By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, The Jewish Sound
After more than two hours of debate on May 20, the University of Washington student senate voted against resolution 20-39, for the UW to divest from certain corporations that do business with Israel, 59-8 with 11 abstentions.
Jewish students opposed to the resolution expressed relief in the landslide victory.
“The process was definitely long and labor intensive,” said Robbie Ellenhorn, a sophomore at the UW and president of Washington Students for Israel. “It feels good to be done with and over with.”
According to Ellenhorn, at least 30 students worked regularly over the weeks leading up to the resolution, meeting with student senators, managing social media, creating graphics and educational materials, and just talking. The coalition that formed in response to the resolution drew students from across the ideological spectrum, from AIPAC to J Street.
“All the students working to defeat the resolution, we all have different views on Israel, and we were all able to come together and realize we were stronger together,” Ellenhorn said.
Despite the students’ request that the community stay at bay, Israel advocacy organization StandWithUs Northwest provided educational materials, media training, speeches, and more, and it served as a liaison between the campus and the community, including posting real-time updates from the senate floor on Facebook.
Hen Mazzig, StandWithUs campus speaker and shaliach, said he spent many hours working with them.
“They wanted our expertise,” Mazzig said. “There’s no other organization that deals with BDS the way that we do.”
The vote drew students, faculty, and community members from both sides. At a preliminary vote before going into the session, the student senators overwhelmingly viewed the resolution unfavorably.
“The general feeling going into it was that it wasn’t going to pass,” said Ellenhorn. “As the debate wore on…it became pretty clear that the senators understood the problems with the resolution.”
The resolution’s call for divestment from Caterpillar, for one, was undermined by the fact that the UW does not invest in Caterpillar.
“They were using materials from [national] Students for Justice in Palestine as part of their resolution, and when it came out that they hadn’t done their research ahead of time, they undercut their own campaign,” said Robert Jacobs, StandWithUs Northwest’s regional director.
But for the pro-divestment activists, passing the resolution is less important than the public relations campaign, Jacobs said. He expects SUPERUW, the main organization behind the resolution, will bring it back to the floor next year.
Leah Knopf, a Jewish student who supported the resolution, told The Jewish Sound that “we are inspired by the broad student support for this resolution and are celebrating the beginning of a long struggle,” in an email. “What students and the larger UW community have learned over these past months cannot be forgotten and the passion for this struggle and social justice will continue.”
However, Jacobs is optimistic the senators were educated about the mission behind the resolution, which he believes is to undermine Israel on much more than a financial level.
“The students exposed that the other students had another agenda,” said Jacobs.
Rabbi Oren Hayon, Greenstein Family executive director of Hillel UW, helped to lead the opposition to the resolution, and in spite of the victory, he sounded worn out.
“It distracted us from spending time doing thoughtful, engaging, meaningful, fulfilling programming for our constituents, because when stuff like this emerges on campus it sucks everyone’s time and energy into it,” Hayon told The Jewish Sound.
Hayon ponders alternative paths, like ignoring such resolutions.
“No one ever was afraid that the UW was going to divest from Israel,” he said. “The risk that this bill carried — I’m not sure it was worth the sacrifice we made to fight it.”
He is also introspective about his role as a leader.
“I am aware that there are Jewish students in our community who are looking for a legitimate, nonviolent way to express their outrage and disappointment to what they see as Israel’s failure,” he said. “I don’t know what options are open to them…. Once the battle lines were drawn it was clear Hillel wasn’t inviting dialogue with students.”
Whatever happens, Hayon would like to remain true to the coalition of diverse students that formed around this crisis.
“Any way forward has to be diverse and thoughtful and inviting,” he said.
Looking back at the UW student senate’s consideration of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) divestiture resolution, it is important to really stress the incredible work the Huskies Against Divestment students did – students from a broad political spectrum – coming together to oppose the one-sided anti-Israel campaign. They showed the UW student senators that BDS says one thing (that it wants Israel to withdraw from the West Bank), but that its real agenda is the end of Israel as a Jewish state. That message got across.
It also needs to be said that this was a terrific example of Jewish organizations working together, collaboratively, to support the students. Hillel UW and StandWithUs Northwest were there and other organizations provided important support as well. We hope this example leads to more organizations working together for common goals in the future and to us all acknowledging and celebrating each other’s contributions.
So, congratulations to the terrific Huskies Against Divestment students, to Hillel UW, and to our community for trusting the students.
[…] Seattle victory many in the Jewish community were stunned by comments recently made by Hayon in the local Jewish newspaper that “The risk that this [BDS divestment] bill carried — I’m not sure it was worth the […]
the good rabbi is right. the fight is not worth it. and since he sees no point in his leadership role, she should resign post haste