DC Coalition Using Divestment to Fight Israeli Occupation

The US Campaign to End the Occupation sponsors rallies and marches in Washington DC. Muslim invovlement in those rallies is generally low. Photos courtesy of the US Campaign to End the Occupation.

DC is home to politicians, lawmakers, shareholders, and executives who work to support and defend Israel’s 44-year old occupation of Palestine. But in DC, not everyone thinks the same way.

The nation’s capital is also home to a non-profit organization fighting to end an occupation they say is entirely “unjust” and “illegal.”

The organization, whose mission is clearly outlined in its name “US Campaign to End the Occupation”, is a national coalition of over 350 organizations representing vast constituencies and diverse religious backgrounds including American Muslims for Palestine, American Jews for a Just Peace, and Grassroots International.

Though run by six full-time staff members on a yearly budget of between $250,000 to $400,000, it is making inroads against American-backed Israeli operations in the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem by urging companies who profit from the Israeli apartheid to divest or take away investments from occupied lands and by challenging harmful US policies which support the occupation.

The coalition mobilized in 2002 and has since launched rigorous, national campaigns to educate the public on America’s current and potential role in the conflict.

“The policies of the US – both military and diplomatic – make possible Israel’s military operations, human rights abuses, and apartheid practices,” the organization’s National Advocacy Director, Josh Ruebner said. “Every group in our coalition understands this,” he said. Between 2009 and 2018, the United States is expected to spend over $30 billion in military aid to Israel.

In fall of this year, the state of Palestine will apply to become a member nation of the United Nations (UN). However, in remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Obama administration has made it clear that it will “stand up against” this united call for self-determination which it views as “undermining Israel’s legitimacy,” despite its 1949 promise to “not use its right of veto in the Security Council on any membership application.”

The United States proposed renewing negotiations in exchange for dropping the Palestinian membership bid, an act the US Campaign says exposes the America as a “guarantor [of] Israeli military occupation” and as “Israel’s lawyer.” In response, the US Campaign launched a petition urging the State Department and the United States Mission to the UN to “not set a timetable for Palestinian freedom.” The petition has gathered 6,544 signatures of its 10,000 goal.

In addition to grassroots lobbying, the US campaign is hitting Israel at its economic weak spot through Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). The BDS movement started in 2005 when over 170 Palestinian organizations in the occupied territories and in exile called the world to apply BDS against Israel until it agreed to uphold international law.

The divestment efforts appear to be hurting Israel; Israeli Prime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it Israel’s “number two threat” after Iran’s nuclear proliferation.

Construction equipment giant Caterpillar is one of the US Campaign’s many targets. Bulldozers sent to Israel wreak paths of death and destruction on Palestinian lands in direct violation of Fourth Geneva Article Convention, article 147. The US Campaign’s protesters gather at Caterpillar’s annual shareholder meeting in Chicago. As a result, Caterpillar decided to move its meeting headquarters to Arkansas where organizing a protester-base is more challenging, Ruebner said.

The US Campaign also urges boycotts of phone company Motorola, which sells equipment to the Israeli army, and the Israeli cosmetics company Ahava, which extracts resources from the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

The boycott includes targeting cultural institutions because “Israel uses these cultural institutions… to whitewash its violations of international law and human rights and present itself as a beacon of cultural progress,” the campaign’s website details.  Several weeks ago, the campaign scored a “big cultural victory” by pressuring former basketball star and actor Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to cancel the showing of his film “On the Shoulders of Giants” in Israel.

Ruebner looks forward to even bigger victories in a future he called “dramatic and fast-changing” for Palestinians. Given the Palestinian UN membership bid, he is confident that “Palestinians are determined to embark on a new diplomatic strategy of going around the US and not through the US to achieve their long denied rights.”

Citing the end of apartheid in South Africa, he said, “Historical change takes place in the moment you least expect it. We are getting to that tipping point.”

He urges Muslim-Americans to join in the effort to end the decades of bloodshed and put a reign on “Israel’s lawyer” – the US. “It is our right and our responsibility for every person in the US, regardless of religion or ethnicity, to support justice and self determination,” the Jewish activist said.

The US Campaign will hold its 10th annual conference in Washington, DC , September of this year. For more information on the non-profit organization’s campaigns and missions, visit www.endtheoccupation.org.