Harvard University has insisted that the sale of shares in Israeli companies is not driven by pro-Palestinian boycott and divestment campaign.
ALSO
Globes (Updated): Harvard denies divestment from Israel
Foreign Policy: Harvard not divesting from Israel
IOA Editor: Harvard’s sale of all its Israeli holdings will remain a bit of a mystery, at least for a while. The manner in which it was done – an entire country-portfolio, sold at once – during the second quarter of 2010 which, coincidentally or not, was also when the Berkeley BDS struggle culminated, suggests it may be more than just a matter of investment management.
If the Harvard Corporation wanted to avoid becoming embroiled in a BDS struggle connected to the Israeli Occupation – say, the next time Israel commits war crimes on sea or land – its best strategy would be to make a ‘business decision’ to pull out of Israel, quietly and without fanfare: not to make a principled, morally-based and publicly explained University policy decision, one that would be controversial and may cause some of Harvard’s donors to put their money elsewhere. And this is exactly what it did. Only time will tell.
Breaking the Silence: Facebook photos depicting Israel Defense Forces soldiers pictured alongside handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian detainees represent the norm, not the exception, in IDF conduct … refuting an official army statement claiming the opposite.
“I wish these pictures reached leftists abroad,” my friend said … as she watched Hamas police use rifle butts and clubs to beat her friends – activists from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Although my friend has never been a fan of the Fatah government in the West Bank, she is outraged by the romanticization of Hamas rule by foreign activists.
In another blow to Israeli shares, the Harvard Management Company notified the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday that it had sold all its holdings in Israeli companies during the second quarter of 2010. No reason for the sale was mentioned. The Harvard Management Company manages Harvard University’s endowment.
IOA Editor:The Harvard Management Company — a subsidiary of Harvard University charged with managing the university’s endowment, pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts — is best known for managing the university’s $26 billion endowment, the largest endowment in US higher education. Historically, the HMC has been the leading university investment management company, receiving a great deal of attention from all other university funds.
This is probably the first reported university endowment divestment from all Israeli holdings. Coming from Harvard, it sets a very important precedent: it is likely to be reviewed, scrutinized, and possibly followed, by other universities. Because Harvard, or HMC, has yet to make a public statement on the decision, one can only assume that it took place as a preventive measure, to avoid becoming the “next Berkeley.”
Yishai Menuchin, director of the Public Committee Against Torture: “The horrible pictures demonstrate a norm of treating Palestinians like objects instead of human beings – treatment that disregards their feelings as humans and their right to privacy.”
President Barack Obama has personally warned Turkey’s prime minister that unless Ankara shifts its position on Israel and Iran it stands little chance of obtaining the US weapons it wants to buy.
Sixty-two years after the founding of the state … it is time to acknowledge that the Jewish state is not interested in also being the state of its Arab citizens. The predicament of the Arab minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Green Line, especially the Muslim Arab minority, is an indication of the attitude of the Jewish democratic state toward those who do not belong to the lords of the land.
The fact that [Israeli Arabs] have yet to choose to boycott the state and its institutions and to stop participating in the game of democracy, which is corrupt to begin with, as far as they are concerned – a game from which they are almost completely excluded – is nothing short of amazing.
Barak: “The F-35 is a fighter jet of the future that will enable Israel to continue its air superiority and mainatain its qualitative edge in the region… The plane will provide the air force with better long-range and short-range capabilities in a manner that will help ensure national security.”
Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel, counts more than 35 Israeli laws explicitly privileging Jews over non-Jews. Other Israeli laws appear neutral, but are applied in discriminatory fashion. For example, laws facilitating government land seizures make no reference to Palestinians, but nonetheless have been used almost exclusively to expropriate their properties for Jewish settlements.
Despite Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the escalating displacement in the Negev and East Jerusalem, Palestinians have some reason to celebrate. In Washington [state] a food co-op has passed a resolution calling for a boycott of Israeli products, confirming that the boycott movement – five years old last month – has finally crossed the Atlantic.
Yesterday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site.
A primer on BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), its history, participants, and recent successes.
IOA Editor: An Appeal from April 2001, which predates by several years actions covered in the summary presented here by IMEU, can be found on the Matzpun website. A co-author of the Matzpun Appeal reports that, to the best of his knowledge, it was the first call for boycott of Israeli products and tourism, covering both Israel and the occupied territories. At the time, the initiative was very isolated, not receiving support from organizations that now support BDS.
In the early hours of 10 August, Israeli forces destroyed — for the third time — the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Israel had first destroyed the village on 27 July as the Electronic Intifada reported, and each time the villagers have attempted to rebuild.
For 62 years, the Palestinian people have been misunderstood and oppressed, and in a small way, we hope to change that. It is in the spirit of justice that we found the inspiration to compile The Veritas Handbook.
FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE VERITAS HANDBOOK
If Israel’s latest order to deport the Hamas MPs was intended to curb support for the movement, it has failed. An array of prominent figures … have flocked to the Red Cross’s doors to offer solidarity. On Fridays the street outside doubles as an open-air mosque. The Hamas MPs, hitherto minor figures, have become celebrities.
