OPINIONS

The dream of peace vs. the nightmare of divestment

Op Ed

By: Op Ed

I was born and raised in Jerusalem, Israel. When I was 10 years old, the Second Intifada began and weekly Palestinian terrorist attacks in my hometown became a routine. One of my classmates died in one of those attacks when the bus she took to school exploded and burned. She was only 10 years old. A few weeks later, a friend of mine lost her hearing in a similar bus attack. In the chaos of the Intifada, on our way to school, my little brother turned to me and asked, “Ben, am I going to die?” Over the following three years, more than a thousand Israeli civilians lost their lives in bus and restaurant bombings, kidnappings and shootings.

Despite the war, my friends and I never gave up the dream of peace with our Palestinian neighbors. Rather than leading to hatred, my experiences have led my friends and me to meet and collaborate with Palestinians towards mutual understanding. We dream of the day Israel and Palestine co-exist as neighbors.

In a recent op-ed, Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine stole my country’s narrative. Their proposal is regressive. It eschews dialogue. It is one-sided, omits crucial facts and hides the true goals of the divestment movement. As a strong supporter of peace, I believe that divestment is not only morally wrong, but will also be very harmful to the Palestinian struggle for independence.

Divestment is a tool designed to win a propaganda war, not to realize the ultimate goal of peace. Divesting from Israeli businesses prevents a dialogue and blocks the establishment of trust. Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine is connected to Students for Justice in Palestine, the national organization of which has adopted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s principles. This movement frequently calls to boycott Israeli universities. Harming Israel’s education will not help the Palestinian struggle for independence. Even the Palestinian leadership understands that the BDS movement will harm future peace negotiations.

Omar Barghoutti, a co-founder of the BDS movement, has repeatedly expressed his opposition to Israel’s right to exist. The Hamas leadership that previously governed the Gaza strip openly calls for the destruction of Israel promotes anti-Semitism and educates children to kill Jews. The others’ right to exist is the most basic contingency for coexistence.

Divestment imposes the entire blame for the continuing Israeli occupation and settlement policy on the Israelis. It refuses to acknowledge the historical reality that on at least three occasions, the Palestinian leadership refused to accept Israel’s offers to end the occupation and that in 2005, in a gesture for peace, Israel removed its entire population from the Gaza strip.

The article suggested that the situation in the Middle East presents a “similar dynamic” to what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri, where the police responded with “unwarranted violence.” This is an effort to garner sympathy by drawing oversimplified and fallacious parallels between unrelated situations under the generalized pretense of oppression. They go as far as accusing Israel of being an apartheid state. On the contrary, the facts prove that Israel is not an apartheid state by any means. There are three Arab political parties in Israel’s current parliament. Arabs serve in Israel’s Supreme Court. In a recent survey, the majority of Arabs in East Jerusalem said that in case of Palestinian independence they would prefer to stay in democratic Israel. The Palestinian population in Israel boasts among the highest college graduation rates and the lowest infant mortality rates in the Arab world. The insinuation of apartheid flies in the face of this reality.

When I was 15, I helped one of the Israeli families move out of their home in Gaza. I assured them that this good gesture would bring us closer to peace. But, instead, what followed since then were thousands of rockets being fired at Israeli civilians from the Gaza strip. I realize I was wrong. Shouting for unilateral actions without striving towards dialogue will not lead to a peaceful coexistence. I wish that the Palestinian people will gain independence soon, but to achieve this goal we should put our efforts into promoting a dialogue, not divestment.

Ben Limonchik ’17

Ben Limonchik is a sophomore majoring in computer science, originally from Jerusalem, Israel. He can be contacted at benlimon ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Individual co-signatories: Adam Schorin ’17, Alex Lubkin ’17, Alon Devorah ’14, Amanda Smith ’14, Ariella Axler ’15, Asher Kaye ’15, Coraal Cohen ’17, Daniel Maroko ‘16, David Wintermeyer ’17, Doniel Kaye ’15, Gideon Weiler ’14, Gil Shotan ’12, Guy Amdur ’17, Jenna Shapiro ’17, Jennifer Rosenfeld ’09, Jordan Shapiro ’14, Josh Grinberg ’15, Julia Turan ’14, Liana Kadisha ’15, Matthew Lebovitz ’15, Max Weiss ’17, Miriam Pollock ’16, Molly Horowitz ’16, Nico Perdomo ’14, Noa Glaser ’18, Roy Lederman ’17, Sarah Kahn ’17, Sawer Altman ’17, Steven Greitzer ’14, Tamara Mekler ’17, Tatiana Grossman ’17, Victoria Anikst ’13, Yale Goldberg ’17, Yisroel Quint ’17.

