Thursday, April 28, 2005
Pre-Background:
Keep the following image in mind as you read the rest of this entry. It's a picture of an item typical of those on sale at a recent Al-Awda Convention at UCLA. This image is a good sum-up of the essence of one of the groups behind this divestment effort:
Al Awda is one of the main groups responsible for what you'll read below - and keep that image in mind the next time someone from one of these groups claims they stand for "Peace" and "Justice."
Most of the following is quoted from the latest JAT-Action alert.
A press release from "The University of Wisconsin Divestment from Israel Campaign":
(Madison, WI- 04/27/05) – The Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals (TAUWP) has adopted a resolution that calls on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents to divest from companies that provide the Israeli Army with weapons, equipment, and supporting systems. TAUWP is a statewide local of the American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin representing faculty and academic staff from 25 University of Wisconsin campuses. The resolution was passed at the TAUWP delegate assembly on April 23rd by a vote of 24 to 2, with four abstentions.
Citing the precedent set by the University of Wisconsin’s elimination of investments in apartheid era South Africa, the resolution urged divestment from Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, and Raytheon ‘based on evidence of the active role these companies play in enabling Israeli forces to engage in practices that violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people.’ The University of Wisconsin Trust Fund’s investments in the companies specified by the resolution exceed $3.8 Million.
The resolution is part of The University of Wisconsin Divest from Israel Campaign, a project led by Al-Awda Wisconsin (The Palestine Right to Return Coalition) and Alternative Palestinian Agenda in partnership with several local social justice, student, and community organizations. The campaign gained significant momentum when the Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Platteville passed a similar resolution at it’s regular meeting on January 25th 2005. The UW-Platteville senate became the first University faculty body in the United States to adopt a resolution calling for divestment from companies providing material aid to Israel. A similar resolution was adopted by the Teaching Assistant Association and called on the Board of Regents to divest from weapon manufacturers...
Like the British Academic Boycott, the Wisconsin vote seems to have been timed to coincide with Passover in order to minimize the number of Jewish members present.
[Much, much more in the extended entry.]
From JAT:
Two radical, anti-Israel organizations operating on the University of Wisconsin campus Al Awda and the Palestine Solidarity Movement, both led by Fayyad Sbaihat, are pushing for divestment from Israel. Sbaihat grew up and attended high school in Jenin. He has been an undergraduate since 1998 and has for at least the last three years described himself as a senior majoring in chemical engineering. Most probably he is a paid, full-time anti-Israel activist. There are rumors that he is a member of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.) He and a small cohort of fellow activists succeeded in persuading the faculty senate of U. Wisconsin Platteville campus to vote for divestment from Israel. They have now succeeded in getting the TAUWP (below) to take a similar vote. The TAUWP is a union of faculty and academic staff with members at 25 UW campuses - all campuses except Madison.
The PSM also plans to hold its annual national conference at UW Madison in the fall of 2005. Last year this conference was held at Duke University, co-chaired by Sbaihat. It is always the occasion of overtly anti-Semitic rhetoric. Dramatic past incidents have included the chanting of Kill the Jews by delegates the year the conference met at U. Michigan, and the publication of anti-Semitic columns in the student newspaper at Duke.
As in previous years, the PSM will not announce its location until mid-summer, this is a deliberate strategy to minimize opposition. University officials, although aware of the plans of the PSM, prefer to deny knowledge of these plans until an official request for meeting space is made, which will probably not happen until early August. This is done to minimize the time during which alumni and taxpayers can become aware that the university is hosting the national conference of an organization that takes an annual vote to condone suicide bombing and other forms of terrorism.
JAT believes that the time to protest this meeting is now. We would like to show the University that if this meeting goes forward there will be a national outcry about the morality of hosting a conference of terrorism supporters at a public university. That outcry will and should focus both on the immorality of a university tacitly endorsing terrorism and on the anti-Semitism of faculty votes that seek to deny to Israel the right to defend itself from terror attacks.
