GUEST ROOM | A Jewish Case for Divestment

Over the last few weeks, the debate surrounding Students for Justice in Palestine’s Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign has only grown more heated. Cornell Hillel and its filial groups, in opposition to most every other minority organization on campus, have positioned themselves as the loudest proponents of the State of Israel and detractors of the divestment campaign on campus. Hillel’s position as the largest Jewish organization on campus has made it yet more difficult to hear the already marginalized voices of anti-Zionist Jews. Despite that — or rather, because of that — we, as Jewish students, feel it is our responsibility to challenge the narrative Hillel has been constructing and explain to the Cornell community why we support the divestment campaign. We understand many of the positions our anti-divestment counterparts hold because we once held those very same positions ourselves.

GUEST ROOM | Rejecting Boycott, Extending an Olive Branch

Cornell, an intellectual Garden of Eden, has been my “home away from home” for three miraculous semesters. There is only one other paradisiacal location on earth that is as close to my heart as the Big Red: The State of Israel. I deferred my enrollment to Cornell, resisting the allure of its 25-acre Botanic Gardens, to take a gap year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with its similarly alluring 25-dunams Botanical Garden on Mount Scopus. The miracle of a “nation reborn,” as Israeli author Daniel Gordis characterizes the return of the Jewish people to their homeland, lies at the heart of my deep connection to the State of Israel. I was accepted to Cornell nineteen years after having been born in the Weill Cornell Medical Center; Big Red was my destiny.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A Call Against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

To the Editor:

Earlier this month, Cornell Students for Justice in Palestine announced a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. The campaign aims to divest Cornell’s endowment from companies they allege are responsible for human rights violations against Palestinians. A wave of these campaigns has spread to campuses across the country, and they sow nothing but discord and fear in their wake. We, the undersigned members of the Cornell community, stand squarely against this campaign because it is antithetical to the values Cornellians hold dear. BDS Prevents Thoughtful Dialogue on Campus

The goal of the BDS movement is to utilize economic pressure against Israel as a mechanism to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.