Guest

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Eric

There are a few questions I wanted to ask the signatories of this Op-Ed (I’ll probably end up asking in person later) .

1) What do you think the Palestinians want collectively, and why?

2) What are your opinions on Settlement policy?

3) Why do think SOOP said that the situation in the Middle East had a “similar dynamic” to the one in Ferguson, Missouri?
a) On that note (this is a bit off topic) what do you think of the protests in Ferguson?

4) Do you think there are Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza that feel oppressed?
Flove

Bravo, Ben!
Gradus Quia

Dialog has had almost 70 years to work. That’s longer than most people in that part of the world actually live. Meanwhile, Israel’s culture, politics, religion, economics and memetic fabric has attuned itself to a constant state of war and the ongoing occupation of Palestine. Only radical outside interference will alter the status quo, as Israelis are functionally incapable of even imagining or truly desiring anything else but their own supremacy. And the world has lost the patience to wait.

Israel is a failed state built on religious psychosis and someone else’s land. There can only be a one-state solution: Israel’s dissolution.
bob

In the War for the Land: Land is victory and Victory is land. There will be no Pal state and there will be no peace. There will be war. The winner will keep the Land. The Arabs are killing each other all over the map..Israel gets stronger with each day that passes..Do you think Muslims could keep the peace with Jews??? All countries’ borders have been defined by war..by war alone…it is History’s way.
ThisIsPalestine

Thank you for admitting that BDS’s vision for the end of this conflict involves the genocide of every Jew in Israel. The Standford student body should vote accordingly.
Signatory

I am one of the signatories on this op-ed, but I am sure that you would get a wide diversity of opinion among the signatories. We have on this list people who I know are more right wing, as well as J-Street, which is farther on the left. Many on this list have very harsh criticisms of Israeli policy, especially in regards to settlements–the tie that binds the group is opposition to divestment.

Personally, I think that Palestinian desires cannot be classified as a collective, because while I am sure that a large amount simply want to live their lives in their own land, another portion still lives in the fantasy world of Gradus Quia (the commentator above) that “There can only be a one-state solution: Israel’s dissolution.” It is still written in the Hamas charter that “Israel will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

I am personally very critical of settlement policy, and in any peace treaty there should be land swaps. I do not, however, see this as the barrier to peace, but freezing these settlements would go a long way to show good faith.

The Ferguson link is one I saw coming after an article was published a couple of weeks into the conflict. This article chased a loose thread that the former police chief of Ferguson had visited Israel 5 years ago for a conference–a pretty weak link, if you ask me. The Palestinian advocates have been trying to utilize the black population for quite a while now, and the proximity in time between Ferguson and the escalations in Israel/Palestine provided good timing for that.
My personal thoughts on Ferguson are the same as in any protest–rights to peaceful protest should always be upheld, and if police infringe on that they should be held accountable. Once looting occurs and molotov cocktails are thrown, I think that police response can be justified.

I do think that Palestinians feel oppressed, and not without good reason–they live in a pretty cruddy situation. The question of where the fault lies is where you run into murky water–I would say that much of the blame lies with bad leadership (rejecting 2000 Camp David accords that would have given their own state, firing missiles into Israel, stealing international aid money for personal/militant use).
One point

To clarify, no one from J Street U signed this letter.
Signatory 2

Dear Eric,

1) I think the Palestinians want what almost every people want, to live in peace, freedom, and prosperity. I think that Palestinian leaders have rejected peace and promoted terror in order to further their own political and corrupt agendas. Hamas as well as Fatah incite violence against Israelis and Jews in their textbooks, tv shows, and public speeches. I think it takes 2 sides to bring peace. I don’t believe the current Israeli government is doing its job to promote moderates in the Palestinian government and I think ideology is getting in the way of this Israeli government doing all it can to promote peace, that being said, I think Abbas’ latest statements about the temple mount and letters of condolence to families of terrorists are not helping either.

