November 13, 2014

Dear SJP Members and Friends,

Once again, I am proud and honored to support the student-initiated movement to divest the
University of California of its shares in firms that support Israels illegal occupation of the West
Bank. We all know that companies such as HP, Caterpillar, Cement Roadstone Holdings,
General Electric, and others provide electronic and data services to maintain checkpoints,
materials to build the illegal apartheid wall, bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian
homes and olive groves in violation of international law, and weapons systems that are used
against Palestinians in violation of our own Arms Export Control Act prohibiting the use of U.S.
weapons and military aid against civilians. I applaud your efforts as a proud graduate of UCLA
(PhD 1987), and a faculty member concerned about human rights and social justice.
The last time I submitted a statement in support of the UC Divestment campaign, I included
details of my experiences in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of Israels
brutal war on Gaza this summer, I dont see the need to revisit the facts on the ground as I saw
them in January 2012. The situation now is even worse, the violence and devastation
unimaginable. In the course of fifty brutal days, Israeli Defense Forces took at least 2,000
Palestinian lives (including over 500 children), left 10,000 wounded, razed 10,000 homes,
displaced about a quarter of Gazas population, wrecked much of its crumbling infrastructure,
and made an already intolerable situation practically unlivable. By the time the smoke cleared,
nearly 150 schools lay in ruins, entire neighborhoods had been razed to the ground; morgues
were filled to capacity as dead bodies lay strewn in streets, under rubble or placed in vegetable
refrigerators or commercial ice cream freezers. The lack of electricity, clean water, food,
sanitation, medical supplies, among other things, left the people of Gaza vulnerable to a variety
of infectious, nutritional and water-borne diseases. And unlike other civilians in war-torn
regions, Gazans were not allowed to seek refuge. They were trapped with no place to hide, as
Israeli aerial bombardments treated all of Gaza as a battlefield.
For many people either indifferent to, or supportive of, Israels occupation, the blockade of Gaza,
and the general treatment of Palestinians, Operation Protective Edge was the final straw.
Support for divestment and boycott as peaceful, constructive, non-violent strategies to end the
occupation and protect Palestinian human rights has grown exponentially since the latest war on
Gaza. I now encounter more and more people in the United States openly describing Gaza as the
largest open-air prison in the world, citing the fact that our taxes subsidize Israels garrison state
to the tune of 6 million dollars a day, criticizing the U.S. for consistently vetoing U.N.
resolutions condemning Israels human rights abuses. And even the most nave observers have
begun to question the narrative that the Arab-Israeli conflict rooted in some ancient,
irreconcilable religious or cultural hostilities, but instead recognize it a product of a colonial
occupation and violation of international law and human rights, subsidized by the United States.
The tide is clearly turning against the illegal occupation and war, in favor of freedom, peace, and
human rights. Demonstrations and actions erupted all across the country calling on Israel to
withdraw from Gaza, lift the blockade, and end the occupation, and in over two dozens U.S.
cities acts of civil disobedience took place targeting companies invested in the occupation or that

provide weapons used to attack Gaza, the Friends of the IDF, and Senators who voted to send
more weapons to Israel. Lobbying groups such as AIPAC and its younger, more liberal offshoot, J Street, are fast losing influence and members, while Jewish groups supporting
divestment are growingnotably Jews Say No, Partners for a Progressive Israel, Peace Now!, If
Not Now, When?, and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). We also witnessed the Presbyterian
Churchs landmark decision to divest its holdings in Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola
Solutions.
Will we stand on the right side of history? Or will we continue to invest in a regime that, as we
speak, is considering legislation in the Knesset outlawing Palestinian political parties in Israel
and imposing a 20-year prison sentence for stone throwing? Will we continue to allow the
university to profit from firms that back the illegal occupation and sanction the continued
building of settlements in clear violation of international law?
I know something about the value of divestment as a non-violent strategy for social justice.
Thirty years ago, as a graduate student, president of UCLAs African Activist Association, and
chair of the Los Angeles Ad Hoc Committee to Keep South Africa Out of the Olympics, I added
my voice to the movement calling on the University of California to divest its holdings from
apartheid South Africa. This was my generations Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment moment,
and many of us put our bodies on the line building makeshift shanty towns on campus and sitting
in at the South African Consulate in Beverly Hills. The movement was not popular at first, but
we educated our community, built momentum, and by the summer of 1986 succeeded in
persuading the U.C. Regents to divest its $3.1 billion worth of holdings from South Africa and
Namibia. Although it took nine years, and the University of California took longer to divest than
most major banks (including Citibank, Chase Manhattan, and Barclays), its leaders ultimately
decided to abide by the wishes of the students and faculty and take an ethical stance against
apartheid.
We understood then and nowthat apartheid did more than strip black South Africans of
voting and civil rights. The regime dispossessed Africans from their land, and through
legislative and military acts, razed entire communities and transferred Africans to government
townships and Bantustans. It was a system of racial classification and population control that
limited the movement of Africans in towns and cities, denied them social and economic
privileges based on race, outlawed organizations that challenged the apartheid state, and used
violence and detention to suppress opposition. Israel has been practicing a form of apartheid
since its inception. After destroying some 380 Palestinian villages, and ethnically cleansing
Palestinian towns and neighborhoods in mixed cities in 1948, confiscating land without
compensation, Israel passed The Absentees Property Law (1950), effectively transferring all
property owned or used by Palestinian refugees to the state, and then denied their right to return
or reclaim their losses. The land grab continued after the 1967 war and military occupation of
Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. In violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Jewish
settlements in the Occupied Territories continue to expand exponentially since 1967.
Furthermore, the most recent violent racist attacks on African immigrants in Israel represent
some of the worst examples of human rights violations. Some 60,000 undocumented workers,
many having fled war-torn or economically devastated countries such as Sudan and Eritrea, are

denied refugee status, subject to deportation and imprisonment for up to a year without trial, and
endure horrifying violence from racist mobs.
The South African experience proves that peace and reconciliation is possible, but will remain
elusive without justice, nor will it be achieved as long as we continue to financially support a
regime that violates international law with impunity. The occupation is illegal, it perpetuates
more than a half century of dispossession, it does not serve the interests of the majority of Israeli
citizens, and it is costing American citizens some three billion dollars a year. The University of
California, a leading global light in public higher education, should not profit from occupation
and dispossession. Divest Now!

Robin D. G. Kelley, PhD

Gary B. Nash Professor of American History
University of California at Los Angeles