Today, the Student Senate at UF will attempt to pass an anti-BDS bill titled “Resolution Condemning the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.”
This bill is a direct attack on Palestinian students and a negation of their existence at the university. The claims it makes are far-fetched, and many of them are actually factually incorrect. The point of the bill is to assert that UF and Israel have special ties that would be broken by a BDS bill, and as an American institution, the school must support Israel as a political ally.
There are thousands of students at UF who are explicitly marginalized by this bill. Using the claim that UF has the largest Jewish student population outside of Israel leaves out the fact that there are countless Jewish allies who are against the explicitly illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. The writers seem to forget about massive organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Palestinian Right of Return and Jews for Justice for Palestine, just to name a few. Not to mention the many pro-Palestinian Jewish students attending UF right now, many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Furthermore, the bill seems to work on the assumption that BDS is a divisive tactic but conveniently leaves out the fact that these companies actively engage in illegal acts of violence against Palestinians every single day. Passive divestment is exactly that — passive divestment, and a refusal to engage in these illegal violations of human rights. Maintaining active relations with and investing in companies that violate human rights, however, is the most divisive act possible.
Not to forget that many facts stated in the bill are simply incorrect. The clause bringing up Hebrew studies is irrelevant, as Hebrew classes and Jewish studies classes would be entirely untouched by a BDS campaign. BDS targets institutions and not individuals. Therefore, the clause on having “multiple doctors at the University of Florida Shands Hospital (who) have studied and participated in research in Israel that has enabled them to further their medical knowledge” is, as well, meaningless and irrelevant. Having BDS implemented would change nothing about the situation for these doctors, nor would it have affected their capability to study in Israel.
The clause on drip irrigation technology is, as well, entirely irrelevant and yet again false. BDS has nothing whatsoever to do with divesting from Israeli technologies.
The fact that the writers of this bill resort to inserting clauses with false statements and literally made-up facts proves that it stands on shaky foundations and has no place at this university, and as students, we refuse to stand for it.
Farah Khan is the external vice president of UF Students for Justice in Palestine. This guest column ran on page 7 on 12/3/2013 under the headline "Proposed Student Senate bill is an attack on Palestinian students"
