Transcription:
UC Berkeley BDS Coalition Statement:
Dear UC Berkeley Community,
Over the past eleven months, Palestinians in Gaza have faced relentless Israeli bombardment, with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians martyred, wounded, or missing beneath the rubble.
The University of California (UC) stands complicit in this genocidal onslaught – through its investments, its partnerships, and its suppression of Palestine solidarity. We must answer the urgent call of Palestinian civil society and implement Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of the Israeli settler-colonial state.
The BDS movement demands: (1) an immediate end to the Zionist colonization of Arab lands, including the genocidal siege of Gaza; (2) full freedom and equality for Palestinians, from the river to the sea; and (3) the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their homes and properties.
We, the UC Berkeley community, must hold the UC accountable for its direct support for the ongoing genocide. Our demands are as follows:
1. We demand the total divestment of the UC Berkeley Foundation and the UC General Endowment Pool from the Israeli state and from all companies profiting from the colonization of Palestine. Most urgently, we demand the immediate withdrawal of the hundreds of millions of UC dollars invested, directly and indirectly through large asset managers like BlackRock, in weapons manufacturers that arm and sustain the genocide in Gaza, including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and General Electric.
2. We call for UC Berkeley, including student groups and government, to boycott all products and services that are complicit in the occupation and genocide of Palestinians, as specified by the BDS movement.
3. We endorse the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), urging UC Berkeley and its researchers to sever all ties to Israeli academic and cultural institutions.
As students of a U.S.-based university that benefits from both U.S. and Israeli settler-colonialism, we must leverage our unique position within the heart of empire and the flow of global capital to call for a free Palestine. As history has shown, UC Berkeley students have power to wield — from student strikes against the Vietnam War, to playing a key role in ending apartheid in South Africa. We can win what we fight for. We must join the growing list of schools, including UC Davis, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles, in the affirmation of a UC-wide commitment to BDS.
As letter signatories, we pledge our commitment to join a broad-based campus BDS coalition. BDS is a call for each of us, with our unique positionalities, to take meaningful and continued action in support of Palestinian liberation. We call on the UC Berkeley community to join this growing movement, setting an example of steadfast solidarity for other institutions to follow. We affirm that Palestinian liberation is intertwined with all struggles for liberation. The struggle for a free Palestine leads us toward a free world.
In solidarity, without compromise, from the river to the sea.
Date: 2024
Attribution: UC Berkeley BDS Coalition Statement, 2024, University of California, Berkeley, Free Palestine Encampment Collection, CU-620, https://archive-it.org/collections/30322, University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.