Disinvestment from Israel

Disinvestment from Israel is a campaign conducted by religious and political entities which aims to use disinvestment to pressure the government of Israel to put "an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories captured during the 1967 military campaign." The disinvestment campaign is related to other economic and political boycotts of Israel.

A notable campaign was initiated in 2002 and endorsed by South Africa's Desmond Tutu. Tutu said that the campaign against Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories and its continued settlement expansion should be modeled on the successful historical, but controversial, disinvestment campaign against South Africa's apartheid system.

Divestment campaigns targeting Israel first received media attention in 2002, thanks largely to a high-profile divestment petition at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology early that year. This was followed later that same year by calls from South African anti-apartheid activist Desmond Tutu for the international community to treat Israel as it treated apartheid South Africa:

The origin of the Israeli divestment campaigns can be traced back to the early 1990s just after similar programs targeting South Africa proved successful in (1) rallying political activists and (2) contributing to pressures that – along with other economic and political factors - led to an end to white minority rule in that country.

Disinvestment campaigns have been focused on high-profile organizations with large financial holdings such as heavily endowed universities or churches and municipalities managing large portfolios of retirement fund investments. Such high-profile institutions, like Harvard University or the multimillion-member Presbyterian and Methodist Churches, provided divestment proponents a platform from which to spotlight their political activity. In addition, the wide financial holdings of these institutions generally provided divestment campaigns a list of stocks upon which to base their calls for divestment.

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