ethnic or religious heritage-regardless of human rights. Resolution 242, passed in 1967, recognizes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war" and calls for the "withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories of recent conflict." Even through the Oslo period (1993-2000), Israel has never withdrawn its army from the occupied territories. Resolution 338 reiterated the premises of 242, and was passed in 1973. Rather than support these resolutions as a guide of the international community, however, Israel has repeatedly rejected them. Indeed, during the "peace process" negotiations at Camp David, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak conditioned any settlement on the willingness of the Palestinian delegation to sign an "end of conflict statement" negating the effect of all of these-and other-United Nations resolutions. The Palestinians' unwillingness to sign this document was later portrayed as a part of their rejection of a "generous offer"-one that provided not only mere fragments of a state, but was based on the nullification of international law.
Other resolutions currently violated by Israel include:
- Resolution 252 (1968) Israel
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.
- 262 (1968) Israel
Calls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport.
- 267 (1969) Israel
Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
- 271 (1969) Israel
Reiterates calls to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers.
- 298 (1971) Israel
Reiterates demand that Israel rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
- 446 (1979) Israel
Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and "in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."
- 452 (1979) Israel
Calls on the government of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories, occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
- 465 (1980) Israel
Reiterates previous resolutions on Israel's settlements policy.
- 471 (1980) Israel
Demands prosecution of those involved in assassination attempts of West Bank leaders and compensation for damages; reiterates demands to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention.
- 484 (1980) Israel
Reiterates request that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
- 487 (1981) Israel
Calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
- 497 (1981) Israel
Demands that Israel rescind its decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan region.
- 592 (1986) Israel
Insists Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories.
- 605 (1987) Israel
"Calls once more upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide immediately and scrupulously by the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, and to desist forthwith from its policies and practices that are in violations of the provisions of the Convention."
- 607 (1986) Israel
Reiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
- 608 (1988) Israel
Reiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
- 636 (1989) Israel
Reiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
- 641 (1989) Israel
Reiterates previous resolutions calling on Israel to desist in its deportations.
- 672 (1990) Israel
Reiterates calls for Israel to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
- 673 (1990) Israel
Insists that Israel come into compliance with resolution 672.
- 681 (1990) Israel
Reiterates call on Israel to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
- 726 (1992) Israel
Reiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
- 799 (1992) Israel
"Reaffirms applicability of Fourth Geneva Convention…to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and affirms that deportation of civilians constitutes a contravention of its obligations under the Convention."
- 904 (1994) Israel
Calls upon Israel, as the occupying power, "to take and implement measures, inter alia, confiscation of arms, with the aim of preventing illegal acts of violence by settlers."
- 1073 (1996) Israel
"Calls on the safety and security of Palestinian civilians to be ensured."
- 1322 (2000) Israel
Calls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying power.
- 1402 (2002) Israel
Calls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities.
- 1403 (2002) Israel
Demands that Israel go through with "the implementation of its resolution 1402, without delay."
- 1405 (2002) Israel
Calls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
- 1435 (2002) Israel
Calls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure.
