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Supporters and opponents of Israeli government policies are getting ready for the UC Berkeley Israel divestment bill showdown Wednesday, with luminaries including South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu joining the list of divestment endorsers.  

Student senators are expected to vote April 14 on whether to override their president’s veto on the bill, which encourages the university to stop investing in companies doing business with Israel. 

The bill also ensures that no student senate funds are invested in the two companies—General Electric and United Technologies— who provide the Israeli military with weapons.  

Although a 16-4 vote of the Associated Students of the University of California cleared the bill March 18, it was struck down by ASUC President Will Smelko a week later.  

Smelko said he disagreed with the narrow focus of the bill. “No matter what I do, large groups of people are going to be very mad and upset..” he said. 

Emily Carlton, one of the ASUC senators who voted for the bill, said that the senate bylaws allow the president to veto any bill passed by the senate, and the senate can then override it with a two-thirds vote.  

“Clearly, the bylaws are flawed,” Carlton said. “However, I am not sure that this was foreseeable, since I don’t think the ASUC has ever faced such a controversial bill—at least not that I have heard about. Essentially, [Smelko] vetoed it on the basis of it being divisive of the student body, and said that the ASUC is not meant to divide people.” 

The passage of the bill sparked immediate controversy, with opponents of the bill trying their best to dissuade the ASUC to change its mind through letters and e-mail campaigns. 

While the bill is titled “UC Divestment From War Crimes,” it focuses on the Middle East conflict and decries human rights violations by the Israeli Army in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Its critics have denounced the singling out of Israel as unfair, anti-Jewish, and even anti-Semitic, given that war crimes and human rights violations take place in other countries as well. 

The senators who support the bill say that Israel was used as a case study to shed light on the problems going on there.  

They have pointed to divestment bills passed by the senate in the past to oppose the South African Apartheid and the genocide in Sudan, but Smelko dismissed those instances as being different. 

Pro-Israel groups flooded Smelko and UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau’s office with e-mails urging them to withdraw the bill, and one Israeli advocacy group StandWithUs even took credit for the campaign in an email to those who support their position. 

“A large percentage of you wrote impressive letters to UC Berkeley opposing the Student Senate divestment resolution,” the letter said. “We have hundreds of copies of your letters. As a result of everyone’s efforts, including an incredibly dedicated group of Berkeley students, the president of the Student Senate (Will Smelko) vetoed the divestment bill. Please send him a note of thanks, at president@asuc.org” 

The StandWithUs e-mail said the bill was “orchestrated by UC Berkeley student group Students for Justice in Palestine.  

“If [Smelko’s veto] is overturned, this is the first time a divestment bill will be upheld in a large, public US institution,” it said. 

Meanwhile, former Daily Planet reporter Richard Brenneman reported on his blog that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) recently kicked off a campaign to take over student government on the Berkeley campus. 

There is plenty happening on the other end of the spectrum as well.  

A group of local Jews are doing their best to encourage the senators not to take back their votes. 

A letter circulated to the Jewish community asks them to “stand up for justice” and sign an advertisement in the UC Berkeley student newspaper, The Daily Californian, to support the divestment vote. 

Sixteen “brave senators voted for a measure calling for UC to divest from companies that profit from and enable Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land, Israel’s illegal settlements, Israel’s illegal wall, and Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes,” the letter says. “Unfortunately, right-wing pro-Israel activists sent a flood of e-mails to the student president's office. He vetoed the bill six days later.” 

The letter warns that although only 14 votes are needed to override the veto, four of the original 16 senators are members of the president’s political party, Student Action,’ “and they are under enormous pressure to switch their votes.” 

Part of the text of the ad reads: 

“We are Jews and we yearn for a future in which Israelis and Palestinians can live in peace and safety, with dignity and human rights for all, when Palestinians will be free from oppression, and when Israelis will be free from being ordered to assume a uniform to enforce that oppression ... Please do not be dissuaded by the misleading arguments of some of our Jewish brothers and sisters intended to weaken your resolve. This is an historic moment in which the ASUC can contribute to our dreams for our children— Jewish, Muslim, and Christian alike.” 

On Tuesday, a press release from Students for Justice in Palestine said that 263 Jews from the Bay Area, Israel and around the world had signed a political advertisement supporting the student senate bill, which appeared in Tuesday’s print edition of the UC Berkeley student newspaper The Daily Californian. 

Notable signatories include UC Berkeley Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture Daniel Boyarin, UC Berkeley Professor of Hebrew and Jewish Studies Chana Kronfeld; founder of Shomer Shalom Institute for Jewish Nonviolence, Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb and Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor.  

The Daily Cal ad comes right after the announcement by Nobel Peace Prize Winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu that he supports the divestment bill, saying “I have been to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, and I have witnessed the racially segregated roads and housing that reminded me so much of the conditions we experienced in South Africa under the racist system of Apartheid.” 

Students for Justice in Palestine will be holding a silent protest in front of Sproul Hall at noon Wednesday to oppose the veto. 

An e-mail from Jewish Voice for Peace charged that "the bill's opponents have been waging a fierce campaign of misinformation, including a closed door meeting with the Israeli Consulate General where student senators were actually told that massive Jewish criticism of Israeli human rights violations is a cultural pathology." The e-mail talked about rumors of Harvard professor and bill opponent Alan Dershowitz arriving on campus Wednesday. 

Carlton, who is getting ready to vote again on Wednesday, said that “the bill just encourages UC to divest, it doesn’t actually do anything.”  

Carlton, who is getting ready to vote again on Wednesday, said that “the bill just encourages UC to divest, it doesn’t actually do anything.” 

“Mainly, it will send a message to other universities,” she said. We have already been contacted by a student leader at Oberlin College who heard about it and wanted to do the same thing. That is where the effectiveness lies.” 

The ASUC meeting is scheduled to take place Wednesday, April 14, at 7 p.m, in the senate chambers, 400 Eshelman Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.