By Scott Plous

( Commondreams ) – On Sunday, May 26—as graduating students at my school, Wesleyan University, tossed their caps into the air—bombs rained down on a tent camp for displaced Palestinians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, killing 45 people, including a number of women and children. The weapons that killed them, GBU-39 bombs, were made by Boeing and supplied by the U.S.

“Many of the dead bodies were severely burned, had amputated limbs, and were torn to pieces,” according to a local physician. In addition, the bomb blasts and ensuing fires wounded another 249 people.

The next day, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the bombing a “tragic accident,” but by Tuesday, Israeli shelling and airstrikes killed another 37 Palestinians in the area, most of them sheltering in tents. “We will enter Rafah because we have no other choice,” Mr. Netanyahu had warned earlier, in his campaign to defeat Hamas after last year’s heinous October 7 attack on Israel.

In American terms, this concentration of explosive force would be like dropping five Hiroshima-size bombs over a land mass one quarter the area of Oklahoma City, with triple its population.

It is this mounting civilian death toll—carried out with U.S. weapons—that spurred students to protest and set up encampments in the spring on nearly 140 college campuses, including Wesleyan. Although each encampment was different, student protesters were largely united in calling on their school to divest any holdings in companies supporting the war. The divestment they were calling for was strictly institutional, but as I will explain later, it’s also possible for individuals to carry out acts of divestment on their own.

In the first three months of the war alone, Israel dropped 45,000 bombs on Gaza, the majority of which were designed or manufactured by the United States. Perhaps the most controversial of these weapons is the 2,000-pound “bunker busting” Mark-84 bomb, which has a lethality area equivalent to 58 soccer fields. In the first month of the war, Israel dropped more than 500 Mark-84 bombs, often in densely populated areas, according to a CNN analysis (and these 500 bombs, made by General Dynamics, are only a small fraction of at least 5,000 that the U.S. sent to Israel after the Hamas attack).

As described in a United Nations Human Rights Council report, the explosive blast from a Mark-84 bomb “can rupture lungs, burst sinus cavities, and tear off limbs hundreds of feet from the blast site, according to trauma physicians. When it hits, the [bomb] generates an 8,500-degree fireball, gouges a 20-foot crater as it displaces 10,000 pounds of dirt and rock and generates enough wind to knock down walls blocks away and hurl metal fragments a mile or more.”

All told, the explosive force of munitions Israel has used on Gaza since October 7 is estimated to be 75 kilotons—five times larger than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In the case of Gaza, though, its 141 square-mile territory is less than half the size of Hiroshima. In American terms, this concentration of explosive force would be like dropping five Hiroshima-size bombs over a land mass one quarter the area of Oklahoma City, with triple its population.

One of the most catastrophic results of this bombing is that roughly 1 out of every 133 Palestinian children in Gaza has now been killed—a number which, when scaled to match the U.S. population, would translate into the deaths of more than half a million American children.

It is hard to imagine the bitterness and hatred that such a death toll would generate in the United States, yet only three days into the war, Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Daniel Hagari publicly acknowledged that Israel’s bombing campaign was “focused on what causes maximum damage“—not on the accuracy of where bombs land or the need to minimize collateral damage.

In keeping with that focus, nearly half of all bombs Israel used in Gaza during the first two months of war were unguided, and even U.S. President Joe Biden warned that Israel risked losing international support due to its “indiscriminate bombing.”

Fox 61 Video: “Wesleyan students call for the disclosure and divestment of military weapons funding”

Wesleyan student protesters began sleeping in tents on April 28, and their encampment ultimately grew to more than 100 tents by the time it disbanded on May 20. The tent community was peaceful and advanced a set of demands, the foremost of which was that the university administration disclose its financial investments and then divest from companies and institutions which are supporting or profiting from the war and occupation of Palestinian territory.

As someone with Israeli family members, it pains me to say that I agree with the call for divestment. My agreement is not only because of the profound loss of life on both sides of the war, but for three additional reasons.

(1) Israeli leaders are violating international humanitarian law. Put simply, it’s illegal to starve civilians or willfully impede relief supplies as a method of war. Nonetheless, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu announced on October 18 that “we will not allow humanitarian assistance in the form of food and medicines from our territory to the Gaza Strip.” As a result of that policy, “full-blown famine” hit Northern Gaza by May, according to the executive director of the U.N. World Food Program. Even worse, the program predicts that if the war continues, more than 1 million people (half the population of Gaza) will face life-threatening levels of starvation by mid-July.

Here is what Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court says about starving civilians and impeding relief efforts:

For the purpose of this Statute, “war crimes”… [includes] Intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies.

To be sure, one could argue that Mr. Netanyahu’s statement doesn’t accurately represent the Israeli government’s official position, but several other top leaders have also publicly called for withholding food and humanitarian relief. For instance, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on October 9: “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

Likewise, on October 12 Energy Minister Israel Katz posted this statement on social media: “No electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened, and no fuel truck will enter until the Israeli abductees are returned home.”

And National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has gone on record as saying that it would be a “grave mistake” for the Israeli government to allow “the transfer of humanitarian aid” into Gaza unless Hamas frees Israeli hostages.

There’s a relatively quick and simple step that individual citizens can take, not as a substitute for institutional divestment, but as a complement to it. They can make sure their own financial holdings are divested.

In other words, the starvation of civilians and suspension of humanitarian aid is explicit, sustained, and willful. Even Israel’s closest military ally and defender, the United States, issued a report on May 10 concluding that Israel has “contributed significantly to a lack of sustained and predictable delivery of needed assistance” and likely violated international humanitarian law (for more on that report, and claims by a former U.S. State Department official that it understated violations of international law, see coverage in The Guardian and PBS NewsHour).

Along similar lines, many Americans believe that laws have been broken. A national poll of Americans by The Economist/YouGov in May asked the following question: “Do you think Israel has violated any international laws in Gaza?” Only 28% of respondents answered, “No.”

Indeed, on May 20, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor requested arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, charging them with war crimes and crimes against humanity, and citing violations of Article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. (The prosecutor also sought to arrest three Hamas leaders for a list of crimes that included rape, torture, and kidnapping.)

In addition, the ICC appointed an independent Panel of Experts in International Law to render an opinion on whether there were “reasonable grounds” to believe that crimes had been committed. In its report, the panel unanimously concluded:

[T]here are reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant formed a common plan, together with others, to jointly perpetrate the crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. The Panel has concluded that the acts through which this war crime was committed include… cutting off supplies of electricity and water, and severely restricting food, medicine, and fuel supplies.

Although President Biden called the ICC prosecutor’s charges “outrageous,” the next day a report documented that Israeli soldiers and police officers were tipping off far-right activists about the location of aid trucks delivering vital supplies to Gaza, colluding with vigilantes to block the trucks from reaching their destination. Then, on June 12, a commission established by the U.N. Human Rights Council released a finding that “Israel has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law.”

(2) U.S. taxpayers are funding Israel’s activities in Gaza. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has been the world’s largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, totaling more than $300 billion in American taxpayer money, adjusted for inflation. Moreover, military aid to Israel shows no sign of slowing down. Between 2019 and 2023, nearly 70% of Israeli arms imports came from the U.S., and since the Israel-Hamas war began last year, the U.S. has supplied Israel with weapons via more than 100 arms transfers.

Even after the U.S. State Department released its May 10 report concluding that Israel was likely committing crimes, the U.S. has continued to underwrite Israel’s actions in Gaza with $12.5 billion in military aid during fiscal year 2024—the second-highest level of U.S. military aid ever provided to Israel.

In a very real sense, then, Israel’s war in the Middle East has become America’s war—a joint project, as reflected in the results of a national poll conducted in April. When Americans were asked whether they thought the U.S. was at war in the Middle East, 56% said either yes or they weren’t sure.

By supplying most of the bombs dropped in Gaza while knowing that humanitarian assistance is being withheld, the U.S. is not only morally culpable—it is breaking federal law. Providing military aid to Israel under such circumstances violates Section 620I of the 1961 U.S. Foreign Assistance Act, which bans foreign aid to any country that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

On March 11, eight U.S. senators sent a letter to President Biden raising precisely this concern, and on March 27, six additional members of Congress sent a similar letter reiterating the point:

It is apparent that the Netanyahu government is repeatedly interfering in U.S. humanitarian operations in direct violation of the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961… We [are] imploring you to enforce U.S. law with the Netanyahu government.

Providing Israel with weapons used in the commission of war crimes also violates Article Seven of the Arms Trade Treaty, adopted by the U.N. General Assembly, ratified by 113 states, signed by 28 others (including the U.S. and Israel), and supported by several Nobel Peace Prize recipients, notable among them Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

Nor is the problem limited to the 2,000-pound bombs made by the United States. On June 6, Israel killed at least 40 people—including women and children—with American-made GBU-39 small diameter bombs in an attack on a school where Palestinians were sheltering. One day later, the U.N. publicly announced that it was adding the Israel Defense Forces (as well as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) to a global list of offenders that violate the rights of children. Because the United States is still supplying Israel with lethal weapons while being aware of how the weapons are being used, many people around the world regard the U.S. as complicit.

(3) Divestment can promote political change and moral alignment. Divestment movements have been around since at least 1783, when Quakers urged members of their community to divest their holdings from the slave trade. As explained by sociology professor David S. Meyer:

[T]he idea wasn’t to financially cripple the slave trade. The idea was to get their [own] conduct in line with their beliefs so they could advocate more effectively, sort of a strike against hypocrisy.

Consistent with this explanation, modern-day divestment campaigns rarely have a major financial effect on the targeted countries or businesses, but they can raise public awareness about an issue, signal its urgency, and generate political action. One such political campaign was the global movement to divest from South Africa, which is widely credited as having hastened the end of apartheid in that country and provided a model for the movement to divest from Israel.

When I asked Wesleyan student protesters why they were calling for divestment, some said that they hoped it would help publicize the plight of Palestinians and contribute to political change. Others spoke of moral alignment, saying that they didn’t want Wesleyan to fund or support war crimes. And still others felt that schools should not profit from war, arms sales, or the death of civilians. As climate activist Bill McKibben famously said when explaining the logic behind divesting from fossil fuel companies, “If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from the wreckage.”

Joining the call for divestment also offers a way for student voices to be heard, for protesters to network within and across campuses, and for students to exert more collective leverage than if they act alone. In the case of Wesleyan, for example, students were able to secure a promise from the administration to have the Board of Trustees consider a proposal later this year to divest Wesleyan’s $1.5 billion endowment, $25-30 million of which is currently invested in aerospace and defense businesses.

The Missing Element: Personal Divestment

One of the most powerful aspects of university divestment is that it makes a statement from a respected institution known for its erudition and scholarly expertise. At the same time, a promise to consider divestment is not the same as a promise to divest, and even if a school were to opt for divestment—as Wesleyan has with respect to fossil fuels, and as it may in the future with respect to defense contractors—the process could take months or years to complete, by which time the war in Gaza would presumably have ended.