Unequal justice: Within 1948 borders, some Palestinians-especially those in largely Arab areas near the Galilee, within some cities in central Israel, or in the Negev desert in the south-escaped the attempt to remove all Palestinians from the land that became the state of Israel. At the close of the war, while nearly a million Palestinians were made refugees, 150,000 remained. These Palestinians were made citizens of the new state, but lived under military rule-of the type we see today in the West Bank and Gaza Strip-until 1966. They constitute a national, ethnic, linguistic and religious minority as recognized as requiring minority rights under international law; Israel has refused to recognize them as such, however. Many Palestinians within Israeli borders became internal refugees; driven from their own land to areas elsewhere within the Green Line, their property was subject to confiscation under the Absentee Property Law. Many families were parted by the close of the war-only those specific individuals who were within the 1948 borders were allowed Israeli citizenship, however. The state racism that is visible in both Israel's continuing practice of defining itself as a "state of the Jewish people" and refusing to include its Palestinian citizens, and in popular references to the Palestinian citizen population as a "demographic concern" due to population increase, is also visible in state-funded services from water and sewer, to education, to street maintenance. Many Palestinian villages remain officially "unrecognized"; never recognized in 1948, their centuries-old existence is deemed illegal, and residents receive no government services. Even in largely Palestinian communities that are officially recognized, the facilities accorded these communities are sharply and visibly inferior to those in majority-Jewish communities. Many Palestinian citizens of Israel are unemployed. The 92% of Israel's land owned by the Jewish National Fund is entirely unavailable to Palestinian citizens of Israel for purchase or rent. While the Israeli government claims that the severe and visible discrimination occurs only because Palestinian citizens of Israel-unlike Jewish citizens-are not conscripted into the army, the same discrimination is evident against Druze and Bedouins, who are conscripted into the Israeli army. In addition, Jewish yeshiva students, who do not serve in the army, are also granted all benefits contingent upon military service, while Palestinians are denied them. Palestinian political protest has been sharply repressed; in October 2000, the army fired upon peaceful street demonstrations of Palestinian citizens of Israel and killed 13. Indeed, in Israel's Basic Laws-a set of laws that substitute for a constitution in Israel-parties are prohibited from running for office should they deny Israel's status as a "state of the Jewish people." Proposals that this should read "and its Arab citizens" were denied; thus, arguing for equality is officially illegal in the Israeli political system. Instead, calls for "transfer" have become ever more prominent from the right-wing parties; from the early days of the Zionist movement, some have called for all Palestinians to be "transferred" from historic Palestine to a surrounding Arab nation, such as Jordan. Right-wing parties today call for such transfer-ethnic cleansing-not only of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but within 1948 borders itself.
Human rights violations: Israel has engaged in numerous human rights violations not described in detail above. In addition to its collective punishment of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government has engaged in numerous specific violations of human rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that, "all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." Contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Israel has never recognized equal dignity and rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian civilians have no right to life, liberty, or security under Israeli occupation. In the West Bank, Palestinian cities are put under twenty-four-hour, shoot to kill curfews, in which the Israeli army may shoot any Palestinian who so much as appears on his front step. Palestinian society, business and education has been devastated by these curfews. Palestinians must pass from place to place through a series of checkpoints, a humiliating and dangerous ritual that has led to the denial of medical care and even death. Palestinians are deprived of the most basic of liberties. Palestinians are regularly subjected to torture. Torture has long been a practice of the Israeli army, the Shin Bet (internal security/intelligence agency) and the border patrols. In 1997, the Supreme Court officially banned torture; however, it allowed the use of "moderate physical pressure." These "moderate physical" methods, including tying Palestinians to small chairs, sleep deprivation, hooding, and violent shaking, continue to be used routinely against thousands of Palestinian detainees.Palestinians in the occupied territories are not provided the right of equal recognition under the law. Violent acts by Israeli settlers against Palestinians, including looting, assault, and murder, are rarely prosecuted; if they are prosecuted, it is not vigorously. While Palestinians in the occupied territories live under military rule, their exports are monitored by Israel, their water rights are denied, and while Israelis speed through the occupied territories on special roads built just for them-bypass roads-Palestinians are caught at checkpoints for hours. Palestinian water in the West Bank is regularly confiscated for Israeli use; even within the West Bank, 70 percent of scarce water resources go to serve small settlements, while the remaining 30 percent is apportioned among millions of Palestinians. Palestinian water tanks are often targeted for shooting by soldiers in towns; a clear assault on civilians. While Palestinian citizens of Israel have access to the regular Israeli court system, Palestinians in the occupied territories must rely on a military justice system. Unless their cause is petitioned for by Israelis, they have no chance of access to the broader court system. Crimes committed by settlers within the occupied territories, however, are directed to the regular/civilian Israeli courts; they are given recourse to all the freedoms thus accorded, unlike Palestinians.
