BDS suppression backfires as universities pass resolutions

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union at the University of California has been fighting to uphold a resolution passed to support the BDS movement against Israel. Its struggle has inspired other university unions to pass their own resolutions.
The UAW Local 2865, which includes some 14,000 students and teaching assistants working for the University of California, passed a resolution to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2014, becoming the first major labor union to do so, with 65 percent voting in favor of divestment and 52 percent supporting an academic boycott among the student-workers union of the University of California.

“The University of California divest from companies involved in the occupation of Palestine; that UAW International to divest from these same entities; the US government to end military aid to Israel. Fifty-two percent of voting members pledged not to ‘take part in any research, conferences, events, exchange programs, or other activities that are sponsored by Israeli universities complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the settler-colonial policies of the state of Israel’ until such time as these universities take steps to end complicity with dispossession, occupation, and apartheid.” UAW Local 2865 Resolution

An anti-BDS arm of the union called Informed Grads appealed the result, with the help of Gibson, Dunn & Crutche, a law firm that has defended Walmart, Amazon and Chevron, Salon reports. The firm has represented Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other corporations that gain from Israel’s defense spending.

While the International Executive Board defended the integrity of the vote, saying it represented the will of the members, it claimed it could interfere with the flow of commerce and pointed to the possibility of discrimination, despite the number of Jewish and Israeli members that supported the resolution and later wrote a letter attesting to the fact. 

Following the decision, lawyer Scott Edelman expressed pleasure at the UAW’s “forceful rejection of BDS, which sets a powerful precedent for other labor unions and national organizations.”

UAW Local 2865 appealed the decision, saying the “IEB improperly ignored the UAW constitutional mandate to solidify the labor movement and build solidarities with other unions, such as the Palestinian labor unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers who issued the call for BDS in 2005.”


The appeal has gone to the UAW Public Review Board who will make a final ruling in the next few months.
The nullification of the resolution has led to increased support for both UAW Local 2865 and the BDS movement among university staff.

UAW chapters at the University of Washington, Univeristy of Massachusetts Amherst and NYU wrote letters of support for the resolution, and went on to pass their own resolutions in April with Massachusetts securing 95 percent of the vote and NYU’s chapter taking 67 percent.

Both groups cited the nullification as a motivating factor for their own votes.


Jennifer Mogannam, a PhD candidate at UC San Diego and member of the union, told Shadowproof the attacks are “part and parcel of the larger Zionist movement’s suppression and attacking of those fighting for Palestinian self-determination and against Israeli settler colonialism.”


A recent BDS victory that saw security firm G4S announce it would end its contracts in Israel has caused Florida country club members to partake in their own boycott. The country club members are threatening to end G4S’s contract with their country clubs in a show of support for Israel.

https://www.rt.com/usa/340901-bds-suppression-uaw-universities/

Why do university unions need to pass resolutions? The individual people are free to boycott Israel if they want to - do they need someone to give them permission?

The unions have buying power - lots of it.

Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

They also lose lots of funds for being racist.

http://www.cjnews.com/news/canada/bronfman-pulls-support-from-york-over-mural

Raggamuffin wrote:Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

Yes they do.

Its not ratified in every state, but more and more are sighing up to do so,

Raggamuffin wrote:Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

Nope, or Disney wouldn't be able to do this:

Disney and Marvel to boycott Georgia if state passes 'religious liberty' bill

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

Nope, or Disney wouldn't be able to do this:

Disney and Marvel to boycott Georgia if state passes 'religious liberty' bill

Can anyone else see the massive error sassy just made.

I also think its wrong to punish a whole state, based off a few idiots in charge

Again punish the people behind that created the religious liberty bill, by boycotting a whole state you make everyone punishable within that state.

This is why the BDS is so warped and controlled by Hamas

By boycotting Israel it effects many Israeli Arabs and countless Palestinians who have jobs, but they are not concerned about the employment of Palestinians, because that means caring for them. They place destroying Israel over that of the welfare of the Palestinians.



This is a good article to digest




Marc Lamont Hill is a professor at Morehouse College and a frequent TV Commentator. He also is coming out with a new book soon on social justice in the U.S. Lamont Hill also is a big supporter of the “Ferguson to Palestine” movement which uses the doctrine of intersectionality to connect Israel to inner city and racial problem in the U.S.  The only majority Jewish state in the world is held out as the connecting force of evil in the world. We wrote about his support in January 2015, when he was part of a Dream Defenders delegationto Israel and theWest Bank, Wow, Marc Lamont Hill drank the anti-Israel Kool-Aid. For that visit, Hill included this statement in a video about the trip:

We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sisters
We come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hate

We come here and we learn laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent and we stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupation
People continue to dream and fight for freedom
From Ferguson to Palestine the struggle for freedom continues.

