BERKELEY – A sensitive detail is usually neglected in protesters' calls for a withdrawal of investment from Israel: the looming threat of haphazard government budgets.
Local governments and public universities that accept $100,000 or more in public funding from the state of California—and that features almost everyone—cannot reply to divestiture demands. It has been banned since 2016, when then-California Gov. Jerry Brown signed it AB 2844.
Last week, a whole lot of pro-Palestinian students and their allies gathered in and around tents arrange on the steps of UC Berkeley's Sproul Plaza, vowing to stay there until the university system officially divests. At Stanford, students also demonstrated with a deal with divestment. Matt Kovac, spokesman for the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition, said he doesn't expect the mobilization to finish until the U.S. and the UC start taking it seriously.
But how can they? The law prohibits the awarding of federal grants or contracts of $100,000 or more to governments and government organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, known by the acronym BDS.
While protesters and human rights organizations have denounced anti-BDS laws on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment, greater than 75% of U.S. lawmakers have embraced this controversial stance over the past decade.
These include financial divestment, a tool pushed by the BDS movement, in addition to cultural boycotts and sanctions to pressure Israel to comply with international law and end its ongoing attack on Gaza, during which 34,000 people were killed in retaliation for a Hamas attack in southern Israel on October seventh, 1,200 people died.
The California bill expressly prohibits the awarding of funding to organizations that discriminate against foreign countries – and specifically mentions Israel. Proponents argue that the divestment violates state and federal civil rights laws regarding business and employment. Furthermore, the BDS movement is accused of being anti-Israel since it directly challenges the legitimacy and sovereignty of the Jewish state.
After South Carolina and Illinois passed the primary such laws in the summertime of 2015, 36 other states followed suit – often with cross-party support.
Organizations equivalent to the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, and Palestine Legal have repeatedly rejected laws like AB 2844 since their introduction, arguing that they’re “designed specifically to do so Suppress campaigns for the rights of Palestinians” and “burden and deter constitutionally protected expression.”
However, lots of these First Amendment arguments have since been rejected by courts across the country, including the U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous refusal to contemplate a boycott case last 12 months.
In an announcement, the UC President's Office said it has “consistently opposed calls to boycott and divest from Israel” and that “a boycott of this nature harms the academic freedom of our students and faculty and the free exchange of ideas” on our campus .”
The last time the University of California heeded student demands for divestment was nearly 4 many years ago, when mass protests that erupted in April 1985 ultimately culminated in UC's divestment South Africa-related stock holdings value $3 billion. said Nelson Mandela in 1990 that the divestment was a catalyst that helped end apartheid within the country.
But the BDS movement has remained weak within the many years since.
In 2002, UC Regents Chairman John Moores said the university was unlikely to secede anytime soon. While the regents were “deeply troubled and saddened by the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine,” he said additionally they had “a fiduciary responsibility to protect the security of the university's pension and endowment funds.”
And last week, UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof further reiterated that there are not any plans to alter the university's investment policies and practices.
By the top of 2023, the University of California's investment portfolios managed $169 billion in assets – a rise of $16.2 billion from the previous 12 months, the study found UC's Investment Committee.
While the regents haven’t disclosed what portion of their current investments are tied to Israel, the UC Berkeley Divest Coalition — which represents 75 student, staff, faculty and alumni organizations calling for UC divestment — said in an announcement , that the UC system invests greater than 2 billion dollars in corporations that provide weapons.
It's unclear what number of protesters are aware of how laws like AB 2844 hinder calls for divestment.
Protesters like Malak Afaneh, a third-year Berkeley law student and Palestinian American who leads the pro-Palestine camp, heard concerning the anti-BDS laws for the primary time last week while organizing on campus. But the news wasn't a surprise, she said, since it reflected other ways UC Berkeley, community members and the United States legal system have handled pro-Palestinian student activism.
“We see this with First Amendment rights, where there is an exception to free speech in Palestine,” Afaneh said.
There is bigger responsiveness to similar investment demands related to climate change and even animal rights that are usually not subject to anti-BDS laws, she said. “I think it just shows how willing this country is to protect its economic and political interests against Israel at any cost,” she said.
Notably, the one two “no” votes on AB 2844 from the 120-member California Legislature were solid by former Democratic legislators from Monterey County: Assemblyman Mark Stone and Senator Bill Monning.
Shortly after the 2016 vote, Monning and Stone told the Monterey County Weekly that they believed boycotting was a constitutional right, comparing the competing views of pro-Palestinian protests to similar efforts by the United Farm Workers of America and Martin Luther King Jr .
“I voted against the anti-BDS legislation because I support economic boycotts, which are a nonviolent means of political expression protected by the First Amendment,” Monning said in an email. “I remain convinced that individuals and companies should not be penalized for exercising their right to participate in a peaceful, voluntary economic boycott to protect and promote the civil and human rights of oppressed minorities.”
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