In the meanwhile, there’s a relatively quick and simple step that individual citizens can take, not as a substitute for institutional divestment, but as a complement to it. They can make sure their own financial holdings are divested.

This is no small thing. American college and university endowments total an estimated $839 billion—an astronomical amount that would have far-reaching political effects if it were divested—but the divestment campaigns on college campuses miss a source of funds 45 times larger: $38.4 trillion in U.S. retirement accounts held by individual employees.

Even after the current war is over, we will be better off in a world that divests from companies selling weapons of mass destruction, fossil fuels, and tobacco products than in a world that financially invests in their growth.

In a matter of minutes, many employees with retirement accounts can divest by moving their assets into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) funds that exclude defense contractors. ESG funds also typically exclude fossil fuel companies, the tobacco industry, and corporations known for worker abuses.

In days gone by, these “socially responsible” or “sustainable” investment funds tended to perform more poorly than broad mutual funds set up to mirror market indexes such as the S&P 500. Not anymore. In fact, according to a New York University meta-analysis of more than 1,000 research papers, today’s ESG funds often outperform other funds.

To take just one example, the Statista Research Department compared the classic S&P 500 index and an ESG S&P 500 index between 2021 and 2024, and it found that by the fourth quarter of 2021, “the S&P 500 ESG index began to steadily outperform the S&P 500 by four points on average.”

A Morgan Stanley study of more than 10,000 mutual funds from 2004 to 2018 also found that ESG funds tend to be less risky than other mutual funds, especially when markets are turbulent. The conclusion, according to the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, is that “incorporating ESG criteria into investment decisions makes good sense financially.”

Of course, not everyone has a retirement fund, but for those who do, these results are reassuring. What they suggest is that individual employees can divest from defense contractors like Boeing and General Dynamics—makers of the GBU-39 and Mark-84 bombs discussed earlier—without compromising retirement savings.

This divestment option applies to a broad range of retirement accounts, including traditional and Roth IRAs, 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, and 457(b) plans. For further details on how to divest, see these tips on how to divest retirement accounts.

All well and good, you might say, but what about after a cease-fire or the war ends—would it still be worth the effort to divest? Without question, my answer is yes. First, cease-fires are often fragile. In the 2014, for example, Israel and Hamas had nine truces, during which more than 2,000 people were killed, before there was a relatively lasting agreement to stop the fighting. And even after the current war is over, we will be better off in a world that divests from companies selling weapons of mass destruction, fossil fuels, and tobacco products than in a world that financially invests in their growth.

Admittedly, personal and institutional divestment are both blunt instruments, and ESG investing has its critics. Nevertheless, ESG investments are growing worldwide and estimated to reach $53 trillion by next year (one third of all global assets under management). The reason for this meteoric growth is not just that ESG investment strategies exclude certain industries. They also embrace prosocial values and goals that are aligned with emergent global regulations, priorities, and needs.

In short, ESG investing is here to stay, and personal divestment can serve as a refusal to support or profit from the use of American-made weapons in Gaza—a small but significant statement. As Mahatma Gandhi reportedly said with respect to the impact of individual actions, “Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”

Scott Plous is professor of psychology at Wesleyan University and founding executive director of Social Psychology Network

Via Commondreams

The Oslo city council announced, “foodstuffs coming from Israeli-occupied areas must be labelled with the area from which the product comes and must indicate that it is from an Israeli settlement, if that is its source.”

The Norwegian government had already made a rule in 2022 that goods from the Occupied Territories could not be marked “Made in Israel,” only those produced inside Israel within its 1949 borders.

It may not be an accident that Oslo made this decision now. Daniel Boguslaw at The Intercept raised the question of whether the far, far right government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which is filled with open racists, fascists and Jewish supremacists, might be the best ally the movement for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel has ever had. Global headlines have been full of the hate filled comments of cabinet ministers such as Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir. Smotrich urged the ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian hamlet.

The Geneva Convention on occupied territories of 1949 and the Rome Statute that created the International Criminal Court in 2002 both strictly forbid countries that occupy the territory of neighbors in wartime from settling their own citizens in this territory. The stricture came in response to atrocities committed by the Axis powers in World War II, as when Germany occupied Poland in 1939 and settled it with German citizens even as the Nazis killed and displaced Poles– in a bid to make Poland German and “Aryan” and to wipe out Slavs.

Israeli authorities have since the 1970s assiduously ignored international law and have subsidized the settling of hundreds of thousands of squatters on privately owned Palestinian farms, orchards and town property. At the same time, the Israeli state permanently locked some 300,000 Palestinians out of the West Bank and Gaza and has exerted various forms of pressure on them to emigrate abroad. They have also illegally annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem and part of the Palestinian West Bank near it, into which they are also putting squatters. Israeli squatter settlements are Jews-only and discriminate against Palestinian residents in Palestine itself.

Oslo’s principled stand is the form of BDS that I favor.

Via Pixabay: Oslo, file.

That is, I don’t think it is fair to boycott ordinary Israelis, many of whom do not like the squatters or their goals. Israel sits in the United Nations as a recognized state, and Oslo is not interested in boycotting companies or products produced in the state as it came into the UN, under the borders of the 1949 armistice. However, virtually everything Israeli authorities have done in the West Bank and Gaza since they were seized in 1967 has been grossly illegal. Worse, Israeli authorities have deprived the occupied Palestinians of the basic right to citizenship in the state, keeping them without even the right to have rights.

