This is not the first time Rev. Tutu has thanked the student body at US Berkeley. I remember not so many years ago when he thanked the student body for standing for divestment of companies that helped the apartheid system in South Africa. Those were special days. Students camped out on Sproul Plaza. and they rejected the idiocy of "constructive engagement" that was offered as an alternative to divestment, the idea put forth by those who wanted to continue to profit off South Africa's shameful system of institutionalized discrimination and disenfranchisement of South African Black population. The ending of that system was a victory for all the people of South Africa.
Today the students of UC Berkeley, like many on many other Universities around the world,and many other institutions, are re-evaluating how their institutions are inadvertently assisting another system of apartheid, this time in Israel.
Dear Student Leaders at the University of California – Berkeley
It was with great joy that I learned of your recent 16-4 vote in support of divesting your university’s money from companies that enable and profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and violation of Palestinian human rights. Principled stands like this, supported by a fast growing number of US civil society organizations and people of conscience, including prominent Jewish groups, are essential for a better world in the making, and it is always an inspiration when young people lead the way and speak truth to power.
I am writing to tell you that, despite what detractors may allege, you are doing the right thing. You are doing the moral thing. You are doing that which is incumbent on you as humans who believe that all people have dignity and rights, and that all those being denied their dignity and rights deserve the solidarity of their fellow human beings.
I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid. I have witnessed the humiliation of Palestinian men, women, and children made to wait hours at Israeli military checkpoints routinely when trying to make the most basic of trips to visit relatives or attend school or college, and this humiliation is familiar to me and the many black South Africans who were corralled and regularly insulted by the security forces of the Apartheid government.
In South Africa, we could not have achieved our freedom and just peace without the help of people around the world, who through the use of non-violent means, such as boycotts and divestment, encouraged their governments and other corporate actors to reverse decades-long support for the Apartheid regime. Students played a leading role in that struggle, and I write this letter with a special indebtedness to your school, Berkeley, for its pioneering role in advocating equality in South Africa and promoting corporate ethical and social responsibility to end complicity in Apartheid. I visited your campus in the 1980’s and was touched to find students sitting out in the baking sunshine to demonstrate for the University’s divestment in companies supporting the South African regime.
The same issue of equality is what motivates the divestment movement of today, which tries to end Israel’s 43 year long occupation and the unequal treatment of the Palestinian people by the Israeli government ruling over them. The abuses they face are real, and no person should be offended by principled, morally consistent, non-violent acts to oppose them. It is no more wrong to call out Israel in particular for its abuses than it was to call out the Apartheid regime in particular for its abuses.
To those who wrongly accuse you of unfairness or harm done to them by this call for divestment, I suggest, with humility, that the harm suffered from being confronted with opinions that challenge one’s own pales in comparison to the harm done by living a life under occupation and daily denial of basic rights and dignity. It is not with rancor that we criticize the Israeli government, but with hope, a hope that a better future can be made for both Israelis and Palestinians, a future in which both the violence of the occupier and the resulting violent resistance of the occupied come to an end, and where one people need not rule over another, engendering suffering, humiliation, and retaliation. True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute. You, students, are helping to pave that path to a just peace. I heartily endorse your divestment vote and encourage you to stand firm on the side of what is right,
God bless you richly,
Desmond Tutu.
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town.
Sent from Emily Schaeffer, human right lawyer in Israel/Palestine, who asked Archbishop Tutu to write the letter.
This coming Wednesday, the ASUC Senate will again vote on a bill, that you can see here, that urges divestment from corporations that do business with the Israeli military, in other words, they profit off the continued conflict. It was vetoed by the ASUC president, but it believed that this veto will be over-ridden, since the original vote was 16-4.
Naturally, with anything supporting human rights and nonviolent action against the Israeli occupation, there is a strident campaign of vilification. Led by the usual groups like aipac, and those who want to encourage support for funding of Israel's human rights violations while at the same time taking a more critical stance of Israel's policies.
Will anyone explain to me how funding human rights violations, with full support or with "critical" support will make any difference? The next time Israel bombs Mosques, UN Schools, Cheese Factories, the next time they demolish a Palestinian home, the next time they send out eviction orders... what difference will it make to the victims if the US funding was encouraged by full-supporters, like aipac, or "critical" supporters like J Street? The home will still be demolished with funding support of the US, in either case.
Here is an excerpt of a great letter sent from Jewish Voice for Peace (a frequent target of attack from J Street... if they were this strident against Israeli policies as they are against other Jewish folks who are opposed to the Occupation, they would have much more credibility from me).
Why are American Jewish groups so intent on defending illegal Israeli settlements and other human rights violations?
By Sydney Levy and Yaman Salahi
A coalition of nearly 20 Jewish groups, ranging from the right-wing David Project and the Jewish National Fund to the liberal J Street, is distributing a misleading statement condemning a Student Senate bill at UC Berkeley. The ground-breaking bill calls for divestment from companies that profit from the perpetuation of the Israeli military occupation in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza. They refer to the bill as "dishonest" and "misleading" and "based on contested allegations."
Yet it is their letter that is both dishonest and misleading.
The bill, available here, is based on extensive, footnoted research.
Yet this coalition of Jewish groups does not contest any of the facts. Without offering any evidence, they dismiss findings by reputable organizations like the Red Cross, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. Instead of condemning these human rights violations, they prefer to misinform the public by suggesting that it is somehow wrong to "take sides" against universally recognized injustice. In so doing, they effectively defend illegal Israeli settlements and the Israeli military occupation that continues to disrupt everyday features of Palestinian life: education, health care, economic life, and art and culture.
Further, they claim that the Berkeley bill calls on the University "to divest exclusively from Israel." They imply that the bill calls for divestment "from any company doing business with Israel."
But this is simply not true.
The Berkeley bill focuses specifically on the Israeli occupation, not on Israel. While a vibrant and necessary debate on the merits of a total boycott and divestment from Israel continues around the world, it is not at issue here.
In reality, the bill divests only from two American companies that make money by equipping the occupation, General Electric and United Technologies – but no Israeli companies. It also announces an intention to divest from any company – whatever the nationality, and only after further research – that similarly profit from the occupation.
These groups choose to deliberately misreport the language of the bill, which refers specifically and exclusively to companies that:
a) provide military support for or weaponry to support the occupation of the Palestinian territories or
b) facilitate the building or maintenance of the illegal wall or the demolition of Palestinian homes, or
c) facilitate the building, maintenance, or economic development of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories;
By condemning the humane and ethical policy of what is essentially morally responsible investment, do these groups mean to encourage investing in companies that provide the weapons of occupation, build the settlements of colonization, and render thousands of innocent Palestinians homeless?....
Jewish Voice for Peace
For its part, the Israeli military has inadvertently provided a very strong case for UC Divestment this very week. It is laying the legal groundwork for making labeling tens of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank as "infiltrators" and subject to deportation or SEVEN years of imprisonment. How in the world can the Israeli government tell the Palestinians that they are infiltrators in their homeland? This order is being fought by many Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups. (see my diary, see this story among dozens of others) It is very important that we tell this story, it is very important that we support this nonviolent, civil society response to the routinely brutal system of apartheid set in place for the Palestinian residents of Israel/Palestine.
Constructive Engagement has Not Worked. That much is clear.
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