As a unified community of students and alumni at Wayne State University, we unanimously call on our university to divest from university's investments to ensure that we are not invested in war profiteers and other companies that knowingly and consistently contribute to or benefit from human rights violations in Palestine and around the world.

For over 75 years, Israel has committed unlawful land theft and genocide on the native Palestinian people who have called this land their home for over a thousand years. The unjust Israeli occupation has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians being forced to leave their homes since the 1930s. Masafer Yatta, Silwan, and Sheikh Jarrah are Palestinian villages currently being ethnically cleansed to make room for Zionist settlers. The occupation not only oppresses Palestinians through an apartheid structure but has unjustly incarcerated Palestinian children and adults, violently invaded Palestinian towns, and murdered Palestinian civilians daily. 2022 was the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians, where over 200 unarmed civilians were murdered, and Israeli Occupation Forces injured 9,000. The Zionist entity has knowingly violated over 28 international laws.

Also, most recently, on October 17, 2023, the Gaza Strip sustained widespread destruction as the Israeli military bombarded the besieged enclave of 2.3 million people for more than two weeks. Even its south, which Israel had declared a safe zone, has not been spared. Satellite imagery and photographs show entire neighborhoods have been leveled, with many hospitals, schools, places of worship, and homes damaged or destroyed by Israeli land, sea, and air attacks. 

Wayne State University is invested in companies that profit from wars. This includes, for example, the world's largest weapon manufacturers, Boeing, General Dynamics, L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. These companies make the weapons that are being used right now to bomb the civilian population of Gaza.

With this, we demand that the Student Senate support a resolution that calls for Wayne State University to divest from corporations dealing with illegal home destruction, raids, and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. We also call to guarantee complete transparency in future investments.