UW DIVEST FROM ISRAEL CAMPAIGN PRESS RELEASE - NOVEMBER 10, 2005

         
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------For Immediate Release------

Contact: Mohammed Abed, (608) 332-9900, mkabed@wisc.edu
	Nasser Abufarha, (608) 770-7007, nabufarha@wisc.edu

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN DIVEST FROM ISRAEL CAMPAIGN PRESSURES REGENTS TO
DIVEST AT PUBLIC FORUM

(Madison, WI- 11/10/05)The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel
Campaign organized students, faculty and community members from around
the State of Wisconsin to attend the Annual Trust Fund Investment Forum
with the University's Board of Regents. This forum provides the public
with an opportunity to air their concerns about investments in
corporations implicated in discrimination and violations of basic human
rights and international law. The room was filled to capacity as close
to a 100 people came to speak in support of Divestment from Israel and
re-investment in socially responsible companies in Wisconsin and around
the United States. Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, and people from a
diverse range of ethnic, national, and religious backgrounds came
forward to speak in favor of the campaign.

Speaker after speaker told the Regents that divestment was both a moral
imperative and sanctioned by UW's own ethical investment policies. UW
Investment policy 78-1, states that all investments 'made in any
company, corporation, subsidiary or affiliate which practices or
condones through its actions discrimination on the basis of race
religion, color, creed or sex. . . .' shall be divested in as prudent
but rapid a manner as possible. Supporters of the campaign pointed out
that any corporation that does business with and/or in the State of
Israel stands in violation of investment policy 78-1 because the State
of Israel practices widespread, systematic, and institutionalized
discrimination against persons of non-Jewish descent living under its
control, irrespective of whether or not they are citizens of the state.
It was pointed out that these policies amounted to a regime of ethnic
separation without self-determination for the oppressed group, that is,
a system of apartheid similar in kind to that imposed on the black population of South Africa
prior to de-colonization.

UW investment policy 97-1 also stipulates that the Board of Regents will
seriously re-consider investments in companies implicated in practices
that 'violate, subvert, or frustrate the enforcement of rules of
domestic or international law intended to protect individuals and/or
groups against deprivation of health, safety, basic freedoms or human
rights.' Companies such as Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics,
General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, and Raytheon are
particularly culpable since they provide weapons and supporting systems
that allow the Israeli Army and security services to implement state
policies that cause substantial social injury to the Palestinian people,
particularly Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. Palestinians
in these areas have suffered both human rights abuses and war crimes
that include the demolition of over 12,000 civilian homes since 1967,
wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, institutions, and
farmland, expr
opriation of Palestinian land and important natural resources such as
water, the imposition of closures and curfews that prevent Palestinians
- including children and the elderly - from accessing healthcare, basic
education, jobs, and all the other services that sustain life. Although
Israel's apartheid wall has been ruled illegal by the International
Court of Justice, it continues to be built deep into West Bank
territory, denying Palestinians access to their own communities,
institutions and services. Along with the system of segregated roads in
the West Bank, the wall is the most visible manifestation of Israel's
apartheid policies towards the Palestinian people.

The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel Campaign
(http://alawda.rso.wisc.edu) was founded by Al-Awda Wisconsin (The
Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and Alternative Palestinian Agenda
and is now a coalition comprised of several local and statewide student
and community based social justice organizations.  The campaign gained
significant momentum when the Faculty Senate of the University of
Wisconsin-Platteville passed a resolution in favor of divestment on
January 25th 2005.  The Platteville Senate is the highest academic body
in the United States to have adopted a resolution calling for divestment
from companies providing material aid to the Israeli army. The Teaching
Assistant's Association, the nation's oldest and largest teaching
assistant's union also passed a resolution calling for divestment from
companies identified by the UW Divest from Israel Campaign. The
Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) soon
followed suit and adopted a dives
tment resolution by an overwhelming majority of 24-2. TAUWP is the
largest faculty and staff union in the University of Wisconsin System.

The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel campaign believes that in
so far as the effort to divest has as its foundation a commitment to
international law and the fundamental rights that belong to every human
being, it lays the groundwork for a just and enduring peace and is
therefore an expression of the hope for a free and secure future for
every Israeli and Palestinian currently suffering under the burden of
conflict. The campaign called on the Regents to keep this in mind and to
immediately discharge their obligation to implement UW's investment
policies, and in so doing, to follow the precedent set by the University
of Wisconsin's elimination of investments in apartheid era South Africa.
The Campaign also informed the Regents that it will continue to build
institutional and public momentum until divestment is achieved and the
University's money is re-invested in the local economy and in
sustainable, humane, and socially responsible business ventures in the
U.S. and
 abroad.

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University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel Campaign
Visit us at: http://alawda.rso.wisc.edu/

Mohammed Abed
Department of Philosophy University of Wisconsin-Madison
Office 5112, Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park Street Madison, WI 53706
e-mail: mkabed@wisc.edu

"The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was
'given' by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new
state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people
were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers
increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle
of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every
right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of
this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people
anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their
country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a
punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement
of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any
genuine settlement in the Middle East".

Message from Bertrand Russell to the International Conference of
Parlimentarians in Cairo, February 1970." Reprinted in The New York
Times, Feb. 23, 1970