Much post-war international law was passed in an attempt to implement a “Never Again” policy — no more aggressive wars, no more annexations of neighbors’ territory, no more genocides against minorities such as Jews, Romani, gays and Poles. In flouting international law, Israeli authorities undermine their own alleged commitment to the principle of “Never again.” They have launched aggressive wars, displaced hundreds of thousands of people (who now have 11 million descendants), illegally annexed territory, and have squatted on occupied territory. The Holocaust can be viewed through the lens of Jewish nationalism or Zionism, such that it becomes a justification for Jews to refuse to be bound by international law or yield to outside pressure. Or it can be viewed through the lens of a humanist universalism, such that it is one of many horrific genocides in the twentieth century — the Armenian, the Polish, the Cambodian, and so forth — and the lesson we take away from it is not a Likud or Religious Zionism ‘get out of jail free’ card allowing the flouting of all laws and norms but the urgent necessity of upholding the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, and the Rome Statute with a determination that the lawlessness of the Nazis, of Mussolini’s black shirts, and of the Japanese imperial armed forces should never be repeated.

Oslo’s boycott is in furtherance of a rules-based international order, and is therefore highly praiseworthy.

By responding to the Palestinian call for boycotting apartheid Israel, the ice cream giant has delivered a blow to Israel’s attempts at criminalising and, ultimately, ending the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

What differentiates Ben & Jerry’s decision to abandon the ever-growing market of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank from previous decisions by other international corporations is the fact that the ice cream company has made it clear that its move was morally motivated. Indeed, Ben & Jerry’s did not attempt to mask or delude their decision in any way. “We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” a statement by the Vermont, US-based company read on 19 July.

Expectedly, the Israeli government was infuriated by the decision, especially as it comes after years of a well-funded, state-sponsored, global campaign to discredit, demonise and altogether outlaw the BDS movement and any similar initiatives that aimed at boycotting Israel.

For years, the Israeli government has viewed the boycott movement as a real, tangible threat. Some Israeli officials went as far as perceiving the ‘delegitimisation’ resulting from the boycott campaign as the primary threat faced by Israel at the present time. Well attended conferences were held in Las Vegas, Brussels, Jerusalem and elsewhere, hundreds of millions of dollars raised, fiery speeches delivered, while politicians and ‘philanthropists’ lined up at many occasions, vowing their undying allegiance to Israel and accusing anyone who dare criticise the ‘Jewish State’ of ‘anti-Semitism’.

However, Israel’s biggest challenge was, and remains, its near complete reliance on the support of self-serving politicians. True, those ‘friends of Israel’ can be quite helpful in formulating laws that, for example, falsely equate between criticising Israel and anti-Semitism, or render the act of boycott illegal, and so on. In fact, many US states and European parliaments have bowed down to Israeli pressure to criminalise the BDS movement and its supporters, whether in the realm of business or even at the level of civil society and individuals. All of this is amounting to very little.

Additionally, Israel doubled down on its attempts to control the narrative in mainstream media, in academia and wherever the anti-Israeli occupation debate proved to be consequential. Through a Kafkaesque, and often bizarre logic, Israel and its supporters deliberately misinterpreted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, applying it at every platform where criticism of Israel or its Zionist ideology is found. The reckless Israeli dialectics was, sadly – albeit predictably – embraced by many of Israel’s Western benefactors, including the US, Canada and Italy, among others.

Yet, none of this has ended or even slowed down the momentum of the Palestinian boycott movement. This fact should hardly come as a surprise, for boycott movements are fundamentally designed to circumvent governmental control and to place pressure on politicians, state and corporate apparatuses, so that they may heed the calls of civil society. Thus, the more Israel attempts to use its allies to illegalise, delegitimise and suppress dissent, the more it actually fuels it.

The above is the secret of the BDS success and Israel’s very Achilles’ heel. By ignoring the boycott campaign, the movement grows exponentially; and by fighting it, using traditional means and predictable language, it grows even faster.

In order to appreciate Tel Aviv’s unsolvable quandary, just marvel at this odd response, which was offered by top Israeli officials in response to Ben & Jerry’s decision. Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, warned the British company that acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, of “severe consequences”, threatening that Israel will take “strong action”, most likely referring to legal action.

But what was truly strange was the language used by Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, who accused Ben & Jerry’s of participating in “a new form of terrorism”, namely, “economic terrorism”. On 21 July, Herzog vowed to fight “this boycott and terrorism in any form.”

Note how the Israeli response to the continued success of the Palestinian boycott movement remains confined in terms of options and language. Yet on the legal front, most attempts at indicting BDS activists have repeatedly failed, as the recent court rulings in Washington demonstrate. On the other hand, the act of accusing an ice cream company of ‘terrorism’ deserves some serious examination.

Historically, Israel has situated its anti-Palestinian propaganda war within a handful of redundant terminology, predicated on the claim that Israel is a Jewish and democratic state, the security and very existence of which is constantly being threatened by terrorists and undermined by anti-Semites.

The above mantra may have succeeded in shielding Israel from criticism and tarnishing Israel’s victims, the Palestinians. However, it is no longer a guarantor of international sympathy and solidarity. Not only is the Palestinian struggle for freedom gaining global traction, but the pro-Israeli discourse is finally discovering its limitations.

By calling an ice cream company ‘terrorist’ for simply adhering to international law, Herzog has revealed the growing lack of credibility and absurdity of the official Israeli language.

