By Emily Sandstrom, news correspondent
A Northeastern pro-Israel student group launched a petition opposing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, or BDS, which currently advocates for a global boycott of Hewlett-Packard, or HP, products because of the company’s business with the Israeli government.
The student group Huskies for Israel created a website for its petition in the wake of Students for Justice in Palestine’s campaign to ban all HP products from campus, which included a proposed referendum submitted to the Student Government Association, or SGA. The SGA Senate reviewed all referenda questions submitted by the student body on Feb. 12 and did not approve the question regarding HP for the ballot.
The ballot question was, “Should Northeastern stop purchasing HP products until HP-affiliated companies end their involvement in all of the following: deportations, population registries and settlements in military-occupied areas?”
Carly Rutkovsky, president of Huskies for Israel and a second-year psychology major, said the petition to end SJP’s campaign gained 217 signatures.
SGA bylaws require the Senate must vet referenda based on two criteria: fairness of wording and adherence to university policy. The bylaws also require the questions may not be leading, may not be phrased in a way that the questions suggest the answers being sought by the sponsors and may not contain appeals to authority or morality, said third-year biochemistry major Collin Walter, the executive communications director for SGA.
Rutkovsky said she agrees with SGA’s decision to reject the referendum question because its wording did not meet the above criteria.
“Take out all the politics, take out all the feelings, this is just about HP,” Rutkovsky said. “I don’t think the BDS movement is based on reality. And the process of the SGA vetting these questions doesn’t have to do with whether these questions are true or not. These are not real things to be discussing. By international law, Israeli occupation is not illegal, but these things don’t have a place at the conversation at SGA.”
In December 2016, the UN Security Council stated in a declaration that Israeli settlements in the West Bank “have no legal validity.” Other scholars contend that Article 4 in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which Israel signed, renders Israeli occupation illegal.
Ben Simonds-Malamud, an SJP member and third-year English major, explained that his group supports the boycott because HP and its associated companies have been criticized for contracting with Israeli prison services, providing technology for Israel’s population registry for border crossings and operating a facility in a West Bank settlement.
“The Hewlett-Packard family of companies is made of four companies that are all interrelated in that they share resources and supply chain,” Simonds-Malamud said. “So, they are involved in and hold contracts in three specific areas that we brought up in the question … The link is that their technology allows these processes to be expedited and be made more efficient.”
The News was unable to independently verify the existence of any HP facility in the West Bank.
Rutkovsky said SGA’s decision not to move forward with SJP’s referendum provided much relief for Huskies for Israel, who were worried about campus climate.
“Something that was spoken about with regard to number 19, the HP referendum, was the diversity and inclusion policy,” Rutkovsky said. “Jewish students and pro-Israel students spoke about how BDS as a movement is an anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist movement with the intentions of the destruction of the state of Israel and potentially the destruction of the Jewish people.”
Ali Safarkhani, an SJP member and a fourth-year economics major, said SJP members did not feel SGA’s decision was justified and they will appeal it.
“We felt like the arguments brought up at SGA were less about the criteria that the referenda were meant to be judged on, and more about objections to the content of the referendum based on ideology,” Safarkhani said.
Safarkhani said it was unfortunate that Huskies for Israel prevented the student body from a dialogue on the issue.
“We are disappointed that Huskies for Israel organized to deny students the ability to vote on the issue,” Safarkhani said. “We think it would be more constructive to engage in the debate once the question is on the ballot.”
Huskies for Israel bought Facebook and Instagram ads, created a website and shared posts across Northeastern-affiliated Facebook groups, including the 800-member Politically Diverse Students group. Northeastern Hillel also shared Huskies for Israel’s petition to their Facebook page and support the action the group took, said Gilad Skolnick, the executive director at Hillel.
“We want Jewish students to feel comfortable and I would love it if SJP wanted to have dialogue,” Skolnick said. “What we need is more mutual respect and for SJP to be interested in dialogue and not interested in bringing resolutions that lead to more hate.”
Other members of SJP said they will continue to push the university to boycott HP despite the referendum’s rejection.
“A referendum being ignored or not included on a ballot by the administration is not the end-all-be-all of a campaign,” said Pratik Dubey, an SJP member and third-year political science and international affairs combined major. “There’s a lot of organizing and outreach and grassroot stuff that we do to put pressure on the university and make things that need to happen, happen.”