University officials will respond to your letter with a form letter that will either deny any knowledge of the scheduled conference or assert that the university has any way of preventing such a conference from taking place on campus. Both assertions are untrue. Although no formal request for meeting space is likely to be made until late summer, university officials have been aware since November 2004 of the intention of the PSM to meet at Madison. There are, of course, numerous means by which the university can prevent such a meeting. Ask yourself what the university would do if a small number of UW students formed a club dedicated to the hatred of homosexuals, endorsed the bombing of gay bars as a means of driving gays out of the United States, and planned to hold a national conference at UW - you will immediately understand that when University officials wish to do so, they have effective means of precluding morally abhorrent conferences from taking place on campus. Our goal is to persuade the UW administration that student clubs like the PSM and non-student clubs like Al Awda that seek to destroy the Jewish State and that endorse the terror bombing of Jews are beyond the pale of what should be acceptable at a great university.
What is true is that the faculty union has no power over the finances of the university; its divestment resolutions have no impact on university investment decisions . What they do have is the power to make it appear that divesting from Israel is morally acceptable, and that Israeli self-defense is, somehow, illegitimate. This is why it is important to insist that the Regents and the Chancellor take a stand condemning the moral turpitude of their faculty.
JAT is recommending using this issue to get an early start on keeping the Wisconsin Administration informed as to the public's displeasure with both the divestment effort and the fact that they may be holding this year's PSM Conference. Here are their recommendations, along with sample letters that in themselves serve as good backgrounders. Remember, copy-and-paste form letters never have the same effect as polite, personal and original notes. You don't need to write an essay. Just be polite and let them know how you feel.
1. Write to the members of the Board of Regents, asking them to issue a public statement rejecting divestment from Israel and endorsing Israel's right to defend its citizens from attack.
David G. Walsh, Vice-President Board of Regents
Foley & Lardner
P.O. Box 1497, 150 E. Gilman St., Madison 53701-1497
email: dwalsh@foleylaw.com
Addresses of all regents below
2. Write to University Chancellor John D. Wiley asking that he deny sapce to the Palestine Solidarity Movement to meet on campus until that group votes to condemn terror attacks that target civilians. chancellor@news.wisc.edu
3. Circulate this letter and the petition asking Chancellor Wiley to deny the use of the campus to supporters of terrorism. http://www.petitiononline.com/stopPSM/petition.html
SAMPLE LETTERS:
Although you should feel free to copy and send our sample letters - and doing so is an effective action - it is always better to compose a letter of your own.. Original letters are more effective even when very brief.
Remember that at Duke, one individual wrote an intemperate letter to the University President, who used it to brand all opponents of the PSM as violence-prone.
Letter to the members of the Board of Regents
Sir or Madam,
I am disturbed that the faculty and staff of the University of Wisconsin would single out the citizens of just one state, the world's sole Jewish state, and dictate that the the citizens of that state do not have the right to defend themselves from attack.
The faculty of the Platteville campus and the faculty and staff who are members of the TAUWP have not voted to deny to the citizens of Spain the right to defend themselves from attack by Al Qaeda. They have not voted to deny to the armed forces of the United States the equipment and technical systems necessary to prevent another 9/11. No. It is only the army protecting the citizens of the world's sole Jewish State that is to be denied access to the "weapons, equipment, and supporting systems" necessary to prevent the success of the ongoing attempts to plant bombs in school buses, shopping malls, and university cafeterias.
If the anti-Semitic aspect of the resolution was not sufficiently clear, the Association of University of Wisconsin Professionals made it so by holding their vote just hours before the start of the Passover seder, insuring that very few Jewish members would be able to attend.
I urge you, together with your fellow members of the Board of Regents, to immediately issue a strong statement that will place the University of Wisconsin within the intellectual tradition of St. Augustine, Grotius, and the distinguished line of philosophers who have argued that a war of defense of the kind that Israel is forced to fight against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is by definition just.
The leading exponent of Just War theory in our generation is Michael Walzer of Princeton. He has made a strong statement regarding the immorality of divestment resolutions, "The current boycott campaign against Israel, modeled on the 1980s campaign against South Africa, aims at a very one-sided delegitimation. And because the other side isn't led by an organization remotely like the African National Congress, or by a man remotely like Nelson Mandela, the success of this campaign would be disastrous. It would strengthen the forces fighting the (Palestinian war to destroy the state of Israel)."