But this is not the end of Israel’s problems. Regardless of whether they are branded successful or unsuccessful, all BDS campaigns are equally beneficial in the sense that each campaign kickstarts a conversation that often goes global, as we have seen repeatedly in the past. Airbnb, G4S, and SodaStream, are but a few of many such examples. Any global debate on Israel’s military occupation and apartheid is a BDS success story.

That said, there is one strategy that will surely end the BDS campaign, and that is ending the Israeli occupation, dismantling the racial system of apartheid and giving Palestinians their freedom as enshrined and protected by international law. Alas, this is the only strategy that Israeli officials are yet to consider.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

MSNBC: “Mehdi Hasan Rants On Ben & Jerry’s Israel Drama”

After years of BDS campaign appeals to them, the US ice cream maker declared that it would no longer be selling its products in Israeli settlements in the West Bank – on stolen Palestinian land, in other words.

The BDS movement has welcomed the move as a step in the right direction, calling on Ben and Jerry’s to go further and withdraw from Israel altogether.

Palestine’s BDS National Committee (or BNC) said it was: “A decisive step towards ending the company’s complicity in Israel’s occupation and violations of Palestinian rights.”

The BNC hailed the company for: “Finally bringing its policy on Israel’s regime of oppression against Palestinians in line with its progressive positions on Black Lives Matter and other justice struggles.”

Starting as a small business in Vermont, Ben and Jerry’s has a reputation as a socially responsible company. It has an official policy of support for the Black Lives Matter movement, declaring in 2016 that: “Systemic and institutionalised racism are the defining civil rights and social justice issues of our time.”

Although it broadly welcomed Ben and Jerry’s move on Monday, the BNC concluded its statement calling for the company to do more and to: “End all operations in apartheid Israel.”

The Israeli licensee for Ben and Jerry’s told reporters that he had declined the US company’s request to end its supply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank. “I refuse it,” he said, stating that such an action would likely fall foul of Israel’s anti-BDS laws. As such, the licencing agreement it has with its Israeli distributor – which ends at the end of next year – will not be renewed.

Some activists on social media were unimpressed, demanding that Ben and Jerry’s withdraw from Israel altogether.

In my view, it was at least a step in the right direction, and the company is soon going to come up against the sharp wall of Israel’s support for its West Bank settlements. The West Bank settlements are Israel – and the reality is that all of Israel is a settlement. The West Bank settlements are fully integrated into Israel’s economy, laws and state infrastructure.

Palestinians in the West Bank, of course, are fully discriminated against by Israel’s apartheid system. Indigenous Palestinians living in the same areas as the newly-arrived Israeli settlers illegally squatting on their stolen land have none of the same rights as the Israelis.

That is a prime example of exactly why Israel is an apartheid system.

The reactions from Israeli government officials, politicians and anti-Palestinian propagandists in the West have been nothing short of unhinged.

Israel lobbyist Ian Austin (a former MP who left the Labour Party over Jeremy Corbyn’s support of Palestinian rights and who relentlessly smeared the former leader as “anti-Semitic”) tweeted openly anti-Palestinian racism, mocking up a fake Ben and Jerry’s ice cream tub that included the name of Hamas.

Former prime minister and opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared – with no sense of irony or self-awareness – a boycott of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.

The current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, dubbed Ben and Jerry’s an “anti-Israel ice cream” and declared that the government would fight the boycott “with all our might“.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid (a former TV news host) smeared the ice cream maker as anti-Semitic and demanded that states in the US with anti-BDS laws apply them in this case.

In reality, every single time that US states’ anti-BDS laws have been brought before superior courts, they have been repealed as blatantly unconstitutional. Five states have already done so.

Israel’s president – supposedly a “moderate” – threw an even wilder tantrum, claiming the frozen dessert maker’s actions were “a new kind of terrorism“.

There is going to be a reckoning: it is almost certainly going to be impossible for Ben and Jerry’s to supply companies in “Israel proper” only, and not to West Bank settlements. In practice, the Israeli economy makes no distinction between the two. Ben and Jerry’s is ultimately going to have to make one of two decisions: to reverse the announcement it made on Monday, or to withdraw from Israel altogether. We must ensure it makes the latter.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Middle East Monitor

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

WION: “The West Asia Post | Meltdown over ice cream in Israel”

In 2019 documentary film-maker Abby Martin was invited to speak at a planned 2020 conference at Georgia Southern University and offered a $1000 honorarium plus travel expenses. Judge Cohen’s judgement says, “One week later, a professor at GSU and conference co-chair emailed several professors at other academic institutions to inform them that Martin had been selected as the keynote speaker for the Conference.In that email, the professor referred to Martin as a “fantastic Key Note,” and planning for the Conference continued.”

But before GSU could pay her, they needed her to sign a pledge that she would not boycott Israel. Martin, who later did a documentary on Gaza and views Israel as a settler-colonial apartheid state, refused to sign the pledge. Cohen writes,

“Martin responded the same day, stating:

‘I’m sure you know, a lot of my work advocates the boycott of Israel, and my new film features that call to action.I cannot sign any form promising not to boycott Israel.’

As a result,Defendants prevented Martin from speaking at the Conference and receiving the$1,000 honorarium, and subsequently cancelled the Conference.

.As a result, Martin was deprived of her ability to speak on the GSU campus, to receive the honorarium, and to showcase her work.”

The GSU invitation was then withdrawn and the conference she was to have addressed, on critical media theory, was canceled.