2) I am against adding onto settlements in response to Palestinian actions. It is childish. I am against settlers who vandalize, threaten, or attack Palestinians. I do believe Jews should be able to live in the West Bank if they so choose as there has been a Jewish presence there for 3,000 years. However, after a solution is reached, if they chose to live in the Palestinian State they would need to be responsible citizens of that state. It is also important to note that settlements take up 1.7% of the West Bank right now. They are not a major impediment to peace practically, only ideologically. Israel has shows in the Sinai and in Gaza and in the West Bank that settlements can and will be removed to promote peace. I do think it is ridiculous to invest in settlements that will not be part of mutual land swaps and that it does not reflect positively on trying to promote peace.

3) I think it is naive to compare these two. In Ferguson, Michael Brown was unarmed. He was shot for racist reasons. While, racism is a huge problem in Israel, I think it is important to remember that the Palestinians typically protest violently with rocks, knives, and guns.

4) I think Palestinians definitely feel oppressed. They feel oppressed by Israel, which is building on their land. They feel oppressed by Israel, which closes their ports and blockades them. They feel oppressed by Israel who built a fence and has checkpoints. However, they also feel oppressed by Hamas, who uses them as human shields. They feel oppressed by Hamas, who shoots them without a trial. They feel oppressed by the PLO leaders who have stolen billions of dollars from them. They feel oppressed by the PLO and Hamas who are explicitly against gay and women’s rights. They should feel angry that a fence and checkpoints went up because Hamas and Arafat promoted terror and Israel had to defend itself. They should feel angry that Hamas squandered billions of dollars on aid to build rockets and tunnels instead of investing in hospitals and schools for children.
mxm123

Israeli openly steals land for settlements. And has being doing so for the past few decades. And the signatories to this piece want us to believe that divestment is the greatest problem. How much more deceptive can people get.

Oh wait add on to that the dubious claims about Omar Barghouti (no link, no proof, just their interpretation), the standard form claims about Hamas, while ignoring that the Likud parties charter openly calls for the destruction of Palestine. And not a word from our fair minded “signatories”

And add to that the standard talking points. Great.
mxm123

1) “I think that Palestinian leaders have rejected peace and promoted terror in order to further their own political and corrupt agendas. Hamas as well as Fatah incite violence against Israelis and Jews in their textbooks, tv shows, and public speeches.”

– Read the Likud Charter ?

– Are settlements good karma perhaps. Aren’t people like you just providing intellectual cover for them.

2) “I do believe Jews should be able to live in the West Bank if they so choose as there has been a Jewish presence there for 3,000 years. ”

Why not allow the same freedom for ALL Jews and ALL Palestinians. Naftali Bennett’s family did not live there for 3000 years.

3) “I think it is important to remember that the Palestinians typically protest violently with rocks, knives, and guns.”

– And their lands are stolen how ? With tickets to Disneyland perhaps ?

4) “However, they also feel oppressed by Hamas” – What does Hamas have to do with settlements. Nothing . Just an excuse perhaps. Or a convenient red herring.
mxm123

“I do not, however, see this as the barrier to peace,” – That is if you ignore that settlements reach deep into the proposed Palestine. The EU nations have woken up to this. Actually the entire world has stated this. And you want to claim that such a policy is no barrier to peace. Huh ? Aren’t you just replaying Israeli Govt/AIPAC strategy.

i.e Pretend as if there is a two state solution, until there is none.

At least Naftali Bennet is being honest in openly calling for apartheid in the Times. How many Jewish organizations would condemn him ? Zero perhaps. For sure not the Hillel.
StanfordStudent

“As a strong supporter of peace” … What kind of supporter of peace are you when the very first thing you highlight in your article is how “Palestinian terrorists” were blowing up buses, without even caring to narrate the atrocities that the Israeli army and police were conducting in the occupied territories at the same time, killing and wounding and arresting thousands of Palestinians? I really wish you had a more .. balanced, let alone conciliatory, opening for your Op-Ed, which supposedly advocates for peace.
Reality Bites

Michael Brown was not shot for “racist reasons”; he was shot because he grabbed a police officer’s weapon and charged him. http://goo.gl/5T2NhA
Rose