Palestinians are often arrested en masse and detained. "Administrative detention" allows Israel to hold Palestinians without charges for over six months; this sort of imprisonment has become a standard experience among young Palestinian men. During the spring 2002 assault on Palestinian cities, thousands of young men-often every man in the city that could be found-were subject to mass detention and imprisonment. Family members of Palestinian militants are also punished by exile to the Gaza Strip, which has become an internal prison, despite their own innocence and prohibitions on exile and deportation. Israel often engages in "extrajudicial executions"-assassinating Palestinian political leaders without a trial. These extrajudicial executions have been condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations; nonetheless, Israel continues them, referring to the practice as "targeted killing." In addition, Palestinians in the occupied territories are often used as human shields by Israeli soldiers; deemed the "neighbor practice," Palestinians are taken by Israeli soldiers to stand in front of the soldiers and be placed at windows. This use of human shields, an illegal attack on civilians, is standard practice for the Israeli army. Palestinian homes are often invaded and used as bases for Israeli soldiers; the family dwelling therein is often sent to a small room or an upstairs floor, while soldiers have the run of the house. Palestinian walls are shot out, kicked through, and destroyed, in order to create "safe passage" for soldiers. In non-combatant territories, Palestinian homes are demolished with Caterpillar bulldozers, charged with being "illegally built" within Palestinian territory. Home demolition has also become a tactic used against family members of Palestinian militants. The Israeli army has used house demolition as a standard practice against Palestinian civilians. Palestinian land is also arbitrarily confiscated, for settlement construction, and, now, the erection of the "apartheid wall" surrounding the West Bank. Palestinian villages are separated by the wall; fertile Palestinian agricultural land is being destroyed in order to build this wall on occupied territory, in peaceful, civilian villages. Indeed, the wall is not built along the Green Line-the 1948 borders of Israel-but on paths cutting through the West Bank, severing Palestinian communities from one another and often running through and directly destroying some of Palestine's most fertile agricultural land. Palestinian elementary and high schools are often forced closed by curfew; Palestinian universities are also under military closure. Universities such as Bir Zeit and Bethlehem have come under direct military attack; they have also been prevented from holding classes. In effect, a generation of Palestinians is being deprived systematically of education at all levels. In addition, Israel has many weapons of mass destruction, including around 200 nuclear weapons-despite having agreed to non-proliferation.
The world, and specifically the United States, can no longer be silent about the criminal Israeli regime. Conceived by colonial powers without the consent of the indigenous Palestinian people, the State of Israel has continued to pursue its institutionalized policies of racism, discrimination and oppression. Indeed, emboldened by the seemingly impenetrable safety net of United States aid, discussion of ethnic cleansing ("transfer") of all Palestinians to Jordan or other Arab states has become only more popular in Israel in recent years. Unlike other countries receiving foreign aid, Israel's aid is unencumbered with restrictions-thus, it may be used directly to promote settlements, engage in military incursions inside the occupied territories, and other acts in violation of international law. For too long, the world has stood silent. It is our monies that allow the Israeli government free rein in its assault on the Palestinian people. No longer should they be used in this manner; no longer should the investments of workers, the grants of alumni and the tuition of students be used to prop up a brutal military occupation.
FINANCIAL SPECIFICS
As the Rutgers University Foundation is a semi-public/semi-private financial entity, it is not required-as are fully public entities-to disclose its financial investments. Rather, it discloses the full amount of its investments in various corporate securities, but these corporations are not defined. In response to requests, the Rutgers Foundation has declined to disclose its specific investments. In this way-a procedure followed by several public universities, including the University of North Carolina-the foundation, while gaining other benefits, remains free of disclosure requirements imposed on the university through its accountability reports and on the state government through its expenditure reports. However, the information that is obtainable from the Foundation indicates that $14,607,109 is held in corporate securities and $2,566,539 is held in corporate debt securities. Considering the breadth of American corporations engaged in business with Israel and noting the prominent investments in such corporations found in nearly every university where disclosure is practiced, it is reasonable to believe that a large percentage of that amount is invested in companies that engage in trade with Israel and, most disturbingly, in corporations that sell arms to Israel and other human rights violators. As more information becomes available regarding specific Rutgers University investments, the data will be released publicly.