Then governor Nathan Deal had signed SB 327 into law in 2016. It obligated any person or company that contracted with the state of Georgia for services of $1000 or more to vow not to boycott the Israeli government as a result of its treatment of Palestinians.

Judge Cohen’s ruling concluded,

“The requirement contained in O.C.G.A. § 50-5-85 that parties seeking to contract with the state of Georgia sign a certification that they are not engaged in a boycott of Israel also is unconstitutional compelled speech. “[W]hen a State attempts to make inquiries about a person’s beliefs or associations, its power is limited by the First Amendment. Broad and sweeping state inquiries into these protected areas . . . discourage citizens from exercising rights protected by the Constitution.” Baird v. State Bar of Ariz. 401 U.S. 1, 6 (1971). “Similarly, the State may not condition employment ‘on an oath denying past, or abjuring future/protected speech and associational activities.” Amawi, 373 F. Supp. 3d at 754(quoting Cole, 405 U.S. at 680).Because O.C.G.A. § 50-5-85 discriminates based on the motive for engaging in a boycott against Israel, the certification requirement forces parties contracting21Case 1:20-cv-00596-MHC Document 53 Filed 05/21/21 Page 21 of 29 with the state of Georgia to publicly assign a motive and speech element to what Defendants deem merely economic conduct. The certification that one is not engaged in a boycott of Israel is no different that requiring a person to espouse certain political beliefs or to engage in certain political associations. The Supreme Court has found similar requirements to be unconstitutional on their face.”

It is fascinating the degree to which Cohen’s ruling depended for its reasoning on the previous federal district court decisions striking down anti-boycott laws relating to Israel in Kansas, Texas and Arizona.

These rulings underlined the importance of Claiborne (1982), and Cohen concurred.

I pointed out that without political boycotts the Civil Rights movement might well not have succeeded. Charles Evers and the NAACP boycotted Claiborne Hardware store in Mississippi, and the Supreme Court upheld their right to do so, writing, “While States have broad power to regulate economic activities, there is no comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case.”

Martin gained the backing of the Georgia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations {CAIR) and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund in launching a lawsuit against the state, alleging that requiring her to sign that pledge violated her first amendment rights.

What is not widely understood is that professors, journalists and others who speak at state universities are considered contractors with the state, so that this law directly interfered with freedom of speech and academic freedom. Most such speakers cannot afford to fly around giving public talks on their own dime, so if the university cannot pick up the tab, those ideas don’t get shared. And, further note that the speaker would not be necessarily speaking on Israel-Palestine. Some people who have been economically harmed by these bills who don’t in fact boycott Israel, but simply won’t sign a loyalty pledge of any sort since it injures their constitutional rights.

The University of Arkansas-Pulaski Technical College “cancelled their ads with Little Rock’s Arkansas Times because owner Alan Leveritt won’t sign a pledge that his business does not boycott Israel. Leveritt doesn’t boycott Israel, but he considers a state law passed by Arkansas and 27 other states to be unconstitutional and he would rather risk his business than surrender his First Amendment rights.” The federal 8th circuit court eventually struck down the Arkansas law, though it is still in litigation.

The Georgia law is one of 38 passed by state legislatures around the United States. Whenever they have been challenged in court they have been struck down. The laws have been pushed by the US Israel lobbies, likely in conjunction with the Israeli government itself, in a frontal assault on the US constitution and American freedoms of expression and the press. The groups include Agudath Israel of America, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, American Jewish Committee, Israel Action Network, Israel Allies Foundation, Israel Project, Israeli-American Coalition for Action, (IAC for Action) an offshoot to the Israeli-American Council (IAC, Jewish Federations of North America, StandWithUs, Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Zionist Organization of America. Jewish Americans in earlier decades had been absolutely crucial to the expansion of American liberties under the First Amendment, and Judge Cohen stands in that proud tradition. It is sad to see this hard line pro-Likud section of them now attempt to impose a Communist-style censorship on other Americans.

This country began with the Boston Tea Party, which was a boycott of the British East India Company.

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Bonus Video:

The Humanist Report: “Abby Martin WINS Lawsuit Against Georgia—Court Strikes Down Their Anti-BDS Law”

In a bid to please his evangelical constituency and potential Jewish big money backers like Sheldon Adelson, Pompeo made two announcements. He declared that goods produced by the Israeli squatter settlers on Palestinian property (which they have stolen from living Palestinian families), and which are imported into the US, will be labeled “Made in Israel.” In contrast, the European Union’s highest court has ruled that goods produced by Israeli squatters on the West Bank must be labeled as such when imported into Europe.

Pompeo also pledged to deny Federal funds to any group that advocates the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel for its Apartheid policies and war crimes against the Palestinian people.

The far right wing Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has been attempting to destroy the US First Amendment for years, so as to push through laws in the US that would forbid criticism of Israel. In Trump and Pompeo he has found willing accomplices.

State legislatures have also attempted to deny funding to individuals and organizations that practice BDS toward Israel, and the courts have consistently struck down these unconstitutional laws. Likewise, the European Court of Human Rights has struck down French government attempts to penalize BDS advocates, in a landmark decision this past summer that affects all 27 EU member states. (See below for more on this).

The WaPo reporters note that neither policy will likely survive more than than the two months the Trump administration has left in office.

What they don’t say is that the denial of funds to BDS advocates is unconstitutional, and would be struck down even by the present the Supreme Court if it remained in place.

A further important point: White supremacists have been trying to ban boycotts since the Civil Rights Movement, and Pompeo’s measures on Thursday were intended to weaken that key First Amendment right.

