What is BDS? What are its demands?

BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions, and is a way to isolate and stigmatize the companies and groups perpetuating Israeli apartheid. BDS demands that institutions remove their investments from companies that finance apartheid, boycott products from companies involved in the violation of Palestinian human rights, and pressure governments to fulfil their legal obligation to hold Israel accountable through sanctions.​

Definitions of each strategy from the BDS Movement website:

Boycott - “withdrawing support for Israel and Israeli and international companies that are involved in the violation of Palestinian human rights, as well as complicit Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions”

Divestment - “campaigns urge banks, local councils, churches, pension funds and universities to withdraw investments from all Israeli companies and from international companies involved in violating Palestinian rights”

Sanctions - “pressure governments to fulfil their legal obligation to hold Israel to account including by ending military trade, free-trade agreements and expelling Israel from international forums such as the UN and FIFA”

Why say “Apartheid” in addition to Occupation?

Apartheid describes the broader settler-colonial project of the State of Israel, which includes its treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel. Using the word “apartheid” illuminates the lived realities of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and within the 1948 borders, and allows us to address the root of the problem - the colonization of indigenous lands by a non-indigenous population - in addition to fighting to end the Occupation. It connotes a commitment to Palestinian sovereignty in a broad and deep sense, including by affirming the right of Palestinian refugees in the diaspora to return to their homeland.

Why have a BDS campaign at Swarthmore?

We believe that Swarthmore has a moral imperative to divest from companies profiting from human rights violations in occupation and apartheid in Israel/Palestine. By remaining invested in these companies, we tacitly and financially support the illegal and immoral activities in which these companies are engaged. As an American institution, we have a particular responsibility to examine the ways in which we are complicit in. The US is the largest backer of the occupation, including through $38 billion in military aid over the next ten years and defense of Israeli policies at the UN.

Additionally, we live in a globalized world in which products, ideas, and mentalities are rapidly spread around the world. The militarism, discrimination, and disregard for human rights that these companies display affects people in every country. We want to change the culture of corporate accountability to start holding companies responsible for their actions.

Will this negatively impact financial aid?

No. There are three ways in which Swarthmore claims that divestment might cause a loss of money. The first is if the stocks we reinvest in perform lower than the ones we divested from, the second is because a less diversified stock performs more poorly, and the last is the cost of switching financial managers in order to divest. But all of these quickly turn out to be fallacious: we can reinvest in other companies that perform at a similar rate, which addresses the issue of diversification and returns, and we can choose to ask our existing investment managers to screen for these 8 companies at the earliest opportunity.  There is no reason to believe that divesting would lose Swarthmore money.

However, even if this does cause negative financial impacts for Swarthmore— and there’s no reason to believe that it will— the choice to cut financial aid is a choice of the administration. Creating a false dichotomy between supporting low income students and living by the principles we espouse is a tactic to divide the student body.

How does BDS address anti-Semitism?

“BDS is an inclusive, anti-racist human rights movement that is opposed on principle to all forms of discrimination, including anti-semitism and Islamophobia.” (from the official BDS Movement website)

“It specifically targets oppressive policies and the institutions and companies that uphold them, not Jewish people. Criticism of Jews for being Jews is anti-Semitic; criticism of the state of Israel is not. The Israeli government encourages the dangerous conflation of all Jews with Israel. When Prime Minister Netanyahu claims to represent all Jews, he furthers such misperceptions. Israel does not represent all Jews, and nearly 25% of Israel’s citizens are not Jewish.” (from JVP’s “A Guide to Difficult Conversations About Israel and Palestine”)

How do you expect the administration to respond to this campaign?

We’ve seen that student power can have incredible effects in shifting the administration. We believe that if we build critical mass, we can pressure the administration into standing with us. That being said, based on past patterns of interaction, we expect the administration to react how they often do to student campaigns: to avoid us, give us non-answers, attempt to capture us into dialogue and to dismiss our concerns. It is our movements job to make sure that they are held accountable to the student body.

What about human rights violations elsewhere? Are we singling out Israel?

It is not factual to claim that Israel is the only country held accountable for violating international law and committing human rights violations. There are many historical examples of this, from the trial of the Guatemalan government following its genocide in the 1980s to that of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Furthermore, the fact that other countries also violate international law is not justification for Israeli apartheid. This is a weak moral argument and one that evades accountability for human rights abuses on principle.

Fortunately, BDS conversations help draw attention to the broader global forces that oppress and divide us; and indeed, the BDS movement is explicitly intersectional in its organizing. Palestinian civil society has consistently formed alliances with other movements and struggles for liberation against settler-colonialism, indigenous genocide and dispossession, racism, and mass incarceration, among other things.

Recognizing the historical and material parallels between ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine and the ongoing colonization of indigenous lands at Standing Rock, the Palestinian BDS National Committee authored a formal statement of solidarity with the Sioux water protectors. Similarly, South African anti-apartheid activists have drawn parallels between their context and the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Additionally, there are numerous other examples of Black-Palestinian solidarity, from formal statements by Black activists and the Movement for Black Lives to the co-organization of events that call to attention the global reach of white supremacy and imperialism.

Thus, in holding Israel accountable for its violations of human rights and international law, we are not singling it out; rather, we are including it in a broader anti-racist, anti-imperialist struggle fought across time and space. Finally, U.S. citizenship/residence make us uniquely complicit in the Occupation, since the U.S. is the largest supplier of military backing to Israel.