Thank you for having the courage to speak out against destructive and one-sided messages about Israel with compassion and reason and intelligence. I am particularly impressed by your response to Eric, which is posted in this discussion. I am grateful to you all.
Curious

“Divesting from Israeli businesses prevents a dialogue and blocks the establishment of trust”

If someone proposed a campaign not divesting from Israeli businesses, but rather international corporations complicit in human rights violations in Israel and otherwise, what would you say about it?
Guest

“They go as far as accusing Israel of being an apartheid state.”
nah bruh desmond tutu is the one calling israel an apartheid state….. as in a prominent social justice activist who LIVED under apartheid in south africa……… that’s when u kno
CheckYourIgnorance

Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine is connected to SJP. That is a fact. It is also connected to the Stanford Asian American Students Association, Black Student Union, Stanford Asian American Activism Committee, Muslim Student Awareness Network, Students for Alternatives to Militarism, Student and Labor Alliance, The Arab Student Association at Stanford, Stanford NAACP, MEChA de Stanford, and Pilipino American Student Union. These groups were all presented information from SIA, J Street, SJP, and SOOP. They all reviewed the information provided and all decided that divestment is something that is necessary for the university. NOT divestment from Israel, but divestment from select companies known to be involved with acts violating human rights agreed upon in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights. Hopefully all members cosignatories and those reading this comment will attend the panel of the opposing viewpoints today. Also, I hope that SIA and J-Street will work alongside SOOP or SJP to have a public discussion. I really do reject this article’s presumption that having Arab political parties and officials in Israel refutes an apartheid system at play. But I’ll save it for the panel.
Justsayin’

Not to use your own catch phrase, but you should “Check Your Ignorance.” Every time divestment has been brought up to the senate it has focused on companies that are wholly associated with Israel and the West Bank, and yet, there are numerous other places throughout the world (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/03/human-rights-risk-atlas-2014-violations-maplecroft_n_4374133.html) that continue to see human rights violations that are not mentioned during divestment. Further, if this is not a targeting of Israel, then why do advocates of divestment continually reject Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in the Middle East, as was the case at Berkeley? If this is not a targeting of Israel in particular, why does the divestment talk always resort to whether Israel and not the companies being divested from are at fault? I agree that “divestment from select companies known to be involved with acts violating human rights agreed upon in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights” is something that we as a student body should consider, but what I cannot see is why divestment continually narrows its scope and focuses upon Israel.
TheNameGame

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I do think though that there’s been over half a century of hoping for dialogue. I advise, stop talking about starting a dialogue…and start it. Ask the hard questions, the things you might be afraid are offensive. Let it all out…but then sit…and listen. Seek out the opinions of those you didn’t intend this article to resonate with. You being naive at one instance of age 15 and one 10 year old girl you know dying is great and all as reasons to strive for dialogue and hope for Palestinian independence. Are you going to do it?

Cause I’m pretty sure this is just talk about “wanting to talk” that has been regurgitated millions of times in millions of papers and blogs and pamphlets for at least the past 60 years.
Gman

Yeah, Tutu is an infallible clergyman: why even bother disagreeing?
Howard Hoffman

Actually, Jews have always owned some of the land, as they never completely left even after the destruction by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. Then, imagine this: they came to the Palestine of the Ottoman Empire and they started buying land. They did not come with horses and swords or jeeps and machine guns. They came in peace to find a place to live where they could be left in peace. The Arabs never accepted this, long before there was a Jewish state. The Arabs were harassing and killing Jews as early as 1920. When Britain became the trustee of Palestine after WW1, they broke off 70% of the land and made it an exclusively Arab country, forcing any Jews in “Trans-Jordan” to leave. In 1947, Britain left the decision to the UN and the UN voted to divide Palestine in two states: one for Jews and one for Arabs. The Jews said “It is much less than what we hoped for, but we will accept”. The Arabs said “No, we will go to war to stop this. We accept no Jewish state.” That is the real story. And as for a failed state, those exist all over the Arab world. Israel is a very successful state. With that success comes envy from the inhabitants around Israel. Instead of building their own states and their own societies, they are obsessed with destroying Israel. How stupid and sad.
Adirondack Jack

The Likud charter speaks against the establishment of an as-yet-nonexistent Arab polity in the highlands overlooking half of the world’s Jews.
The Hamas charter implores the extermination of every Jew hiding under every rock in every corner of that country.

