Swarthmore College student leaders pass BDS resolution
The legislation asks the school to divest from companies that violate international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFBDS(photo credit: WIKIPEDIA)
Swarthmore College student leaders voted in favor of BDS on Thursday after rejecting the resolution in February, the Algemeiner reported.“Not in any way a measure taken against the existence of the state of Israel. This vote only condemns the human rights violations occurring in Palestine due to the Israeli occupation,” Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) club on campus said in an e-mail, according to the report.The student body president expressed a similar sentiment to the president and Board of Managers writing in an e-mail after that vote that the vote was "not a repudiation of the Jewish faith or of our fellow Jewish and Israeli students."The student government voted in favor of the resolution that was proposed by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) club on campus. The legislation asks the school to divest from companies that violate international law in Israel and the Palestinian territories.When the Student Government Organization (SGO) presented the original petition, dozens of students were recorded chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”During the first vote, SJP members were asked not to attend as not to exert influence on those voting. When the SGO voted against the divestment, protests erupted from SJP members and students involved in similar groups on campus. This gave SJP, JVP and Swarthmore Students for Israel (SSI) time to explain their positions on the issues.Matthew Stein, a member of SSI told the Algemeiner that he believed that two public twitter accounts likely help persuade the SGO to vote in favor of the BDS resolution.One account, Radical Alert shared right-wing content and accused SGO members of being antisemitic. Another account, Stop Hate At Swarthmore, tagged SJP members and student government representatives, and condemned them for their "hateful" behavior.The SSI distanced itself from these accounts and denied any relation to them.