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Demands from INSAF include divestment from Israeli companies; end of partnership with Tel Aviv University

Hundreds of students and community members took to Tabaret Lawn on Monday, April 29 in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The day-long protest organized by INSAF uOttawa and the Palestinian Student Association included speeches from leaders of their organizations, professor Gulzar Charania, and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) Carleton. The sit-in was later extended to Friday.

The sit-in was accompanied by a list of demands put forth to the U of O, posted to INSAF’s Instagram page.

Disclosure

Firstly, INSAF’s (Arabic translation: justice or equity) Instagram post is demanding that the U of O disclose “all direct and indirect investments made by the university.” The U of O’s latest release of their long-term investment portfolio is dated Dec. 31, 2022, and includes the disclosure of 260 different holdings.

Divestment

Secondly, INSAF’s Instagram post demands “complete divestment from any and all corporations involved directly and indirectly in the surveillance, occupation, and murder of Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank.”

INSAF cites seven companies with holdings in Gaza (Axon Enterprise, Airbus SE, CAE Inc, Scotiabank, Blackrock Inc., Estee Lauder Companies, Intel Corporation, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton) and six companies with holdings in the West Bank (Amot Investments Ltd., Atlas Copco, Booking Holdings, SolarEdge Technologies Inc., WSP Global Inc., and Cisco Systems Inc.) as divestment targets.

Axon Enterprise (formerly TASER International) manufactures tasers and bodycams, and surveillance systems. Axon Enterprise entered into a $90 million stake in Israeli digital intelligence firm Cellebrite in 2021. Cellebrite has been accused of spying on Palestinians, which Australian-German journalist Antony Loewenstein says has “enabled Israel to deepen its control over millions of Palestinians and to do so at a profit.”

Airbus SE is a European aerospace corporation. The company signed into a $600 million deal with Israeli defence contractor Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in June 2018 to arm Germany with Israeli-built surveillance drones. IAI is a state-owned aerospace and defence company which has manufactured drones used for attacks against civilians dating back to 2008, according to Defence for Children International.

CAE Inc. (formerly Canadian Aviation Electronics) is a Canadian manufacturer of flight simulation technologies, flight modelling technologies, and flight training services. According to the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, CAE provided technology used to train Israeli military to operate aircraft used in their attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009 and works in cooperation with the IAI to develop training.

Scotiabank is a Canadian banking and financial services corporation. Scotiabank holds a 4.3 per cent stake in Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems Ltd. — which they reduced from 5.1 per cent during the third quarter of 2023 following protests at the bank’s headquarters in Toronto. Elbit’s operations include the sale of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), artillery, munitions, and electronic warfare systems to Israel’s Defence Ministry.

Blackrock Inc. is the world’s largest asset manager, with managed assets totalling $10 trillion. Blackrock has investments spanning almost all global industries. The New York-based company’s holdings include multiple defence contractors utilized by the Israeli government, including Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics.

The Estée Lauder Companies is an American multinational cosmetics company, based in New York City. Since the early 2000s, pro-Palestinian activists have called for a boycott of the company due to the Lauder family’s ties to Israel.

Intel is an American multinational technology company. The company received a $3.2 billion grant from the government of Israel in December to go towards a planned $25 billion computer chip plant expansion in southern Israel. “This investment, at a time when Israel wages war against utter wickedness, a war in which good must defeat evil, is an investment in the right and righteous values that spell progress for humanity,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich at the time.

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) is a multinational conglomerate specializing in luxury goods headquartered in Paris. LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault has invested in Israeli firms such as Wiz, a cloud security startup.

Amot Investments is an Israeli real estate company. Investigate reported in 2019 that the firm owns an industrial building in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The United Nations Security Council reaffirmed in 2016 that Israeli settlements in the West Bank had “no legal validity,” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.”

Atlas Copco is a Swedish multinational industrial company. Investigate reported in 2022 that some of its products were “used in the construction of the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem railway, which cuts through the occupied West Bank.”

Booking Holdings is an American travel technology company which operates under the brands Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda, KAYAK, and Open Table. In 2019, Amnesty International found that Booking.com listed 45 hotel or rental options in settlements including in East Jerusalem. As of June 2023, the company was still listed on the United Nations database of companies conducting business in illegal Israeli settlements.

SolarEdge Technologies is an Israeli renewable energy company. The company has erected solar fields near the settlement of Shadmot Mehola in the West Bank.

WSP Global is a Canadian consulting firm. The company was contracted to “plan, design, maintain, and extend” the Jerusalem Light Rail (JLR) system. A report submitted to the United Nations by Al-Haq: Law in the Service of Man in 2021 alleged that “WSP facilitates the practice of forcible transfer of settlers into the Occupied Palestinian Territory through its construction and servicing of the JLR”.

Cisco is an American multinational digital communications corporation. In 2018, the government of Israel announced a partnership with Cisco to “accelerate the country’s Digital Agenda”. Investigate reported in 2019 that eight announced locations of Cisco’s “digital hubs” are “in or near illegal settlements in occupied territories.”

Adoption of Anti-Palestinian Racism Definition

Thirdly, INSAF’s Instagram is demanding that the U of O formally adopt the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association (ACLA) definition of Anti-Palestinian Racism, which reads as follows.

“Anti-Palestinian racism is a form of anti-Arab racism that silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti-Palestinian racism takes various forms including: denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians; failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an Indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine; erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians; excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies; defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values.”

Breaking off Academic Relationships

Finally, INSAF’s Instagram post demanded that the U of O “commits to reviewing and accordingly breaking off relationships with academic Zionist institutions. (Example: Exchange program at Tel Aviv University).”

In March, U of O President and Vice-Chancellor Jacques Frémont commented on this topic, stating “The University of Ottawa will have no part of any movement that boycotts academic institutions. We will continue to pursue mutually beneficial relationships with leading institutions around the world and will continue to do so to further the advancement of knowledge and the free circulation of ideas, students and faculty members.”

INSAF has extended the sit-in until Friday, May 3, and will leave by 9 p.m. each night. The U of O has yet to respond to the Fulcrum’s request for comment on INSAF’s demands.