To equate the two suggests extraordinary moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
mxm123

The Likud charter leads to apartheid. And it’s being acted with the most success as we speak.

And you talk of moral and intellectual bankruptcy ? Hypocrisy much ?
Curious

Looking forward to your response, Ben! I see Justsayin’ has written: “I agree that “divestment from select companies known to be involved with acts violating human rights agreed upon in the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights” is something that we as a student body should consider,” but was hoping to get a direct response from Ben or one of the co-signatories. Thanks for writing this article, btw.
CheckYourIgnorance

You are focusing on other groups and other examples of divestment, but focus on what is actually being put forth by this coalition, at this university. No one in any of the SOOP coalition meetings has refuted Israel’s right to exist. If you attended, maybe you would know this. Bring your questions to the next meeting or visit http://soopalestine.org/what-is-divestment/
mxm123

Jews owned land. And Arabs owned land. They were both owners of that land. And now you want to pretend that because Jews lived there, it belonged to Jews. And of course you want to invent history that Jordan was the land partitioned for Arabs. Baloney.

Your religion (whatever it is ) does not negate other peoples rights.
Howard Hoffman

No one is pretending anything. There are 2 issues that get mixed up here. One is ownership of land and the other is sovereignty of land. When they had no sovereignty, Jews came to Palestine and started buying land. Was that a crime? Imagine if we decided to criminalize land purchases in the US by say Chinese people who want to buy land here. For the “crime” of buying land, as early

as 1920, the Arabs started killing Jews. Think about that. Jordan was partitioned from the rest of the British Mandate of Palestine and Jews were excluded. That is simple history. You might want to read some books that set the record straight. The best one, if you want to actually learn the history: Israel in World Relations by Richard Bass. The first chapter: Introduction to Ideology. 2nd: What is History? So, it starts with vital basic concepts. You have to understand that the people who spout baloney are the Palestinian leaders. Arafat and Abbas both have denied that there were Jewish temples on the Temple Mount (which they refuse to call by that name). Try asking the Romans or Jesus if there was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.
mxm123

Of course you’re.Just because a few jews owned land in Palestine that does not give them over arching sovereignty over the entire land. I never stated that buying land by anyone is a crime. So why do you claim so.

Jordan was partition as Jordan. And the Palestine Jews AND Arabs in Palestine were considered a separate territory. You wish to reinvent history here. Again just because Jews lived there does not give them overarching sovereignty.

Read real history not some right wing author who has three reviews on Amazon, one of whom is you !!!
P. Nile Schwartz

There aren’t any HRV in Israel, except for a bit of discrimination against Jews on behalf of those that enjoy killing Jews.
people are heartless

This is an extremely one sided article.. Wow
robert affinity

The partition proposed independence for both the Arabs AND the Jews with borders and governments based on demographic majority. After about 80% of Palestine was granted independence as the Jew Free state of Jordan, the remaining 20% was to be divided in terms of sovereignty (not and ownership) by demographic majority except for Jewish majority Jerusalem which was to be an international city open to all. I don’t see the problem. But, Arabs did and invaded and began ethnically cleansing as they had promised they would do.
robert affinity

You seem to think land was stolen. Perhaps you could be more specific. I know the PA admitted that most of the West Bank and Gaza are undeniably Jewish owned private property that was illegally seized by Arabs in 1948 and which they would probably have to return or compensate for if they ever agreed to a final peace deal with Israel. This was admitted in their internal documents that were leaked to Al Jazeera (google: Palestinian papers land ownership)
robert affinity

ALL the settlements combined comprise about 1.2% of the land in the WB and Gaza. And they comprise a tiny fraction of the Jewish owned private property that was illegally seized by Arabs in 1948 (as admitted by the PA in their internal documents leaked to Al Jazeera). AND those areas had large Jewish populations until they were ethnically cleansed in 1948. I don’t see why a single Jew moving back after having been ethnically cleansed in 48 is an obstacle to peace. It sounds like you do. If so, I assume your logic is applied equally to both parties and you support the notion that Arabs moving to or perhaps even living in any of Israel are obstacles to peace? Or, are you applying your logic only to some parties but not others?