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E-mailHas the movement really started? Has the academic boycott of Israel really begun? To be sure, I don’t really know. Sure, there might be some successes here and there, but support for Israel remains high in the United States.
Academic means one of two things or both: divestment from Israel and companies doing work in the Occupied Territories and/or a boycott of Israel’s academia.
Recently there was one success. Hampshire College in Massachusetts became the first American university to divestment from Israel. The movement was lead by an Israeli studying at the university, Matan Cohen, and the university chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP}. They managed to get the university administrators to divestment from companies doing work in the Occupation. Fair, you might say. After all the divestment only targets six U.S., none Israeli, companies doing work in the Occupied West Bank.
But pro-Israeli zealots are always standing guard to go after any dissent from pro-Zionist dogma. Harvard demagogue Alan Dershowitz didn’t waste anytime in going after Hampshire, like he did with Jimmy Carter, and promised that if they do not end the divestment campaign he will lead his own one against Hampshire; how ironic! For Dershowitz this time its personal: his son graduated from Hampshire. The insane professor even managed to get the private numbers of the student organizers in order to harass them.
It was Thursday morning and we had just broken to the press. Already we were terrified, mind you we were about to take on one of the world’s most powerful political machines. What’s more is that we were a little unprepared, as a local newspaper was coming out with the story a day early and so we had to go all out sooner than we expected (lest the media pick up on the story for a full day without our voices out there).
I woke up a little later than I had planned on. I knew we were about to get flooded with phone calls from the media and I didn’t want them to wake me up and not be ready for their questions. Already people were running around the house, pacing with nervousness, on the phone with the media and arguing in Hebrew, or in the bathroom about to lose their breakfast.
Soon, everyone left but Matan and I. I came out of my room after responding to some e-mails from reporters and Matan came up to me:
“Brian, I just got off the phone with Alan Dershowitz.”
I was still a little tired, and I didn’t quite get it. “Wait, who?”
“Alan Dershowitz”
This woke me up. “What did he say?”
Matan smiled, “He said: I should have known you were involved. Then he went on to say he’s going to organize a boycott of me and of the college.”
“Oh.” We knew we might be hearing from Dershowitz, but certainly not only after an hour or so of being out to the press. That was a little intimidating. “How did he get your number?” I asked. Matan didn’t know.
About 20 minutes later I got a call from Andrew, another SJPer. “Listen, Brian, I just got a call from Alan Dershowitz. He’s threatening to organize an international divestment campaign of Hampshire.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked. Andrew didn’t know.
A little bit later, I got a phone call. I thought it was my first reporter. I grabbed the cell phone, started pacing, and answered.
“Hello, Brian?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, this is Professor Alan Dershowitz. I’m calling to find out if Hampshire College divested from Israel.”
My heart sank. I was not ready for this. I stumbled: “I don’t know, you should read our press release. Which I also think says we divested from the Israeli occupation, not Israel.”
“I have read your press release. And I’m asking you.”
“Okay, well look, I don’t think I’m going to talk to you about this.”
“Wh-”
“Listen, I’m not going to talk to you. Sorry, bye.” Click. I hung up the phone. I called up the stairs to Matan:
“Matan... I think I just did something bad. I think I just hung up on Alan Dershowitz.”
“Good,” Matan replied.
The reason for Dershowitz and his ilk was so deranged is because they fear, perhaps rightly, that if they allow even one critic of Israel to breath it would bequeath several more. Therefore, crush it before it gets big.
Maybe it’ll get too big for them to crush? Let’s hope so.
RSS 
Boycott Hamas and Hizbollah, who shoots rockets into Israeli towns.
Group who blow up school buses and restaurantes,r using civilians as human shields.
It is amazing to me, that there is so much confusion over who the terrorists are. Hamas is a terrorist organization that condones and facilitates suicide bombings and will kill every Jew on the planet if they have the chance.
Israel is an energetic democracy with a vibrant press. Israel is a free country that abides by the rule of law.
Arabs hate the West, too.
And not because of Israel.
But because they are Muslims and believe they deserve to be superior to the West and if they cannot be, they want to destroy it.
And every person reading this, whether friend or foe of Israel, knows this to be true in their heart-of-hearts.
However, history has shown how gullible most people are. They rely strictly on what is placed before them. The world could learn much from Israel scholars, if they would only listen. Instead our intellectual choose to close their ears and minds, they do not seek the truth.
Sorry to “bust your bubble”, Marco, but the Board of Trustees for Hampshire College says you’re wrong:
“An open letter to Alan Dershowitz
“Dear Alan,
“We begin by affirming our high esteem for you, both as a legal scholar and a powerful voice against anti-Semitism. We also appreciate that as a parent of a Hampshire College alumnus, you are part of a community that we hold dear. Nonetheless, we are saddened and frustrated by your recent column in the Jerusalem Post and elsewhere and by your many comments in the press, which present information about the actions of the Hampshire College Board of Trustees that is simply not true. Hampshire College did not divest from Israel or take the action it did because of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians or its presence on the West Bank.
At no time did the college or the board take actions or make statements motivated by anti-Semitism, bigotry and anti-Israelism.
Your influence in the public sphere of ideas has the power to cause great harm to our - or, indeed, any – institution’s reputation. So our frustration stems from your decision to rely not on the official statements of the board of trustees and from us as individuals, but rather from the press releases of a student group, Students for Justice in Palestine.
Hampshire College has made a strenuous, good-faith effort to explain its decision to exit a problematic mutual fund. We make this effort again, without equivocation: Israel was not the cause for divestment from the State Street fund. As you know, last spring, the student group SJP, which is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, petitioned, as is its right, the community-based subcommittee (CHOIR) on responsible investing, which is a subcommittee of the investment committee, in turn itself a subcommittee of the finance committee of the board, asking that the college exit from one particular fund, State Street SSgA. The group claimed that six companies in the fund were supporting or profiting from Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. The companies were said to be Caterpillar, General Electric, ITT, Motorola, Terex and United Technologies. CHOIR passed a recommendation concerning these companies to the investment committee, in accordance with the board’s procedures.
The investment committee, however, expressly rejected this narrow focus, and instead sought to apply our own socially responsible investment policies. This cursory review suggested multiple problems - none of them having to do with Israel - in the fund, and also revealed the implementation inadequacies of the policy. The committee then turned to an outside, independent reviewer, KLD Research & Analytics, the gold standard for socially responsible investment screening, to look closely into the fund’s components. KLD’s review vetted companies for several possible red flags, including employment discrimination, environmental abuse, military weapons manufacturing, unsafe workplace settings, and dealings with Burma or Sudan. Twenty-three equities were found to violate the military weapons screen; four dealt with Burma and three with Sudan; 70 were involved in significant employment discrimination controversies; 28 were found to be environmentally problematic; and 197 were cited for employee safety issues. Some companies appeared in more than one screening category.
In sum, what KLD found was that of the fund’s 455 holdings, well over 200 raised significant concerns relative to Hampshire College’s socially responsible investment policy and were in violation of values of socially responsible investing. It was on this basis that the investment committee voted as it did to exit from the fund when an alternative fund has been identified. The decision was entirely unrelated to Israel or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, two of the six companies originally cited by students as problematic were given a clean bill of health on Hampshire’s policy by the KLD screeners (and a third, it turned out, was not even listed as a constituent of the fund). [This just means that “Students for Justice in Palestine”, like many other organizations demanding divestment, have no idea what they’re talking about. They target companies without concrete evidence and put companies that don’t even do business with Israel on the list. Witness Marco’s article regarding Starbusk’s, which left Israel because of its inability to make a profit in Israel back in 2003, yet they’re still on a lot of boycott lists, including Marco’s. MD]
At the risk of repetition, let us emphasize again that this review did not include Israel, its interaction with the Palestinians, nor its presence on the West Bank as tests for the stocks in this fund. Moreover, Hampshire currently holds investments in funds that include many hundreds of companies that do business in Israel and in at least three actual Israeli companies: Amdocs, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Check Point Software.
We understand that socially responsible investing is a very powerful tool and must be used prudently. The investment committee and now the full board have recognized during this process that the college’s policy on socially responsible investment, last revised in 1994, has become outdated and much too awkward to implement. We are now at work developing a new college policy on socially responsible investing, one that is up-to-date and provides clear guidance for our investment advisors.
Sadly, though, there have been students and some members of our faculty who have mischaracterized what happened here, claiming that the board did something that it did not do. None is a member of the investment committee. We have great respect for our students and encourage their endeavors - academic, social, political. We very much want our campus to be a place for learning and for healthy debate from all points of view. But we are also clear, and urge you to understand us clearly, when we say that students do not speak for the college and may not willfully misrepresent the school. It will be, and must be, the college’s task to undertake any disciplinary action, according to its established rules and procedures. Discipline is an internal process that is not shared with the public.
We understand that this is an emotional issue for all involved. We simply want to state the facts plainly, separating them from the rhetoric, which, while very public, remains all too often untrue. Your good opinion matters to us; it matters, yes, because you are an influential public figure, but it matters even more because we count you as one of the Hampshire family, and hope that you will think of yourself that way, too.
Sincerely,
Ralph Hexter, president
Sigmund Roos, chair of the Board of Trustees
Hampshire College
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/guest/entry/an_open_letter_to_alan
Now if these gentlemen don’t know what was done and why it was done better than “Students for Justice in Palestine”, then there’s something VERY WRONG at Hampshire College. The logical conclusion is, of course, that the student organization knew it was lying when it made its announcement—either that, or they were on some colossal ego trip.
