On Thursday, April 10 the Cornell Student Assembly voted 15-8-1 to indefinitely table a formal Resolution to Divest from all companies that conduct business in Israel. The vote came after the Assembly overruled a motion by President Ulysses Smith, ’14, to disallow the tabling of the resolution until after it was presented.
Some of the businesses identified in the resolution as profiteers from Israel’s “military occupation” of and “abuses and violations” in Palestine that Cornell invests in included Tata Motors, Raytheon, Hewlett Packard and SodaStream. (No mention of the fact that Palestinians in Palestine employed by SodaStream like their employer.)
The outcome today was strictly procedural – the motion to table did not alter the substance of the resolution. However, as the Legal Insurrection blog noted, this outcome is a huge blow to Cornell’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the drafters of the resolution.
As the vote to table indefinitely was underway and it appeared a clear majority was in favor of the motion, SJP members in the audience abruptly announced a “walkout” and did as they said. The show was followed by shouting and cursing by students who were presumably either SJP members or simply ordinary Cornellians who, blind to reality and facts, are vehemently anti-Israel.
Also in attendance were many Jewish students from the Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee and Cornell J Street U., two pro-Israel group on campus.
Professor William Jacobson (who is also the faculty adviser of the Cornell Review and can be heard in the video towards the end), in another blog post, also noted that the resolution’s submission was most likely specifically timed to coincide with the eve of the Jewish holiday Passover, calling it a “last minute, sneak” move.
This year Passover begins Monday night, April 14, and according to Jacobson many Jewish students leave campus Thursday to travel home to celebrate with family. If the resolution had not been tabled today, the formal vote to adopt it would have occurred on that very Thursday, April 17.
Jacobson goes on to extensively detail the SJP’s efforts to purposely keep the Resolution in the dark from the Cornell community at large and Assembly members deemed likely to oppose it.
For more continuous updates on this issue, Legal Insurrection is a great source, and make sure to read future articles in the Cornell Review’s print newspaper for more extensive articles on the topic.
