Should the US and Princeton divest from Israel?

Universities have ethical responsibilities. This principle is generally acknowledged: it was unethical for Princeton to be paying dining hall employees wages so low they qualified for food stamps; it was unethical for Princeton to discriminate on the basis of race or gender; and it was unethical for Princeton to be indirectly supporting the apartheid regime in South Africa through endowment investments. In each of these cases, vigilant students and university community members pointed out the injustice that Princeton was committing, and (eventually) the University changed its practices.

Over the past seven months, more than 300 students and 42 faculty members have signed a petition calling on Princeton University to stop investing in companies that do business in Israel until the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip ends, Israel stops using torture against Palestinian prisoners, and the Israeli government otherwise abides by international law. This initiative has received diverse support, including support from within the Jewish community.

The divestment campaign was launched with an editorial by two Jewish students printed in these pages on the first day of Passover, arguing that the liberative message of that holiday is in conflict with the oppression and humiliation faced by 3 million Palestinians on a daily basis and that Princeton ought to end its complicity in this situation. They joined with Kofi Annan, who has stated to Ariel Sharon, "You must end the illegal occupation . . . You must stop the bombing of civilian areas, the assassinations, the unnecessary use of lethal force, the demolitions, and the daily humiliation of ordinary Palestinians."

But the maladies that Annan decried continue: earlier this month a Palestinian grandmother died when the Israeli Army blocked the ambulance team going to her aid from reaching her. Two days later twenty-one homes were destroyed as Israeli tanks made their way into the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, displacing dozens of innocent civilians. And these are regular occurrences in the Gaza Strip and West Bank: the International Red Cross affiliate in the Occupied Territories reports that ambulances have been blocked from reaching their destinations more than 200 times, 68 percent of ambulances have been hit by Israeli ammunition, 142 schools have been shelled by the Israeli army, and more than 16,000 Palestinians have lost their homes to Israeli tanks and bulldozers.

In the news, we hear about how Iraq is defying the international community by preventing the inspection of potential weapons of mass destruction. The US government acknowledges that such defiance requires a swift and severe response. But Israel has been in open defiance of international law for more than 35 years, and, perhaps even more importantly, it has come under intense fire from the international human rights community including by such organizations as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. To take just one instance, the Geneva Convention clearly states that an occupying country, "may not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies," but this is exactly what has been happening.

Some people object that the way the Palestinians are coping with their state of oppression is itself unjust and that the abhorrent, headline-grabbing suicide bombings should cause us to take a "neutral" position. But such a position is not defensible: if, in the face of violent resistance to oppression, we step back and turn our heads, what can result except an escalation in the violence? It takes courageous individuals and organizations to support non-violent responses in the face of violent conflict — and that is exactly what Princeton students have been doing since last year with the campaign calling on Princeton University to divest from Israel.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has been a vocal supporter of divestment from Israel — he even went so far as to say, after a visit to the region, that, "a description of what is happening in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank could describe events in South Africa." Perhaps Tutu remembers the way the ANC was characterized as a "terrorist" organization by the South African government.

Moreover, although Tutu might be challenged for overlooking other human rights violations around the world by focusing on Israel/Palestine, he recognizes that the relationship the US has with Israel — a bilateral relationship in a class of its own — gives those in the US a special responsibility to protest Israeli human rights violations.

The students living in our dorm rooms and eating in our cafeterias in the 1950's and 1960's made their voices heard in opposition to racism in the South, in the 1960's and 1970's to the Vietnam War, in the 1970's and 1980's to apartheid South Africa, and today we will not be living up to this venerable legacy if we do not add our voices to the mounting cry, "Princeton: Divest from Israel Now!" Vincent Lloyd is a senior in the religion department from Rochester, Minnesota. He can be reached at vlloyd@princeton.edu.