For the past 65 years, the Israeli government has oppressed and traumatized the Palestinian people by numerous means, including, but not limited to, racial discrimination, ethnic cleansing, illegal settlement and colonization, and military occupation. Thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children have been killed since the beginning of this conflict, and Palestinian refugees and their descendants number in the millions.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has declared the establishment and further expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the creation and utilization of the Apartheid Wall which divides Palestinian land, illegal according to international law.

The United Nations General Assembly has also declared the establishment and further expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank illegal, along with the exploitation of the occupied Palestinian territories’ natural resources, in accordance with its Fourth Geneva Convention.

United States policy states that its administration does not accept “the legitimacy of continued settlement activity.”

Human rights organizations that have condemned the human rights violations committed by the Israeli government include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Defence for Children International, Addameer, B’tselem, Adalah, Al-Haq, Badil, and the Israeli Coalition Against Home Demolitions.

However, it still stands that Israel has been the leading recipient of aid from the United States since the 1970s, currently receiving approximately $3 billion. Billions of dollars more go into supporting the state of Israel through the economic participation of many United States-based companies and institutions in Israel, including Rutgers University. The United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave, has been assisting a state which suppresses the freedom, liberty, and justice of an entire people.

Rutgers University prides itself on being a community of global citizens. Our university has a long tradition of activism and being the voice of those whose cries fall on deaf ears. In the 1980s, Rutgers students were among the many activists worldwide who called for their governments, corporations and universities to divest, or remove their financial investments, in apartheid South Africa and other countries and corporations that continued to do business in South Africa, despite its clear violations of human rights. It was this movement of BDS—boycott, divestment, and sanctions—that helped to bring about the fall of South Africa’s apartheid regime through the act of international isolation.

The billions of dollars in United States aid from our tax money and the billions of dollars in investment and economic participation from United States corporations and institutions—including our own university— have helped to back the state of Israel and allow it to continue in its occupation of the Palestinian people and their land, as well as its denial of their basic human rights.

Thus, another BDS campaign has come to Rutgers, and this time, it is for the people of Palestine.

As students, faculty, alumni, staff, and the larger community of Rutgers University, and as living, breathing, feeling human beings, we cannot, in clear conscience, allow these human rights abuses to happen on our dime. These violations of human rights cannot continue, particularly with the aid of our tax money, the economic participation of companies whose products we consume, and the support of the investing power of our university.

Thus, our petition stands:

We, the students, faculty, alumni, staff, and community of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, demand that our administration cease its support and endorsement of oppression and the violation of fundamental human rights.

We demand that the Rutgers administration publicly release a full list of corporations and institutions that do business with or in Israel and in which the administration has invested or done business with as well.

We demand that the Rutgers administration immediately divest from, and boycott, any such corporations and institutions which benefit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

We demand that the Rutgers administration take part in national pressure for the discontinuation of United States aid to Israel.

We demand that the Rutgers administration take part in national and international pressure for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.

We demand that the Rutgers administration cease to be a complicit third-party in the oppression and occupation of the Palestinian people.

We demand that the Rutgers administration join us in our fight for the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, national liberation, human rights, and justice.

The Rutgers BDS movement is here to stay. And we will not be silent.

Students for Justice in Palestine
Rutgers—New Brunswick chapter