We, the undersigned members of the NYU faculty and student body, call on our colleagues, classmates and the wider university community to take a stand in support of human rights and respect for international law.
There is good reason to believe that NYU is invested in companies which contribute to or profit from – and thus help perpetuate – Israel’s ongoing occupation and illegal settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, its military and economic siege of Gaza, and its denial of the most basic human and civil rights to the 4.5 million Palestinians who live in these occupied Palestinian territories. While we may hold different views on the situation in Israel/Palestine, we are united in the belief that our university should not be complicit in the systematic denial of the rights of the Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. We therefore believe that NYU must divest itself of any holdings it may have in such companies.
For decades, the State of Israel has brutally suppressed Palestinian demands for self-determination. Since 1967, Israel has implanted hundreds of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem, both of which are actions deemed illegal by the international community, including the United States. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s construction of a wall that encloses parts of the West Bank and further infringes on Palestinian lives and livelihoods is a violation of international law. Israel’s policies violate the rights of Palestinian refugees, as stated in UNGA 194. At the same time, Israel has turned the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza strip into the world’s largest open-air prison and launched repeated military assaults against it. The Israeli offensive against Gaza this past summer killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, the great majority of them civilians and a quarter of them children.
Several multinational corporations have been targeted in recent years for their profiteering from the occupation. These include Caterpillar, which sells the bulldozers that routinely demolish Palestinian homes and uproot their olive trees; Veolia Environment, which helped construct and currently operates the light rail system connecting West Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements; Motorola Solutions, which provides motion-detection “virtual fences” for the illegal West Bank settlements, as well as a mobile communication system for the Israeli Army; Hewlett-Packard, which provides biometric identification systems used at Israeli military checkpoints to control the movement of Palestinians; G4S, which provides equipment for Israeli prisons holding Palestinian political prisoners and for Israeli military checkpoints and the Separation Wall; Elbit Systems, which manufactures Hermes military drones that Israel uses for targeted extrajudicial killings in Gaza; and Northrop Grumman, which supplies the Israeli military with the Longbow system for Apache AH64D helicopters, including Longbow Hellfire missiles, as well as radar engineering and support for F-15 and F-16 combat jets. A growing number of organizations, including TIAA-CREF, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Mennonite Church and the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation, have already divested from some of these companies
NYU students, faculty and staff have a long and proud tradition of demanding that the university live up to its professed values, from the anti-apartheid struggle to the current fossil fuels divestment campaign. The time has now come for NYU to take action that, by exerting financial and moral pressure, can help end the Israeli occupation and support the aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis for justice and self-determination.
We therefore call on NYU to divest from all companies in its portfolio that contribute to or profit from the Israeli occupation.
If you are a member of the NYU community and would like to sign the statement, please do so below:
There is good reason to believe that NYU is invested in companies which contribute to or profit from – and thus help perpetuate – Israel’s ongoing occupation and illegal settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, its military and economic siege of Gaza, and its denial of the most basic human and civil rights to the 4.5 million Palestinians who live in these occupied Palestinian territories. While we may hold different views on the situation in Israel/Palestine, we are united in the belief that our university should not be complicit in the systematic denial of the rights of the Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. We therefore believe that NYU must divest itself of any holdings it may have in such companies.
For decades, the State of Israel has brutally suppressed Palestinian demands for self-determination. Since 1967, Israel has implanted hundreds of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem, both of which are actions deemed illegal by the international community, including the United States. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s construction of a wall that encloses parts of the West Bank and further infringes on Palestinian lives and livelihoods is a violation of international law. Israel’s policies violate the rights of Palestinian refugees, as stated in UNGA 194. At the same time, Israel has turned the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza strip into the world’s largest open-air prison and launched repeated military assaults against it. The Israeli offensive against Gaza this past summer killed more than 2,100 Palestinians, the great majority of them civilians and a quarter of them children.
Several multinational corporations have been targeted in recent years for their profiteering from the occupation. These include Caterpillar, which sells the bulldozers that routinely demolish Palestinian homes and uproot their olive trees; Veolia Environment, which helped construct and currently operates the light rail system connecting West Jerusalem to illegal Israeli settlements; Motorola Solutions, which provides motion-detection “virtual fences” for the illegal West Bank settlements, as well as a mobile communication system for the Israeli Army; Hewlett-Packard, which provides biometric identification systems used at Israeli military checkpoints to control the movement of Palestinians; G4S, which provides equipment for Israeli prisons holding Palestinian political prisoners and for Israeli military checkpoints and the Separation Wall; Elbit Systems, which manufactures Hermes military drones that Israel uses for targeted extrajudicial killings in Gaza; and Northrop Grumman, which supplies the Israeli military with the Longbow system for Apache AH64D helicopters, including Longbow Hellfire missiles, as well as radar engineering and support for F-15 and F-16 combat jets. A growing number of organizations, including TIAA-CREF, the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Methodist Church, the Mennonite Church and the Quaker Friends Fiduciary Corporation, have already divested from some of these companies
NYU students, faculty and staff have a long and proud tradition of demanding that the university live up to its professed values, from the anti-apartheid struggle to the current fossil fuels divestment campaign. The time has now come for NYU to take action that, by exerting financial and moral pressure, can help end the Israeli occupation and support the aspirations of both Palestinians and Israelis for justice and self-determination.
We therefore call on NYU to divest from all companies in its portfolio that contribute to or profit from the Israeli occupation.
If you are a member of the NYU community and would like to sign the statement, please do so below:
