Currently, Palestinians are being displaced out of their homes, killed and tortured by Israelis. This has been ongoing since 1947 when the first Nakba happened where more than 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. The Israeli supreme court gives their army permission to illegally force Palestinians out of their homes which is a war crime and illegal under international law. They have built a system of mass incarceration that solely targets Palestinians to maintain apartheid. Israeli forces have jailed 800,000 Palestinians since 1967 on offenses that are arbitrary in an effort to terrorize and repress Palestinians. Palestinians are arrested for discussing politics and healthcare, this is implemented to silence them. 

BDS is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycott, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. The main objective of this global campaign is to put political and economic pressure on Israel to recognize the rights of Palestinians and meet their obligations under international law. BDS was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. It calls for a boycott of Israeli products in order to end funding to Israel and stop their occupation and genocide of Palestinians. The movement's divestment activism involves all types of organizations divesting - withdrawing their investment money- from israeli companies or corporations that work with the Israeli military. 

Virginia Tech should implement BDS because academic institutions are key sites of contestation that can either endorse or challenge Israeli apartheid and colonialism, academic institutions should not be neutral grounds, by failing to take action we are complicit in supporting Israeli academic institutions in their oppression of Palestinians. Palestinians are denied their rights daily and in order for Virginia Tech to uphold its core values of Ut Prosim, they need to pass the BDS resolution and address their involvement with Israeli academic institutions. Those academic institutions are major accomplices in their regime of occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid. Many academic institutions are now supporting the academic boycott of Israel and Virginia Tech should too. In order for this resolution to reach the university council level of leadership, it must first pass through two commissions. These commissions will only respond to the influence of the student body they oversee, to awareness of this issue reaching a point where they have to act on this resolution. The passing of this resolution will affirm the position of this university and its student body against apartheid and settler-colonialism by directly divesting from and refusing to collaborate with Israeli and Israeli-supporting institutions.

This resolution was already passed by the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at Virginia Tech in October of last year.

Shabeer Ahmed's BDS Speech at VT on 5/8