Rutgers University is, of course, the public university of the State of New Jersey. The State of New Jersey sponsors an officially chartered state commission to encourage corporate investment and trade with Israel, the New Jersey-Israel Commission, created in 1998. It receives an official state office and $130,000 annually-while the state's higher education budget is slashed. No other country enjoys this privilege, and a nation engaged in repeated violations of United Nations resolutions and international law should not be so honored by our state government. As Rutgers University depends on New Jersey funds for its continued operation, it is incumbent upon the state to invest in a way that is both socially responsible and profitable; investment in Israel is neither.
OUR DEMANDS
As a public institution, Rutgers University should uphold high standards of accountability-even in its investment fund. While academic departments, student organizations and other areas of the university are required to divulge in detail their expenditures and investments, the University's foundation is not. This does not protect donors; donors seeking anonymity need not be disclosed in a voluntary structure that allows the Foundation to reveal its investments, investments made in the name of our university. As the Foundation moves toward full compliance with socially responsible investment, including divestment from Israel, it can only benefit from public scrutiny of the University's endowment fund investments. In the interim, it is a responsibility that the University and its Foundation owe their faculty, students, staff and alumni, and New Jersey residents-accountability and openness to scrutiny and criticism. The investment records of the Foundation should be released.
The Board of Governors and the Board of Trustees must take positions supporting the Foundation's divestment from Israel and companies doing business with Israel. As in the case of South Africa, divestment from Israel is a moral imperative and one to which our university must be responsive. If these boards wish to promote meaningful policies of social responsibility for Rutgers University, they must request investment disclosure from the Rutgers Foundation and endorse the call for divestment. It is at times of decisions like these that the need for meaningful student and faculty representation on the Boards is clear; these bodies must be responsive not solely to money, but also to the needs of the community and the responsibilities of a public institution in society.
The Rutgers University Foundation should immediately pursue a policy of divesting from corporations doing business with Israel; the first order of business is to divest from arms manufacturers, who cannot be considered a socially responsible investment in any circumstance. It should follow this with a full divestment in corporations that continue to do business with Israel. Indeed, there are many corporations involved in such trade. Many, however, are not-and many more will be encouraged to vacate their Israeli investments as it becomes visible that investment in occupation and oppression will not be profitable. In order to push corporations to take a stand in favor of human rights, institutional investors like Rutgers University must make it clear that those corporations will no longer receive the benefit of institutional investment should they continue to do business with governments and nations that violate international law. There are many students and faculty who would be happy to aid the University's search for alternative investments, in order to ensure that Rutgers' financial expenditures reflect its social values.
Our tax dollars-state as well as federal-should not go to supporting the Israeli regime. The New Jersey-Israel Commission should no longer be renewed by either executive order or legislative enactment. As Governor McGreevey extended the term of the commission's existence until 2007 through his Executive Order #12, it is imperative upon the legislature and Governor McGreevey to correct this error and remove the charter of the New Jersey-Israel Commission until Israel comes into accord with human rights law, United Nations resolutions and other standards of international law.
On a national level, we join with other faculty, students, staff, alumni and community members at universities across the country to call for a nationwide divestment from Israeli apartheid on the part of institutional investors. We also join with them to call for an immediate end to United States government aid to Israel until Israel abides by international law. From our universities to our communities to our national government, financial support of Israeli apartheid must come to an end. Words alone are ineffective; in order to secure meaningful peace, they must be combined with action. Criticisms of the Israeli government are worthless when accompanied by billions of dollars in aid, forgiven loan guarantees, military equipment and corporate investment.
Divestment must be in effect until Israel complies with international law, as summarized above and in the divestment petition of Rutgers University faculty, staff, students and alumni, and New Jersey residents: ending the illegal occupation, evacuating the illegal settlements, ending the use of torture, recognizing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and homeland, and guaranteeing equality under law for all citizens of Israel, enabling it to become a state of all its citizens. Until that day, it is incumbent upon Rutgers University faculty, staff, students and alumni, and all residents of New Jersey, to mobilize, take action and demand that government and corporate assistance to Israeli apartheid be ended immediately. It is time for Rutgers University to take the lead and recognize that socially responsible investment must mean rejecting the crimes of the Israeli state.
(Prepared by New Jersey Solidarity and the Rutgers University Campaign for Divestment from Israeli Apartheid, January 2003)