Sincerely yours,
Dear Chancellor Wiley,
I am certain that you will agree with me that there are certain moral choices so clear and so important that a University must take a stand. American Universities have long made plain that cheating and plagiarism are morally unacceptable. In the twentieth century, universities, Wisconsin among them, stepped to the forefront of the moral battle over civil rights to make clear that discrimination based on race and creed would no longer be morally acceptable in America. Now, I am writing to ask you to take a position on one of the great moral issues of the twenty-first century.
The nineteenth century gave rise to a Marxist view of the world in which the ends justify the means. The twentieth saw the rise of a political and religious philosophy within Islam, arguing that in pursuit of the goal of installing a just and righteous Muslim state, the targeting of innocent civilians for mass murder is an appropriate means. These two streams of Islamist and Marxist thought have come together at the University of Wisconsin.
The Palestine Solidarity Movement, an organization with its roots in the International Socialist Organization, believes in the Marxist claim that the ends justify the means. However, the volunteers that the PSM sends to the West Bank and Gaza work closely with Hamas, an Islamist organization that believes mass murder is morally justified as a means of Islamic conquest. In support of its declared goal to replace the State of Israel with a Palestinian State "From the river to the Sea," PSM delegates have voted at each of their previous national conferences to endorse the terror bombing of innocent civilians.
I urge you to take a clear stand against the targeting of civilians in mass murder attacks by denying the use of University of Wisconsin facilities to the Palestine Solidarity Movement until such time as a national conference of the PSM votes to denounce suicide bombing and the targeting of civilians in terror attacks.
Sincerely yours,
Board of Regents Contact Information
Roger E. Axtell
One Parker Place, Suite 360, Janesville, 53545
email: rogerax@ticon.net
608-757-2666
Mark J. Bradley
Ruder, Ware & Michler, LLSC
P.O. Box 8050, 500 Third St., Suite 700, Wausau 54402-8050
email: mbradley@ruder.com
715-845-4336
Elizabeth Burmaster
Department of Public Instruction
P.O. Box 7841, Madison 53707-7841
email: Elizabeth.burmaster@dpi.state.wi.us
608-266-1771
Eileen Connolly-Keesler
Oshkosh Area Community Foundation
404 N. Main St., Suite 205, Oshkosh 54901
email: eileen@oshkoshareacf.org
920-426-3993
Danae D. Davis
Miller Brewing Co.
3939 W. Highland Blvd., Milwaukee 53208
email: ddavis@mbco.com
414-931-3456
Gregory L. Gracz
Milwaukee Professional Fire Fighters Assn., Local 215
5625 W. Wisconsin Ave., Milwaukee 53213
email: gracz@local215.com
414-259-8000
Toby E. Marcovich (REGENT PRESIDENT)
Marcovich, Cochrane, Milliken & Swanson
1214 Belknap Street, Superior 54880
715-394-6624
Milton McPike
10319 Hwy KP, Mazomanie 53560
email: mmcpike@tds.net
608-795-2777
Jose A. Olivieri
Michael Best & Friedrich LLP
100 E. Wisconsin Ave., Suite 3300, Milwaukee 53202-4108
email: jaolivieri@mbf-law.com
414-271-6560
Charles Pruitt
A.B. Data, Ltd.
8050 North Port Washington Rd., Milwaukee 53217
email: cpruitt@abdata.com
414-540-5003
Gerard A. Randall, Jr.
Private Industry Council of Milwaukee County
2338 North 27th St.
Milwaukee 53210
414-270-1700
Beth Richlen
30 S Mills St., Madison 53703
email: barichlen@wisc.edu
608-661-8094
Peggy Rosenzweig
6236 Upper Parkway North, Wauwatosa 53213
email: prosey5@yahoo.com
414-258-4664
Jesus Salas
2019 E. Oklahoma Ave., Milwaukee 53207
email: jsalas@uwm.edu
414-297-7394
Brent Smith
Johns & Flaherty
PO Box 1626, 205 5th Avenue S., Ste 600,
La Crosse, WI 54602-1626
email: brent@johnsflaherty.com
608-784-5678
David G. Walsh (REGENT VICE PRESIDENT)
Foley & Lardner
P.O. Box 1497, 150 E. Gilman St., Madison 53701-1497
email: dwalsh@foleylaw.com
608-258-4269
OFFICE OF THE BOARD OF REGENTS
Judith A. Temby, Secretary
1860 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr., Madison 53706
email: board@uwsa.edu
608-262-2324