I have explained before:

Boycotts aren’t illegal, and we have Supreme Court cases to prove it . . .
The key case is NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware.

Wikipedia explains,

[I]n 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, and a young black man, Roosevelt Jackson was shot and killed by two Port Gibson police officers. On April 19, 1968, the field secretary of the NAACP for Mississippi, Charles Evers, led a march to the Claiborne County courthouse and demanded that the entire Port Jefferson police force be discharged When the demand was not met, the boycott on the merchants was [imposed]. On April 21, Evers made a speech in which he said, “If we catch any of you going into these racist stores, we’re going to break your damn neck . . .

“In a decision by Justice Stevens, the Supreme Court reversed the Supreme Court of Mississippi’s decision, holding that the nonviolent elements of the petitioners’ activities were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and holding that the petitioners were not liable in damages for the consequences of their nonviolent, protected activity. This decision means that “boycotts and related activities to bring about political, social and economic change are political speech, occupying “the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”

The Supreme Court found for the NAACP and against Claiborne Hardware in 1982: “While States have broad power to regulate economic activities, there is no comparable right to prohibit peaceful political activity such as that found in the boycott in this case.”

It is important to explain that Israel militarily occupied the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza in 1967, even though the civilian populations there were not active in the Six Day War, which was fought among states. International law, as with the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, envisages relatively short military occupations. It forbids the occupying power to alter the life ways of the occupied population, and strictly prohibits the settling of the Occupier’s population in the occupied territory.

h/t Wikimedia..

The Geneva Convention’s outlawing of settling the occupied territory was intended to prevent schemes like the one Nazi Germany attempted to implement in Poland once it invaded and occupied it, whereby Berlin sought to expel the Poles and replace them with ethnic Germans, creating a greater Germany that stretched east, and erasing the Polish nationality.

Netanyahu wants to prevent criticism of his government for its monstrous plan forever to keep Palestinians stateless and without rights, and to gradually displace them by Israeli squatters. The Founding Fathers’ First Amendment is extremely inconvenient for him, and thus he wants to chip away at it, deploying sleazy politicians like Pompeo.

I wrote earlier,

Economic boycotts have been part and parcel of American political striving for liberty from the beginning. I have three words for you: Boston Tea Party. What do you think the American colonists were doing when they tossed 342 chests of British tea into the harbor? They were boycotting, divesting and sanctioning the injustice of King George III.

Two Federal judges have already found state laws that attempt to punish companies or individuals for boycotting Israel unconstitutional, one in Kansas and one in Arizona.

When Kansas fired Mennonite school teacher Esther Koontz from a program to train other teachers over her refusal to certify that she doesn’t boycott Israel (she does), the ACLU took the case to court and a Federal judge struck down the Kansas statute. The state legislature then reformulated so that it only affected big businesses under certain circumstances, which is also unconstitutional, but made it a little unlikely that the law would affect anyone.

The same tactic is being pursued in the Arizona legislature, after a broad anti-boycott law was struck down by the courts. The GOP is now redoing the law in such a way that it is unlikely to affect anyone in the real world and so unlikely to be further challenged.

Of course they are unconstitutional. They are also racist, aimed at keeping brown Palestinians down.

It should be noted that the laws do not only punish companies. Most states treat individuals providing them services as companies categorized as “sole proprietors.” University professors invited to speak on campus in the states with these horrid laws have been asked to sign statements they don’t boycott Israel before being allowed to speak. These procedures are the most dangerous assault on free speech in the United States since the McCarthy era.

As for the European Court of Human Rights, here is that story:

The French government actually arrested some members of the Left Front (Front de Gauche) political coalition, which has seats in the French National Assembly and in the European Union, for boycotting Israel, charging them with engaging in discriminatory practices. The Israeli far right, which is about as racist as the come, cynically manipulates public opinion in Europe and the US by claiming that criticizing its war crimes against Palestinians is a form of racial bigotry directed at Jews. This ridiculous charge is often actually taken seriously by people who should know better, including, apparently a French magistrate.

The defendants in the French case took it to the European Court of Human Rights, which on Thursday struck down the French court decision with prejudice, saying it had “no relevant and sufficient grounds,” and ordered the French government to pay over $100,000 in damages to the defendants. Since the decision affects all 27 EU member states, it is a huge defeat for the Israeli far right, and a big victory in Europe for freedom of speech.

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Bonus Video:

TRT World: “American journalist banned for rejecting pledge to not boycott Israel”

The decision on June 19, 2020, by two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee, continues a string of victories for the ASA in a case it has defended since April 2016. Thomas C. Mugavero of Whiteford, Taylor & Preston L.L.P. argued the cause for appellees with counsel on the joint brief from Mark Allen Kleiman, and Maria C. LaHood and Shayana D. Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Background
In December 2013, with the recognition that “there is no effective or substantive academic freedom for Palestinian students and scholars under conditions of Israeli occupation” and that “Israeli institutions of higher learning are a party to Israeli state policies that violate human rights,” the ASA’s National Council endorsed “the call of Palestinian civil society for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.” This resolution was ratified by the ASA’s membership with a vote of 66.05% “yes,” 30.5% “no,” and 3.43% “abstain.”

The ASA has previously won dismissal of two cases in New York brought by Israeli organizations, the International Legal Forum (ILF) and Athenaeum Blue & White. (The latter was incorporated by David Abrams on the day he filed the lawsuit. Founder of the Zionist Advocacy Center, which is a registered foreign agent for the ILF, Abrams has sued a wide range of entities, including the Carter Center, the National Lawyers Guild, the City of Durham, and at least three universities. He also petitioned the IRS to revoke the charitable status of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors without Borders.)

