The Mitzvah to Fight Divestiture

November 22, 2002  Rabbi Gary S. Creditor In 1971 I graduated the School of General Studies of Columbia University in New York City, the largest department of the university. Simultaneously I was a student in the Teachers Institute, now called List College, of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Because Columbia graduations were done en masse and the Seminary's was small and intimate, I attended my JTS graduation and not Columbia's. I am a registered alumna and receive its mailings. So I was caught completely off guard when I received an email from the Jewish Chaplain's office of Columbia University asking me to go the University's website via a hyperlink. There I found a profoundly disturbing and upsetting petition to which I responded immediately. For reasons that will become apparent, my only regret was that I could not follow the dictum of the late Mayor Daley of Chicago: "Vote early and vote often." The issue is that of divestiture. It is a fight that is occurring at universities around the country. It is a fight that is occurring in boardrooms of companies large and small. Its outcome will have a profound impact on the future of the State of Israel. Our future is directly connected the future of Medinat Yisrael. Every one of us has an immediate stake and integral responsibility to respond. All that evil needs is for good Jews to sit back and do nothing. In the aftermath of Viet Nam War in the 1960's and 1970's universities in particular set up committees to monitor where the universities invested their money. At the beginning it was intended to make sure that they were not invested in companies that contravened some vague morality that students and left-wing faculty thought was wrong. Later the committees monitored investments so that they should not aid the apartheid regime in South Africa. There were many ironies in these situations about who really was hurt when universities were forced to divest themselves, remove their funds, from such investments. Often the most vulnerable of societies and lowest factory workers were the most affected. At Columbia University it is called the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing. This tactic is now being used in an attempt to destroy the State of Israel economically. From California to New York, from north to south, has begun an insidious campaign to force universities, which have great sums to invest, todivest themselves of any and all investments that in any way are connected and support the State of Israel. It is impossible to know where money is invested unless you read the smallest print in annual reports. How many of us have retirement funds through our companies? Where do they invest it? How many of us have IRA's with banks? Where is it invested? How many of us have mutual funds? Where do Fidelity's of the world invest? How many of us are alumni of universities? Where do they invest it? How do you think the State of Israel has grown these years? Because of us? Our donations to the Welfare Campaign and buying Israel Bonds assists the State in its social welfare work, it does notgrow the industrial infrastructure. It does not fund start-up companies in electronics and agriculture. This is accomplished through the complex financial structure of investments that Israel has secured by representing its work to investors throughout the world. Some of the money in our pension funds, in our mutual funds, in our alma maters, in our stock portfolios is invested in Israel. That is what has made the desert bloom! And the campaign for divestiture does not stop there. It also seeks to have the universities to lobby Congress and the President to suspend aid to Israel. Who else stands besides, behind and in front of Israel if not this country? Is not the potential harm transparently clear to us? Israel has no other ally in the whole world but for the United States of America. And we are the voice for Israel. I am proud that the University president Lee Bollinger and the president of Barnard College, Judith Shapiro, have both come out forcefully and unequivocally against this campaign. When I received the email from Rabbi Charles Sheer, the Jewish chaplain at Columbia I responded immediately, joining my name to 24, 829 others. As I began, my only regret is that I can't vote early and often. There is great danger and hypocrisy in this campaign against Israel. It simplifies the complexity of the situation to the bottom line that Israel is guilty and should be punished. Guilty of what? Existing? Guilty of what? Offering the Palestinians statehood? Guilty of what? Being Jews? Guilty of what? Giving them clean water and medical care? Are the Palestinians therefore innocent? Of blowing up civilian buses? Murdering women and children in their beds? Of killing students in a university cafeteria? Of murdering families as they sat at seder? Is the punishment to be the dismemberment and eradication of Medinat Yisrael? Will these persuade the madman of Iraq not to have mass weapons of destruction? Will this bring down oil prices? On this subject the well-known Rabbi Saul Berman, adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School, wrote the following, which I quote verbatim and in its entirety. Why is there no demand to divest from companies doing business with Saudi Arabia, due to its denial of religious freedom, its denial of women's civil rights and its support of the terrorist madrasas all through the Arab world? Why is there no call to divest from companies that purchase oil from Iraq, which has slaughtered tens of thousands of its own citizens with poison gas? Why no call from businesses with relations to Syria for its decades-long occupation of Lebanon? Why not from companies doing business in Egypt, which suppresses democracy and promotes virulent anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism? Or the Palestinian Authority, which abuses children in its encouragement to become suicide bombers, which summarily executes suspected collaborators and which explicitly targets civilians? Why no call from those doing business in Yemen, the world's largest slave trader?   The ultimate purpose of the campaign of divestiture is to destroy the State of Israel by using an economic weapon. It is not a campaign about morality. The immorality of targeting Israel and none of those named above clearly reveals that this is a political campaign. They could not destroy the spirit of Israel and the Jewish people. They could not defeat the State of Israel on the battlefield. They will try to use this weapon. Silent American people will be their accomplices.   Many of us our college graduates. Most of us have investments of one nature or another. I call upon all of here, and all those who will read this on the listserv where this sermon will be published, and upon all those to whom all of you, readers and listeners can spread the message: Find out what is going on at your alma mater and investment firms. Ask questions. Read the bulletins. Read on the web national Jewish publications, which carry the details. Protest in the most vociferous of terms any attempt to divest their funds from Israel and from companies doing business with Israel. Write. Sign petitions. Scream. Make phone calls.   This is not one of those "sexy" issues. It is not as glorious as marching in Washington, D.C. No one is going to get their pictures on the news and certificates from the Federation.   But: All those who are vigilant and pro-active, All those who stand up for Israel, All those who stand on the ramparts of the walls of Jerusalem, even if we do it in Richmond, Virginia, Will have protected the State of Israel and the destiny of the Jewish people one more time. If this is all that we do in our lifetime is this, then dayaynu. This is enough. It is for this, that we are here. Amen.