Pro-Israel students from the University of California at Berkeley won a minor victory last week against the campaign for their school to divest from companies doing business in Israel. Last week, student senators, professors, local activists and guest speakers battled over the issue of divestment for over nine dramatic hours with the pro-Israel side scoring a temporary win in an environment where they feel under constant attack.
A bill passed by the student senate on March 17 urging divestment from two corporations that supply the IDF with equipment was vetoed on March 24 by the Association of Students President Will Smelko. The ASUC (Associated Students of the University of California) meeting over an attempt to overturn the veto was attended by a mass of Bay Area community activists sporting Yasser Arafat-style black and white kaffiyehs, along with people passing out green stickers on "war crimes."
One of the speakers who co-authored the original bill was student Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, an activist with the anti-Zionist International Solidarity Movement and a former student of the London School of Economics, where he unsuccessfully attempted a similar Israel divestment campaign. Also supporting the bill and explaining why via telephone was Richard Falk of the United Nations.
Opening remarks opposing the bill came from Israel’s Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, Akiva Tor, who argued that divestment bills will only make an Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria more difficult to implement. Tor told the crowded room that “Israel wants to end the occupation.”
Local Zionist Freedom Alliance leader Yehuda Katz, who was at the event lobbying student senators to oppose the bill, criticized Tor’s remarks as counter-productive. "With respect to the Consul General," Katz told Israel National News. "Either we have a right to our country or we don’t. Opposing the bill on grounds that it prevents us from ethnically cleansing Jews from their homes and shrinking our country’s borders is playing into the hands of those who call us occupiers in our own homeland. The only way to educate the community and change anti-Israel perceptions is to stand up for our legitimate rights and make people understand the justice of the Zionist struggle. This is especially true in regards to Jewish rights in Judea and Samaria."
Twelve student senators of the 20 member ASUC initially opposed the veto and needed only one more vote to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority to overturn it. Minji Kim, a student senator of Korean background who initially supported the divestment bill when she genuinely believed it to be about war crimes, ultimately abstained, preventing divestment supporters from achieving their aim and reportedly inviting accusations of her personal responsibility for the deaths of Arab children.
While pro-Israel advocates were celebrating their 6am victory Thursday morning, student senators from the CalSERVE party that had initiated the bill pulled off a last-minute political maneuver to allow the veto to be reintroduced for another vote next week. Pro-Israel student activist Matthew White told INN that he is confident that the re-vote will finally defeat the divestment bill but cautioned that nothing is for certain.