In the past year, I have sat in the safety and comfort of my room scrolling through a seemingly endless stream of videos where mothers scream over the corpses of their children; where a young boy around my sister’s age sobs because he doesn’t know if his best friend is dead or alive under the rubble; where fathers carry the pieces of their family in plastic bags, one in each hand; where a man holds up the last remains of a little girl, her hair and scalp; and where a father turns around in horror holding up the limp body of his beheaded son.
So, I suppose Haze Doleys is not inaccurate when saying, “Palestinians are caught between a rock and a hard place” (“Rejected Divestment Right Call,” The Oberlin Review, Sept. 6, 2024).
This piece is not an attack on Doleys’ character, because I am sure she genuinely believes in everything she wrote in the article. Perhaps she just falls into that camp of people who she says talk about divestment: people with “good intentions and a lack of understanding.”
I find many elements of the original article misinformed at best and disrespectful and dangerous at worst. Still, given the limitations of an op-ed and the abundance of existing rebuttals to many of Doleys’ claims which I find outrageous — including that Israel has “done a great amount to help Palestinian civilians” or that “there is no genocide going on” — I will focus on the topic in the title of the original article: divestment.
Doleys claims that those who support divestment are simply “well-meaning people just trying to educate themselves [who] will come across [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions]’ website, believe the untrue accusations based in skewed history and antisemitism, and then spread it via things like student divestment proposals and SFP.”
Attempting to characterize Oberlin’s Students for a Free Palestine as a group of good-intentioned but naive students wishing to help Palestinians — and, for some students, their families and friends in Gaza who are being indiscriminately and unapologetically killed by Israel and the — U.S. is an insult to the hard work, emotional labor, and collective organizing of students, faculty, alumni, parents, and residents of the City of Oberlin who support the liberation of Palestine.
It is even more inappropriate for an American, regardless of ethnoreligious identity, to say that the Palestinian-created and led BDS movement is based on “untrue accusations and skewed history” when they themselves have no connection to Palestine or its history. In reality, the only “untrue accusation” here is the accusation that BDS is “antisemitic.” Refusing to support companies complicit in the Israeli apartheid regime, in violations of international law and human rights, and in genocide is not antisemitic. Israel is a state, not a person. No state is exempt from criticism, Israel included. No state is above the law, Israel included.
Doleys also claims that “divestment isn’t feasible, effective, or warranted. If Oberlin divested, it would lose a ton of money without having any effect on companies’ decision to divest from Israel or on the Israel–Palestine conflict itself.” I would hope that anyone attempting to speak on the topic of divestment would be familiar with the resounding success and influence of student divestment campaigns in the anti-Apartheid movement.
Students were at the forefront of the anti-Apartheid movement, fundraising for South African liberation movements, campaigning against investment in Apartheid, and acting in solidarity with South African student protesters. In 1984, the Free South Africa Movement was launched, which catalyzed students — alongside labor unions, civil rights organizations, and church groups — across the U.S. Student encampments began at Columbia University and spread across the country, with over 150 universities protesting and demonstrating in solidarity and calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Slowly, colleges and universities began to divest; banks started to pull loans from South Africa; and as public sentiment tipped in favor of the anti-Apartheid movement, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 officially called for the U.S. to sanction South Africa just two years after the start of FSAM.
The student movement in the 1980s is not so different from what is happening today. In fact, the BDS movement for Palestine is open about their inspiration from the anti-Apartheid movement. Those against radical liberation movements have always used the same tired rhetoric to try to discredit student protesters — young and inexperienced, violent and hateful, overdramatic, outside agitators, demanding too much, and “it’ll never work.”
The issue with these arguments is that they misunderstand the fundamental drive behind liberatory movements. These movements — and organizations like Oberlin SFP — are not motivated by a need for validation from people in power or approval from our peers. These movements are powered by a belief in justice and an understanding of solidarity, which includes respecting and trusting oppressed people to make their own decisions about the best way we, as privileged citizens of a country funding the Palestinian genocide, can support them. This means that when Palestinians make the call to boycott, divest, and sanction because they believe it is the most effective way for us in the West to support their struggle for freedom, we listen.
To argue against BDS “because in practice, it actually causes more Palestinian suffering” is patronizing and performative. This kind of argument perpetuates the idea that Westerners know more about the best interests of Palestinians than Palestinians themselves do — a dangerous sentiment historically used to justify American intervention and kill millions of people across the Global South. The high unemployment rates of Palestinians, dangerous and exploitative working conditions, and discriminatory payment are not caused by students in America calling for divestment from the bloody 76-year occupation of Palestine; they are entirely because of Israel’s systematic destruction of Palestinian economic and political institutions and activities.
But there is one thing Doleys and I are in complete agreement on. Neither of us is surprised by the Board’s decision to reject the overwhelmingly favored divestment proposal. While Doleys’ reading “between the lines of [the Board’s] threshold argument” is that there is no genocide occurring, “therefore nothing to warrant divestment,” I take a different interpretation. In Oberlin’s divestment policy, there is zero mention of “genocide” being a necessary quality to “warrant divestment.” Instead, Oberlin considers divestment “from entities that contribute to activities that ‘shock the conscience,’” with a few other clauses, all of which are more than met by the conditions of this genocide and can be found on the Oberlin website.
We don’t even have to agree on the legal technicalities of whether or not Israel’s crimes constitute genocide, because anyone with a conscience can agree that what we have seen in the past year is “shocking” — abhorrent, even. Thus, I find that the Board of Trustees rejected the proposal not because they thought there was no genocide occurring but because — just like they refused to divest from Apartheid and fossil fuels until public scrutiny became too much — the Board values profits over morals or Palestinian lives.
“Rejected Divestment Right Call” is another voice among an unfortunately sizable group of people who have convinced themselves that taking one history class, reading about genocide in the abstract, or witnessing a genocide from their phones — within the safety of the country that is, ironically, responsible for said genocide — qualifies them to tell Palestinians what they are and are not experiencing and how they are allowed to feel. It is an important reminder to all of us in America that, despite how educated we think we are, we will never know what it is like to actually experience a genocide. Our words will never weigh more than the stories of Gazans. Despite how well-intentioned we claim to be, our intentions mean nothing in the face of our actions.
