Cal State Long Beach’s student government will cast a final vote today on a proposed resolution that would demand campus leaders divest from businesses that are “complicit in human-rights violations” stemming from their doing business with the Israeli government.
The resolution is reflective of the controversial BDS movement. The acronym stands for “boycott, divestment and sanctions” and the overall movement seeks to use economic pressure against Israel to advance the cause of Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
The Long Beach campus’ student government is scheduled to vote on the proposal during its Wednesday meeting along with a pair of other resolutions that similarly demand divestments from companies that students allege are unfriendly toward LGBTQ individuals or are involved in the private prison industry.
The proposals are due for their third readings on Wednesday. Student government rules require resolutions to pass three votes to win final approval.
Students supporting the resolution could not be reached for comment by deadline. The proposed resolution calls upon the Long Beach campus and affiliates to divest from defense contractors and other firms whose business with the Israeli government, students supporting the resolution contend, leads to abuses against Palestinian people.
“CSULB ASI (Associated Students, Inc.) urges the university and all of its auxiliaries to divest from companies that are complicit in the violation of human rights anywhere around the world, and seeks to have this resolution act as the initial step to discontinuing the perpetration of any systems of oppression,” the Israel-specific resolution reads.
If the campus’ student government adopts the resolution related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, they would be doing so over the objections of campus President Jane Close Conoley.
Conoley asked student senators in a letter dated April 26 to reject the BDS resolution, citing concerns of on-campus anti-Semitism and her conclusion that divestment proponents from beyond the Long Beach campus do not support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — acknowledging Israel’s right to exist.
The campus president’s letter attracted a response from Palestine Legal, a Chicago-based group that describes its mission as providing legal advice and aid to pro-Palestine activists. Palestine Legal attorney Liz Jackson wrote a May 3 letter to Conoley in which she maintained the campus president falsely linked support for Palestinian interests to anti-Semitism and also criticized her for “extended silence” over graffiti found in a restroom in which someone wrote a message threatening to kill Muslims.
Campus spokeswoman Terri Carbaugh confirmed the discovery of the message in a bathroom stall and said in an email that it was removed shortly thereafter. Campus police are investigating and have also notified the FBI.
Boycott proponents with the Palestinian BDS National Committee say their objective is to pressure the Israeli government from withdrawing from the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights. They do not affirm support for either a one- or two-state solution to the broader conflict and call for a right of Palestinian refugees a right to return to their old homelands. They also claim former Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and author and activist Naomi Klein as supporters.
Critics of the BDS include the Anti-Defamation League, which charges that supporters “employ anti-Semitic rhetoric and narratives to isolate and demonize Israel” and New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, who argued in a February 2014 piece that allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to return to Israel would doom the country’s long-term existence as a Jewish state.
