Submission: Divestment promotes peace, justice in Palestine

I have always been very positive about the future of a just peace for both Palestinians and Israelis.

It is one of the reasons I believe in the work I do with Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. But this past summer caused me to question whether I should remain so positive. This summer, when the bombs were dropping on Gaza during Israel’s 50-day-long attack on the Gaza Strip, known as “Operation Protective Edge,” a state of hopelessness began to settle in.

I woke up every morning to the death toll in Gaza increasing to incomprehensible numbers. Hearing reports day and night of the stories – the families that were torn apart by unimaginable deaths, the total devastation and decimation of complete cities in Gaza – was overwhelming for most of us who kept up with the news, but tragic for Palestinians on a level I can never fully understand.

Our University is invested in a number of companies that aid in the ongoing, systematic oppression of the Palestinian people. In February, SJP at UCLA and hundreds of UCLA students asked members of the Undergraduate Students Association Council to end our complicity in this oppression. We brought forth UCLA’s first divestment resolution from companies that profit off violence against Palestinians, but it failed to pass by two votes.

It was with the added knowledge of my own complicity in Palestinian oppression that I watched the news unfold this summer.

Thanks to all my research last year, by this summer I was well acquainted with the weaponry the Israeli military was employing against Palestinians. A significant portion of it came from companies our school invests in: Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin are all responsible for the missiles and Apache helicopters used by the Israeli military on Palestinian civilians.

Over the course of my work with SJP at UCLA, I have become an expert at rattling off facts and figures. So when people approached me seeking to understand better what happened in Gaza this summer, I dutifully reported: over 2,000 Palestinians killed, 500 of whom were children; 18,000 housing units either destroyed or severely damaged, leaving 108,000 people homeless. I told them about the ground invasion that followed the air strikes, and explained to them the massacres in Shejaiya and all across Gaza, where Palestinians sought refuge in U.N. camps, hospitals and schools, which were subsequently blown to pieces.

But these numbers had names and faces. As of late my mind turns repeatedly back to an image I wish I could rid myself of, but cannot: four boys, all sons of fishermen, were playing soccer on the Gazan beach when they were hit by an Israeli strike. They tried to run to safety, but were followed; the lives of Ismail, Zakariya, Ahed and Mohammad Bakr would end at ages 9, 10, 7 or 9, and 11 or 12, respectively. The lives of their mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers – if they are still alive – changed for the worse and forever, but the attack on Gaza only carried on. Four tiny bodies to add to the death toll.

It would be easy to let these stories add to my hopelessness, as they did over the summer. But to give in to the idea that there is “nothing we can do” about the oppression of Palestinians just because they are thousands of miles away is to contribute to and perpetuate a miserable status quo. Nothing can ever bring back the Bakr boys, but misery, hopelessness and complacency will only allow more deaths to occur in our names.

Education and activism, on the other hand, can help dismantle the structures of violence that lead to their deaths. There is a growing recognition of what we as students have the power to do. Divesting from human rights violations against Palestinians does not only end our complicity, but aids in the Palestinian struggle for justice and liberation.

Our University’s investments in arms manufacturers and other companies that profit off human rights violations were made without our consent. Divestment is a way to reclaim our agency and move from despair about the present to hope for the future. Join me and other students across campus in advocating for a more ethical University and a just peace.

Palma is a graduate student in anthropology and the co-director of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Committee for Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA.