Somerville Divestment Project

Divestment is the decision of an investor to remove money from companies that are connected to socially irresponsible activities.

Israel bonds are the only foreign national bonds in which Somerville has invested.

$250,000 worth of national bonds of the State of Israel are the only foreign national bonds that Somerville holds. These funds can be used by the Israeli government for any purpose including committing human rights violations.

Israel's violations of international conventions and laws include attacks on civilians, home demolitions, collective punishment, land confiscation, and illegal settlements (colonization). Palestinians often live under 24-hr curfews and "closures" (villages and towns are sealed by the Israeli military) that may last weeks. Both actions impede the ability of Palestinians to go to school, work, attend services at mosque or church, and go to hospitals for medical care [for 2004 figures click here].

Besides Israel bonds, the city of Somerville has over $125,000 invested in Caterpillar Tractor which supplies Israel with bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes; $450,000 in United Technologies which makes armaments and helicopters used to commit "targeted" assassinations during which innocent bystanders - women, men and children - have been killed, wounded and maimed.

Israel bonds directly fund activities that violate international law. Money invested in Israel bonds is placed without conditions in Israel's General Treasury, and it is used, among other things, to build and populate illegal settlements (colonies in Palestinian land) and to build the Apartheid Wall, a 22ft wall that encircles whole towns and villages or splits them in half as in Bethlehem. This wall has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice; it is build in land confiscated from Palestinian and effectively confines them to ghettos/open air prisons.

Israel's violations of human rights have been amply documented by a number of international, Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups.

For decades, a number of organizations have been monitoring Israeli actions and their consequences. These groups include the United Nations Human Rights Commission, CARE, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem, U.S. State Department, Palestinian Human Rights Center and Christian Aid.

"Throughout my pontificate I have felt close to the Palestinian people in their sufferings..."No one can ignore how much the Palestinian people have had to suffer in recent decades. Your torment is in the eyes of the world. And it has gone on too long." - Pope John Paul II

Truly, divestment is a non-violent way of pressuring the Israeli government to change its policies so that they conform to human rights laws and international laws that protect civilians. Many Israelis and American Jews support divestment and do not believe real change will occur without international pressure, as it happened in South Africa.

So the use of "anti-Jewish/anti-Israel" labels is a way of discrediting the individual so that no one gets around to discussing the issues: the reality that has been and is being documented in human rights reports and the rights of Palestinians to no taxation without representation; to protection from unlawful searches and seizures; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for themselves and their children.

With the Gaza pullout, Israel has discarded the peace process in order to continue its feverish illegal expansion on the West Bank and Jerusalem and its imprisonment of the native population in bantustans. That killing the peace process was the goal was stated clearly by Dov Weisglass, a top adviser to Prime Minister Sharon who said in an interview with Ha'aretz last fall: "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde. It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians...Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. What more could have been anticipated? What more could have been given to the settlers?".

The UN Human Rights Commission had this to say: " The Government of Israel is determined to defer final status negotiations for as long as possible to enable it to establish as many facts on the ground as possible before such negotiations begin. The international community should be aware of this obvious fact and do its best to ensure that such negotiations commence forthwith. Only a resolution to the conflict which ends Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the construction of the wall, the expansion of settlements and the de-Palestinization of Jerusalem will lead to an environment in which there is hope for respect for human rights."

Meantime, Gaza has also been turned into "one big prison". A senior Israeli analyst stated bluntly in 2002 that Gaza would serve as "the penal colony" of Israel, its "Devil's Island, Alcatraz." (Nahum Barnea, Yediot Aharonot June 21, 2002)

We do not know why our beloved city chooses to continue to hold bonds that such a large number of civic-minded citizens strongly oppose. These investments divide the city. Why would the mayor and other politicians be so adamantly in support of investing in these bonds and stocks? Let's encourage a peaceful world by investing our tax money in socially responsible ways.

Many churches and organizations support divestment as a means of bringing peace and justice to the Middle east.

A number of churches and civic organizations have opted to divest after careful examination and/or fact-finding missions to the Holy Land. The churches include the New England United Methodist Churches (554 chrches), United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church of the U.S. and the World Council of Churches. The civic groups include the U.S. National Lawyers Guild, Veterans for Peace, Massachusetts Green-Rainbow Party, University of Wisconsin Faculty Senate.

[The church] should not profit from the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land or the destruction of Palestinian homes, orchards and lives". - New England United Methodist Church

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