Anti-Divestiture, pro-Palestine

I believe that the Palestinian people, oppressed for decades under Israel's occupation, deserve their independence side by side with Israel. For this reason I do not support the nationwide divestiture campaign. It is not a constructive instrument to achieve the vision of a free Palestine. It rewards the current method the Palestinian Authority (PA) has chosen to pursue its aim of independence: militancy and terrorism, rather than helping the Palestinians embark on a path of non-violent resistance that will guarantee their eventual independence.

The reason the Palestinians have yet to embark on such a path is two-fold. First, a significant proportion of the population still believes that Israel does not have a right to exist (according to a study by the Jerusalem Media Center, 41 percent of Palestinians equate a free Palestine with the end of Israel's existence). Second, they lack a leadership able to rally those in favor of non-violent opposition. Our brilliant professors are not putting their minds together to provide a positive policy, but instead they signed their reputation down the drain when they decided to make a flawed and unjust argument for divestiture. I write in opposition to this policy because it will only serve to delay the Palestinian dream of liberation.

Divestiture calls for Israel's immediate compliance with UN resolution 242. It calls for a negotiated settlement, based on the principle of exchanging land for peace. The divestiture petition, however, calls for a unilateral compliance, which is not what the resolution itself calls for. Is it just for Israel to just determine the borders of a future Palestine without negotiations? Is that what the divestiture petition really wants to promote? Resolution 242 was drafted under Chapter Six resolutions. This chapter deals with the peaceful resolution of disputes and entitles the council to make non-binding recommendations and is to be distinguished from Chapter Seven which is binding (and is the chapter under which the resolutions against Iraq were written).

Divestiture calls for Tufts to stop investing or collaborating with Israeli institutions of higher learning. The teaching hospital of Hebrew University is where many injured Palestinians are sent following violent clashes. Divestiture would mean preventing this hospital from receiving necessary funds.

Do you want to hamper research in the medical field in an attempt to bring piece to the Middle East? This thinking is flawed. Israeli researchers have made a disproportionate contribution to the world of science (and many other fields) in the past fifty years. The Bi-national Science Foundation has financed a US-Israeli multi-centered study of parathyroid hormone (PTH) treatment of osteoporosis which showed that PTH is effective in treating women to prevent bone loss.

Divestiture aims to halt such collaboration. Many labs in the university have joint research projects with Arab universities and Palestinian ones. Divestiture is not the right way to go to promote the Palestinian right for a homeland, unless one believes that research for the cure to cancer, AIDS, or other diseases, should be slowed.

No attempt should be made at linking the divestiture campaign in South Africa and the proposed divestiture from Israel campaign; the differences are drastic. Divestiture was a practical approach to South Africa because one racial group systematically and institutionally oppressed another within one nation. By withdrawing international financial support, extensive economic pressure was placed on the authoritarian apartheid regime to grant equal rights to the black majority.

Israel is an entirely distinct case. The Arab-Israeli conflict is not about Israel denying Israeli Arabs civil rights; in fact, Israeli Arabs have the highest living standards and greatest amount of freedom in the entire region. On the contrary, the conflict concerns Israel's right to exist. Israel occupies the West Bank and Gaza not because it made an imperialistic land grab, but because the surrounding Arab nations declared war on it _ a war that Israel won. Many countries have committed human rights atrocities all over the Middle East but consensus in the academia is that divestiture from these countries in protest of such violation is unproductive. Let us not hold Israel to a different standard.

Divestiture might not be an anti-Semitic policy, but it is discriminatory in its application. By rewarding the course taken by the PA for independence, it is advocating the destruction of Israel. If you believe in the Palestinian People's right for independence, than you must join me in condemning divestiture as an unconstructive, inefficient, flawed, and discriminatory policy that will only serve to delay the dream of peace in the Middle East.



Matan Chorev is a sophomore in the dual degree program at Tufts and the New England Conservatory majoring in Political Science and Cello Performance. He is co-chair of the Middle Eastern Student Society.