NEW YORK (Press Release)– The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Wednesday expressed its appreciation to University of California officials for their strong, unequivocal statement in which they announced their decision not to recommend to the university’s board divestment from companies doing business with Israel.
Student organizations at the University of California recently put forward two bills calling for Israel divestment. Both resolutions were defeated.
“The university did the right thing by making clear that it is unfair to hold one country – Israel – to a different standard,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “The divestment resolutions recently proposed at UC Berkeley and UC California, San Diego, were unfair in their isolation of Israel and were a thinly veiled attempt to demonize and delegitimize Israel.”
In the UC Statement on Divestment, President Mark G. Yudof and Board of Regents Chairman Russell Gould and Vice Chair Sherry L. Lansing made clear that “divestment needs to be undertaken with caution” and that “any discussion on divestment … must be robust and fair minded.” They said the student resolutions failed that test.
In their statement, the university officials reaffirmed a 2005 Board of Regents policy that the university will only consider divestment when the U.S. government declares that a foreign regime is committing acts of genocide.
“We must take great care that no one organization or country is held to a different standard than any other,” read the UC statement. “In the current resolutions voted on by the UC student organizations, the State of Israel and companies doing business with Israel have been the sole focus. This isolation of Israel among all countries of the world greatly disturbs us and is of grave concern to members of the Jewish community.”
A comprehensive story on this matter was published by Marsha Sutton of San Diego News Network.
Also on Wednesday,the Anti-Defamation League called on the head of the Polish professional soccer league to sanction a team for a blatant display of anti-Semitism by its fans.
During a May 8 match, fans of Resovia Rzeszow displayed a large banner showing a caricatured hook-nosed Jew with a blue and white yarmulke – the colors of the opposing team – and the phrase, “Death to the Crooked Noses.”
“This sickening display of crude anti-Semitism is an alarming manifestation of a continuing problem in Polish society, where our opinion surveys and other polls have found disturbing levels of anti-Semitic sentiment,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “We call on the league’s president to sanction Resovia Rzeszow and to apply the anti-racism practices of the European football authority, UEFA.”
In a letter to Mr. Andrzej Rusko, president of the Ekstraklasa league, ADL said, “An equally important measure of society is how authorities react to such incidents.”
“Only 700 of Rzeszow’s 15,000 Jews survived the Holocaust,” the letter stated. “Jews were starved and executed in Rzeszow’s ghetto, which was later transformed into a concentration camp for the region. Some were sent to nearby death camps, while others were shot in the forest. Calling for death to Jews on the same spot cannot go unpunished.”
*
Preceding provided by the Anti-Defamation League