Systematic academic boycotts, including of Israel, are considered to be severe violations of academic freedom by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) because such boycotts damage the entire academic system and free exchange of knowledge:

[S]ince its founding in 1915, the AAUP has been committed to preserving and advancing the free exchange of ideas among academics irrespective of governmental policies and however unpalatable those policies may be viewed. We reject proposals that curtail the freedom of teachers and researchers to engage in work with academic colleagues, and we reaffirm the paramount importance of the freest possible international movement of scholars and ideas….
The Association’s defense of academic freedom, as explained in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, rests on the principle that “institutions of higher education are conducted for the common good . . . [which] depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition.” Although the statement says nothing about academic boycotts, plainly the search for truth and its free expression suffer if a boycott is in place….
The Association recognizes the right of individual faculty members or groups of academics not to cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree. We believe, however, that when such noncooperation takes the form of a systematic academic boycott, it threatens the principles of free expression and communication on which we collectively depend.

Major academic associations of universities and over 250 university presidents have issuedsimilar statements regarding the threat to academic freedom and the advance of knowledge pose by the BDS academic boycott of Israel.
Not long after I saw Lamont Hill’s annnouncement of his support for the academic boycott of Israel, I saw this article in the Jersusalem Post online, Haifa and NY researchers collaborate on treatment for two deadly cancers:

The Technion – Israel of Technology and New York University Langone Medical Center have initiated a joint cancer research project, targeting the most dangerous form of skin cancer, metastatic melanoma, and mesothelioma, a rare cancer that develops in the protective lining of the lungs and other internal organs.
In the first joint collaboration, US and Israeli researchers will test the ability of a nanotechnology based on so-called “nanoghosts” to deliver the promising treatments.
In earlier studies, Technion researchers took a stem cell, removed its contents and then shaped a piece of the cell’s outer membrane into a vehicle to deliver treatments into the brain.

There are dozens if not hundreds of similar medical research projects cooperatively between Israeli higher education institutions and non-Israeli institutions. Under the official academic boycott guidelines, such cooperative projects are banned:

Research and development activities that fall into these broad categories:

(a) Among academic institutions – Institutional cooperation agreements with Israeli universities or research institutes. These agreements, concluded between international and Israeli academic institutions, typically involve the exchange of faculty and students and, more importantly, the conduct of joint research. Many of these schemes are sponsored and funded by the European Union (in the case of Europe), and independent and government foundations elsewhere.

The American Anthropological Association boycott will be mostly symbolic (like that of other groups like the American Studies Association). So perhaps it’s viewed as a no-risk easy ideological and political choice for Lamont Hill and others AAA members. But if they support the BDS academic boycott of Israel for one field of study, they necessarily advance the boycott in all fields of study since BDS makes no exceptions for medical research. The academic boycott is the academic boycott, in for one field, in for all.
Which raises a question I tweeted to Lamont Hill. Since the Technion-NYU cancer research project would be banned under the academic boycott guidelines, How Many People Must Die for BDS?


http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/04/question-for-marclamonthill-how-many-must-die-for-academic-boycott-of-israel/

sassy wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

Nope, or Disney wouldn't be able to do this:

Disney and Marvel to boycott Georgia if state passes 'religious liberty' bill

I'm sure I've read that they do have laws to prevent boycotts of Israel.

Raggamuffin wrote:

sassy wrote:


Nope, or Disney wouldn't be able to do this:

Disney and Marvel to boycott Georgia if state passes 'religious liberty' bill

I'm sure I've read that they do have laws to prevent boycotts of Israel.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/US-Congress-passes-rare-law-targeting-boycotts-of-Israel-407056

Raggamuffin wrote:Don't they have a law there to prevent official boycotts if the Government doesn't have one?

Just read up this as well:

United States

Boycotts are legal under common law. The right to engage in commerce, social intercourse, and friendship includes the implied right not to engage in commerce, social intercourse, and friendship. Since a boycott is voluntary and nonviolent, the law cannot stop it. Opponents of boycotts historically have the choice of suffering under it, yielding to its demands, or attempting to suppress it through extralegal means, such as force and coercion.

In the United States, the antiboycott provisions of the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) apply to all "U.S. persons", defined to include individuals and companies located in the United States and their foreign affiliates. The antiboycott provisions are intended to prevent United States citizens and companies being used as instrumentalities of a foreign government's foreign policy. The EAR forbids participation in or material support of boycotts initiated by foreign governments, for example, the Arab League boycott of Israel. These persons are subject to the law when their activities relate to the sale, purchase, or transfer of goods or services (including the sale of information) within the United States or between the United States and a foreign country. This covers exports and imports, financing, forwarding and shipping, and certain other transactions that may take place wholly offshore.^[12]
However, the EAR only applies to foreign government initiated boycotts: a domestic boycott campaign arising within the United States that has the same object as the foreign-government-initiated boycott appears to be lawful, assuming that it is an independent effort not connected with the foreign government's boycott. Other legal impediments to certain boycotts remain. One set are Refusal to deal laws, which prohibit concerted efforts to eliminate competition by refusal to buy from or to sell to a party.^[13] Similarly, boycotts may also run afoul of Anti-discrimination laws, for example New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination prohibits any place that offers goods, services and facilities to the general public, such as a restaurant, from denying or withholding any accommodation to (i.e., not to engage in commerce with) an individual because of that individual's race (etc.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott#United_States


So basically, if the boycott is initiated by people in the USA, it's lawful, even against Israel.

Also from the same link

• the antisemitic boycott of Jewish-owned businesses in Nazi Germany during the 1930s
  
  

History repeating itself