{"id":54913,"date":"2015-03-09T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=54913"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:26:00","slug":"ohio-students-approve-israel-divestment-vote-by-landslide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/03\/ohio-students-approve-israel-divestment-vote-by-landslide\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio Students Approve Israel Divestment Vote by Landslide"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday [3 Mar 2015] night, the student government at the University of Toledo<\/a> in Ohio<\/a>\u00a0approved\u00a0a resolution to divest from companies which profit from Israeli violations of Palestinians\u2019 rights. The resolution passed\u00a0with 21 student senators in favor and only four against.<\/p>\n

This comes just two weeks after a divestment resolution hearing was muzzled<\/a> and ruled \u201cunconstitutional\u201d by the student government\u2019s judicial council at the university. On Tuesday night, the judicial council reconsidered its\u00a0original decision and found that the divestment resolution was\u00a0indeed constitutional.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe differences were stark between what happened this week and what happened [on 19 February],\u201d said Derek Ide, co-founder of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Toledo (UT-SJP), in an interview with The Electronic Intifada on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n

Ide said that students led a strong campaign over the last two weeks to demand transparency and democratic process from the student government and the university administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful coalition\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before the initial hearing on 19 February, the university administration had insisted<\/a> that discussions on the resolution be conducted in a secretive manner. During that\u00a0meeting, students supporting and opposing the resolution were prevented\u00a0from hearing each others\u2019 viewpoints.<\/p>\n

These processes were heavily criticized by students, activists and legal advocates with the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Solidarity Legal Support<\/a> as violations of open democratic process and students\u2019 first amendment rights.<\/p>\n

A petition<\/a> supporting students\u2019 right to hold a divestment hearing was circulated via the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and garnered more than 5,400 signatures.<\/p>\n

During Tuesday\u2019s hearing, students from a diverse array of groups and communities on campus were allowed to deliver personal testimonies in favor of divestment.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very liberating experience,\u201d Ide said. \u201cThe UT Divest team had a beautiful coalition of human beings who put together articulate, very powerful arguments that swept the opposition away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hillel<\/a>, a nationwide network of campus centers for Jewish students which opposes boycott and sanctions efforts against Israel, brought in the Jewish Federation of Toledo<\/a> to help crush support for the resolution. The group is affiliated with a national network called the Jewish Federations of North America<\/a> (JFNA).<\/p>\n

In 2010, JFNA and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched<\/a> the \u201cIsrael Action Network,\u201d described as \u201ca multimillion-dollar joint initiative to combat anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns<\/a>\u201d and to fight \u201cthe delegitimizing of the State of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students affiliated with Hillel repeated \u201cthe same canned speeches from two weeks ago,\u201d Ide explained. Those speeches, he said, included claims that passing a divestment resolution would \u201cincrease anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut none of the senators bought it,\u201d Ide added. Listen to the interview with him via the media player above.<\/p>\n

\u201cVerbal thuggery\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

During the initial hearing on 19 February, several student senators repeated claims touted by Israel-aligned organizations that the divestment resolution could inspire \u201cdiscrimination\u201d toward Jewish students on campus.<\/p>\n

Opponents of the resolution this Tuesday night asserted that the resolution unfairly \u201csingled out\u201d Israel, another allegation repeated by Israel-aligned organizations which is designed to defeat student divestment campaigns.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the campus newspaper, the Independent Collegian<\/em>, Ide said<\/a> that \u201cIt is not us [SJP] who singles out Israel. It is Hillel and AIPAC<\/a> and every other defender of Israeli crimes who wants Israel to maintain a special status, a status that places them above international law and unaccountable to the norms and standards of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barbara Harvey, a Detroit-based attorney active in the National Lawyers Guild<\/a> and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace<\/a> told The Electronic Intifada by email that \u201cthe rehearing of SJP\u2019s divestment resolution was an object lesson in the power of free speech and fair play, when justice and humanity are on your side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harvey\u00a0said that students speaking in support of the resolution \u201ctold of moving personal experiences, ranging from direct contact with the occupation, close up, to discrimination in the modern US, explaining their own commitments to justice for Palestinians. The opposition\u2019s responses by Hillel and the local Jewish Federation rested on a foundation of guilt-tripping accusations of discrimination and sometimes wildly inaccurate factual assertions, fairly characterized as verbal thuggery.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ball is now squarely in the university\u2019s court,\u201d Harvey noted. \u201cWill the trustees show the same courage as SJP and the student government in considering whether to implement the resolution?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCollapsed\u201d to pressure<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ide told The Electronic Intifada that although the administration has not reached out to SJP about the ways in which democratic process was subverted two weeks ago, the student government leaders \u201ctried their best to rectify what happened [when they] completely collapsed [to pressure from the administration].\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that the student government leaders \u201cdid as much as they could last night to make the debate last night as open and transparent and as democratic as possible, given the structural constraints of student government.\u201d<\/p>\n

The University of Toledo\u2019s divestment victory has become the third resolution passed by student governments in just the last two weeks, alongside Northwestern University<\/a> and Stanford University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The entire divestment hearing was recorded on YouTube:<\/p>\n

httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=SkT2RTndz-c<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 electronicintifada.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Tuesday [3 Mar 2015] the student government at the University of Toledo in Ohio approved a resolution to divest from companies which profit from Israeli violations of Palestinians\u2019 rights. The resolution passed with 21 student senators in favor and only four against.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}