A group of Israeli women smuggled 12 Palestinian woman and four children, among them a year-old baby, into Tel Aviv for a day of fun about two weeks ago. The women, among them writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the women from their villages, following two earlier meetings with them.
RELATED: Israeli and Palestinian Women Find New Way to Challenge The Occupation
Two of the US closest allies in the ME, Israel and Saudi Arabia, are on the brink of signing large arms deals with the US in a move designed to ratchet up the pressure on Iran, according to defence analysts. [T]he joint strengthening of the Saudi Arabian and Israeli militaries was seen as a key regional interest for the US.
I would like to remind [Israelis] that it is they who hide in darkness. It is we who stand in the light. It is they who deceive. It is we who openly proclaim our compassion and demand justice for those who suffer in Gaza. We are not afraid to name our names. We are not afraid to name our beliefs. And we know something you perhaps sense with a kind of dread. As Martin Luther King said, the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, and that arc is descending with a righteous fury that is thundering down upon the Israeli government.
The violence of the occupier is the norm that no one questions, so much so that it becomes invisible. Only the response to that norm is presented and perceived as criminal, and the occupying nation wallows pleasurably in its eternal victimhood to justify its violent actions.
Henning Mankell, aboard the Gaza Freedom Flotilla: “We have been attacked while in international waters. That means the Israelis have behaved like pirates … The moment they start to steer this ship towards Israel, we have also been kidnapped. The whole action is illegal.”
The Obama administration plans to sell advanced F-15 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia but won’t equip them with long-range weapons systems and other arms whose inclusion was strongly opposed by Israel, diplomats and officials said.
Widely regarded as one of the most important historians of contemporary Europe, Tony Judt died on Friday… Judt is perhaps most controversial for his critique of Israel: in 2003 he famously called Israel an anachronism and outlined the argument for a one-state solution with Palestinians and Israelis living in secular, binational state.
The Popular Resistance Campaign marched toward Israel’s no-go zone Monday in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, in protest over land confiscation and prohibited access to farm land.
A police officer known as “Major George” who is accused of torturing Arab prisoners in his previous role as chief interrogator in a secret military jail has been appointed to oversee relations with Jerusalem’s Palestinian population, it has emerged.
Defining Israel as a Jewish state condemns us to living in a racist state… Were we to not expel the migrant workers’ children but continue to raze Bedouin villages we would not solve a thing. We will continue to move from one injustice to another until we recognize the racist nature of the state.
Israel quickly reined back expectations yesterday over its agreement to co-operate with a UN investigation into the Israeli army’s lethal raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla two months ago.
Israeli security forces destroyed a Bedouin village this week for the second time in a matter of days, leaving 300 inhabitants homeless again after they and dozens of Jewish and Arab volunteers had begun rebuilding the 45 homes.
Israeli defense companies have scored one of the biggest deals in the industry’s history: They will be making about $4 billion worth of parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter [manufactured by] Lockheed Martin… The discussions about Israel’s involvement were led by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
IOA Editor: There’s no business like War Business, to misappropriate Irving Berlin.
Emily Henochowicz, the very talented art student who lost her eye after being shot by Israeli tear gas canister in a West Bank protest, discusses her life, art, and why she plans to return.
ALSO — Mondoweiss: ‘Democracy Now’ and ‘Village Voice’ grant Henochowicz sympathy the ‘Times’ begrudged her
Israeli Border Police: “Instead of the family acting responsibly toward a child and removing him from the situation, they chose to make cheap anti-Israel propaganda, whose sole purpose is to present us in a negative light around the world… the authorities on site acted lawfully against the unacceptable phenomenon of water theft.”
IOA Editor: For Reasons of State, the Occupation “authorities” controlling Palestinian “sites” by military force, again prevented the lawful residents of said “sites” from using their most precious national resource: Water.
[South Lebanon] was under Israeli occupation for 18 years… It was an occupation no less brutal than the one in the territories, but whitewashed well… So now, as well, we can do what we like… For months now the drums of war have been beating here again. Rat-a-tat, danger, Scuds from Syria, war in the north. No one asks why and wherefore.
Boycott is the primary tool of those engaged in nonviolent resistance to systematic injustice. Boycott targets unjust policies. It is not about ‘the right to exist’; Everyone has the right to ‘exist’… Israel inside the green line is the agency of occupation and [it] conducts, plans, prepares and executes aspects of the occupation from inside the green line.
Zinn, who died in January at the age of 87, did not advocate violence or support the overthrow of the government, something he told FBI interrogators on several occasions. He was rather an example of how genuine intellectual thought is always subversive. It always challenges prevailing assumptions as well as political and economic structures. It is based on a fierce moral autonomy and personal courage and it is uniformly branded by the power elite as “political.” Zinn was a threat not because he was a violent revolutionary or a communist but because he was fearless and told the truth.
Chris Hedges’ Truth Commission on Conscience in War speech: Americans “are as capable of perpetuating evil as those who oppose us, and this existential crisis is one that turns those who have the courage to stand up and speak … into outcasts, pariahs, prophets.”