In their lawsuits alleging ASA’s boycott resolution and activities violate state and city human rights laws, the ILF and Abrams complained that the ASA does not permit Israeli organizations to become members, despite ILF’s admission that it never attempted to apply for membership and Abrams admission that his group’s application was fulfilled by ASA. The courts ruled that these organizations, having suffered no injury, had no standing to sue the ASA. The judge in Manhattan went a step further to opine: “Moreover, even if ILF’s claims were ripe, this court strains to see how ASA’s actions, as alleged by ILF, would not be protected under ASA’s right to freedom of association.”
The United States Court of Appeals’ recent decision in Bronner, et al. v. Duggan, et al, caps a succession of rejections of the Plaintiffs’ claims and arguments in the federal courts.

• In March 2017, the district court dismissed “derivative claims” brought by the Bronner, et al., who made a failed attempt to represent what they claimed were the interests of the ASA.
• By February 2019, the district court dismissed all remaining claims against the ASA, including the “ultra vires” claim in which Bronner, et al., accused the ASA of violating its own express purposes and bylaws in passing, implementing, and defending the boycott resolution.
• As the court noted, Bronner, et al., also claimed “that—merely by their position as ASA members—they are entitled to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the ASA and individual defendants for alleged misuse related to the boycott resolution. The ASA’s successful repudiation of this claim—made by academics who, while burdening the ASA with legal fees for several years, profess to be concerned about the ASA’s well-being—has protected these resources for the interests of our organization and the concerns of our diverse membership.

New Court of Appeals Ruling
With its ruling of June 19, 2020, the Court of Appeals has thoroughly rejected the arguments of Bronner, et al, to overturn these dismissals. It twice cited Bronner, Rockland, Kupfer, and Barton for stretching the relevance of case law “too far” and elsewhere opined that “the case law does not corroborate their unsupported assertions.” It repudiated the attempts of Bronner, et al., to utilize a valid direct claim as a “Trojan horse to sneak” invalid “derivative claims past the bulwarks of the federal courts.” The Court also rejected the plaintiffs’ claims for punitive damages. What may be of particular interest to ASA members is the court’s ruling denying the standing of Bronner, et al., to have their case heard in federal court based on the value of their alleged damages. “The Professors have provided nothing beyond a bare-bones assertion of jurisdictional sufficiency,” the judges declared, “to suggest that the monetary damages arising from their direct claims even remotely approach [the required threshold of] $75,000.” In other words, even if one took the major leap to assume that their claims were valid for the sake of argument, Bronner, et al., were deemed to have wildly overstated the maximum potential value of the damages they claimed to have suffer.
The decision by the federal Court of Appeals points out that that Bronner, et al., despite having multiple opportunities to do so, have offered no evidence that they suffered in any measurable way from decisions ASA leaders have made from the passage of the boycott resolution to the filing of their complaints. Regarding their apparent inability to identify any actual damages, the federal Court of Appeals noted:

“The Professors nowhere explain how they have suffered economic or reputational damage. They assert no loss of standing within their universities. They do not purport to have been denied tenure, promotions or other prestigious honors. Nor do they claim to have had their writings rejected by academic journals.”

This repeated failure by Bronner, et. al, moved the Court to cite a passage from a prior case: “a litigant has an obligation to spell out its arguments squarely and distinctly, or else forever hold its peace.”

Forward in this Generation
Although this victory leaves other pending litigation unresolved, the ASA will keep moving forward in these urgent times. We will continue to defend our work, our reputation, and our members who come under attack. We will continue to form principled alliances in the interests of academic freedom and social justice. Through our meetings, journal, elections, chapters, committees, caucuses, and other communications, we will continue to host dialogue, debate, and disagreement among those who value and appreciate critical and engaged scholarship that rises to the challenges of this moment in history.

We thank you for your solidarity and support.

Link to the opinion filed by Judge Henderson: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cadc/19-7017/19-7017-2020-06-19.html

Via American Studies Association

Reprinted with permission.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

American Studies Association: “#2019ASA Decolonizing Methodologies: 20 Years of Research for Indigenous Peoples and Social Justice”

The Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC) called for the action to mark the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as part of its “Apartheid Off Campus” campaign, which seeks to highlight how universities’ investment and partnership policies tacitly support and enable Israel’s ongoing violations of international law and human rights.

Actions include rallies, marches and banner drops, as well as a range of creative actions such as the construction of a Separation Wall and staging a die in.

“We’re joining thousands of students across the UK taking action today because we believe students should have a say in the investments and partnerships made by their universities, and we do not want those links to contribute to the ongoing oppression of Palestinian people,” Chair of KCL Action Palestine Society Zobia Shahid said.

READ: Repression of the BDS movement is a sure sign of its success

“At KCL, we’ve just launched a campaign against the university’s links with the Technion which has helped create machines which destroy Palestinian homes. We will not accept this happening in our name,” she added.

Huda Ammori, campaigns officer at the PSC, said: “Despite most institutions holding ‘social responsibility policies’ which often include restrictions on investing in companies who conduct business which leads to human rights violations, UK universities remain deeply complicit with Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. In the face of such blatant hypocrisy by UK universities, students are doing vital work holding their institutions to account and demanding they live up to their word.”

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

The Real News: “Historian Ilan Pappe of Exeter U.: ‘We Need Sustained International Pressure on Israel’ Pt. 2”