Boycott
One major organization threw its weight behind the movement to boycott Israel this quarter. Representing almost 1 m. workers, the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LO) endorsed a full economic, cultural, and academic boycott of Israel on 5/12. The Palestinian BDS National Comm. welcomed (5/13) the move and called on the LO to “apply pressure on the Norwegian govt. to end all its military ties with Israel’s regime of oppression and to divest its sovereign fund from all companies that are complicit in Israel’s occupation and illegal settlement enterprise.” The LO’s endorsement was not the only indication of rising support for the BDS movement in Europe. On 4/19, Barcelona’s city council passed a declaration upholding the rights of citizens to boycott Israel, condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, and calling for an end to the blockade of Gaza. In doing so, Barcelona joined the more than 50 Spanish municipalities that have backed BDS since 2014 (Electronic Intifada, 4/20). Elsewhere, the Belgian municipality of Sint-Jans-Molenbeek, 1 of 19 in the Brussels area, adopted (4/26) a motion to boycott companies and other institutions complicit in the Israeli occupation. In Italy, the Univ. of Turin’s student council passed (3/1) a motion calling for the annulment of agreements between the university and Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, due to Technion’s collaboration with the IDF.
Also of note: the U.S. literary organization PEN America stopped accepting donor support from the Israeli govt., according to the U.S. activist group Adalah-NY on 2/23. The move came mos. after more than 240 writers and publishers called on PEN to end its relationship with the Israeli govt. surrounding the nonprofit’s annual World Voices Festival in 2016. The Israeli govt. provided funding for the festival in 4 of the previous 5 years.
Divestment
U.S. universities remained a hotbed of divestment-related activity this quarter. On 3/15, the student senate at De Anza College, a community college in Cupertino, CA, passed a res. calling on the school’s board of trustees to pull investments from Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Motorola Solutions, Caterpillar, and G4S due to their complicit roles in Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights. With their successful resolution, the student activists at De Anza added to similar accomplishments by their peers at 7 of the 9 Univ. of California campuses, nearby San Jose State Univ., Stanford Univ., and the Univ. of Chicago. Later, the undergraduate student senate at Tufts Univ. passed (4/9) a similar res., targeting HPE, G4S, Elbit Systems, and Northrop Grumman.