In November of 2023, five active GSEU and UUP members from Stony Brook and Buffalo gathered on a Zoom call to discuss what we were going to do to hold SUNY accountable for its role in "israel's" genocide in Gaza. Out of this discussion came the plan to launch a boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against "israel" campaign in the SUNY system. SUNY BDS has since brought together undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni from across 56 of the 64 campuses. We now have a leadership body, the Steering Committee, with representation of the 12 most active campuses, which is rapidly growing to include more organizers. Nearly a third of us are graduate students and workers, again showing how essential we are to change within the university system.
SUNY BDS serves both to connect campus organizers from across the SUNY system and to coordinate action at the state level. Organizing in the SUNY system can be difficult, as many schools are physically isolated both from other universities and from large urban communities with vibrant organizing groups. We host bi-monthly General Assembly meetings, including campus updates and training in media relations, digital security, the structure of SUNY's finances, etc. Over the summer, we hosted an undergraduate-led summer academy in which organizers developed their skills. We also work to coordinate state-level FOIA/FOIL efforts and research, actions in Albany, including a march last April, and state-wide days of action. Finally, we represent New York State in efforts to organize internationally across the Student Intifada.
Graduate workers have been essential to every step of this process. We know how to organize from our experiences in our union. Now we are taking the skills of movement building, outside pressure, and inside negotiation and applying them to BDS. We are circulating our divestment statement to collect signatures to involve more campuses and graduate workers. At protests, sit ins, and the encampments, we knew how to agitate the administration to apply pressure. When they do invite us in - which is rare - we know the tricks they will play to dodge true negotiation and progress. We know when it is time to apply more outside pressure and when it is time to sit down and meet.
Palestine had for millennia been a land where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in community [1]. However, this balance was destroyed by Zionism in the early 1900s, which, in collaboration with anti-semitic governments of Europe - most notably Britain as it controlled Palestine at this time, led to mass European Jewish immigration to and colonization of Palestine [2-4]. After the British withdrew, "israel" made two major land grabs, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, one in 1948 (the Nakba) and a second in 1967 (the Naksa) [5, 6]. During this time, a majority of the displaced Palestinians were forced into refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Syria, and south Lebanon, though some remain as second-class citizens in what is now "israel" [5,6]. Military aggression, arrests and torture without due trial, blockades, and apartheid occurred throughout all of "israel's" history [5,6]. Palestinians resisted both peacefully and militarily, as they have the right to as an occupied people [5-7].
To best understand the context of the modern genocide in Gaza, we need to look to the decade-long siege under which "israel" has placed the 2.3 million Palestinians living there. This siege began in 2005, but was greatly accelerated in 2007, when the Hamas political party was elected to govern Gaza. The restriction on food, movement, and development resulted in 70% of Palestinians in Gaza being unemployed by 2019, and 80% living in poverty [8]. On top of this, "israel's" bombing campaigns in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 left thousands dead and injured and damaged infrastructure that Palestinians could not rebuild due to lack of materials from the blockade [9,10]. In 2018, Palestinians in Gaza tried mass peaceful resistance to their siege, which was met with only violence [11]. In 2023, militant groups, led by the al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas, tried armed resistance. Now we have reached the current genocide in Gaza. During this genocide, "israel" has displaced 90% of Gaza's population, killed (as of July) an estimated 186,000 Palestinians, injured (as reported) over 115,000 Palestinians, completely destroyed half of the hospitals and partially destroyed the rest, destroyed over 80% of all buildings, and imposed a near-total blockade, preventing the entry of food and medicine [12-15]. "israel" has recently expanded its genocidal campaign into southern Lebanon, which it has attacked and occupied, most recently in 2006, and Syria. These unspeakable atrocities hide the acceleration of land theft, settler terrorism, mass imprisonment, movement restrictions, and military occupation that are occurring in the West Bank this past year [16-18].
Palestinian labor has always been at the heart of the Palestinian resistance. Throughout the 1970s, Palestinians built their labor movement, despite "israel's" efforts to arrest labor leaders and disband unions [19]. By the start of the first Intifada, a mass attempt by Palestinian civil society to "shake off [literal translation]" the "israeli" occupation, in the late 1980s, the labor movement was able to organize mass strikes [19]. Palestinian laborers almost entirely ceased work in "israel," redirecting their labor to their own communities [19].
Labor movements have long used their collective power to show true solidarity to comrades globally. The rank-and-file of the US have organized to oppose almost every US-caused or sponsored war, pushing their union leadership to take a stance [20]. Workers have always been able to draw the lines of solidarity in our global struggle against capitalism and imperialism. This is why Palestinian labor unions joined with other civil society organizations in 2005 to call on their equivalents internationally to boycott and divest from "israel" until it met the following demands: (1) end occupation and colonization of Palestinian and Arab land and remove the separation wall, (2) grant full equality to Palestinians living in "israel," (3) allow the right of return of Palestinian refugees as granted in UN Resolution 194 [21].
As teachers and researchers at a university, we can feel powerless to make a difference in ending a genocide using our labor. Especially as we read about dockworkers preventing arms shipments [22]. However, every step we can take to weaken "israel" matters. It is a step closer to heeding the call for BDS from our comrades in Palestinian unions.
SUNY is deeply complicit in "israel's" genocide, from unethical investments to partnerships with "israeli" institutions. The financial structure of the SUNY system is complex with investments both at the state and individual campus level. SUNY BDS is studying the structure of the financial system, working to FOIL information on investments of the SUNY Research Foundation, and training campus organizers how to FOIL investment information for their own campuses. It is highly probable that SUNY is invested in companies that are fueling this genocide. War, technology, and fossil fuel companies, almost all of which are contributing, are highly profitable and common in most investment portfolios. However, this has not been a barrier to divestment in the past or present for public or private universities. The clearest investment though is in the faculty and staff pension funds as New York State Common Retirement Fund has over $250 million invested in "israeli" bonds [23].
Stony Brook has partnerships with International Business Machines (IBM) and Hewlett Packard Inc and Enterprises for software and computing systems. IBM supplies the "israeli" police and military with its technology and equipment and HPE supplies "israeli" police and prisons with servers and data storage and security [24, 25]. Additionally, Stony Brook partners with two "israeli" academic institutions. It maintains a study abroad program at Reichman University, which has developed a "situation room" to disseminate the falsity that Hamas = ISIS, and other "israeli" propaganda, globally [26]. Stony Brook School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences also partners with a research facility in Eilat (Umm al-Rashrash), "israel" for a course on Red Sea coral reefs [27]. Though this facility may not be directly involved in the genocide in Gaza, partnering with it, rather than one of the several other countries surrounding the Red Sea, is choosing to provide Stony Brook's name, influence, and money to a genocidal settler-colony rather than to bolster research and cultural exchange in Arab and East African countries.
As graduate student workers, we know our power in this university. We are the ones who keep the classes running, the papers graded, the labs going. Our labor brings in grant money. We give the university achievements to put on their advertisements. Collectively, we can bring about change in the university. We did this when we formed the GSEU and in subsequent bargaining. Recently, we saw ourselves bring about change through our fee strike and our Living Wage campaign. It is time for us to find ways we can use this power to join our fellow academics, teachers, and union workers in Palestine in solidarity by pushing our university to end its complicity in their genocide.
In the 1980s, SUNY students and faculty launched a successful campaign for divestment from apartheid South Africa. Consistent pressure for years resulted in a 9-4 vote by the SUNY Board of Trustees to divest the endowment from all corporations linked to the South African government. This divestment included many of the same companies from which we are calling for divestment today, such as IBM. The divestment process involved millions of dollars [28]. Today Stony Brook administration tells us divestment is not possible. SUNY Board of Trustees rolls their eyes when we talk at their meetings. Divestment does not happen overnight. For South Africa, it took years of commitment, including many of the same tactics used today. Most of note, students slept over on the lawn outside of the SUNY Administration Building in Albany over the winter. In response, the administration ordered to turn on the lawn sprinklers.
We at SUNY BDS know this is a long fight for divestment. Luckily as graduate students, we are often around for a long time. We carry the patience and dedication our studies require into our organizing as we build a movement of undergraduates and graduates that will pass on to the next generation of students, and faculty and staff for longevity. Our graduate workers from Stony Brook are involved in a variety of ways, including managing internal communications, writing press releases and statements, constructing peer support and mediation within the movement, and planning events that build international solidarity. There are a variety of ways to get involved more deeply in organizing, although the main thing we need as a movement are numbers. We need to show up in solidarity with our fellow workers in Palestine every time there is an action at Stony Brook. This is the arena where we have power to create change.
[1] Rotem, N. (2016, April 4). Before Zionism: the shared life of Jews and Palestinians. +972 Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.972mag.com/before-zionism-the-shared-life-of-jews-and-palestinians/
[2] Khalaf, I. (1997). The effect of socioeconomic change on Arab societal collapse in Mandate Palestine. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 29, 93-112. https://www.jstor.org/stable/163853
[3] Massad, J. (2012, December 24). Zionism, anti-semitism, and colonialism. AlJazeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2012/12/24/zionism-anti-semitism-and-colonialism
[4] Alsaafin, L. (2017, October 27). Did British Mandate pave way for Israeli occupation? AlJazeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/10/27/did-british-mandate-pave-way-for-israeli-occupation
[5] Sayigh, Y. (1997). Armed struggle and the search for state. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
[6] Khalidi, R. (2020). The hundred years' war on Palestine. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
[7] Right of peoples to self-determination/struggle by all available means, A/RES/45/130 (1990). https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-184801/
[8] Smith, R. (2019). Israel's permanent siege of Gaza. Middle East Report, 290, 38-42. https://www.jstor.org/stable/45406228
[9] Timeline: Israel's attacks on Gaza since 2005. (2022, August 7). AlJazeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/7/timeline-israels-attacks-on-gaza-since-2005
[10] Humaid, M. (2022, May 10). A year on from war, Gaza frustrated at slow reconstruction. AlJazeera. Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/10/year-on-war-gaza-frustrated-slow-reconstruction
[11] Martin, A. (Director). (2019). Gaza fights for freedom [Film]. Empire Files.
[12] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2025). Humanitarian situation report #277: Gaza Strip. Retrieved from https://www.ochaopt.org/content/humanitarian-situation-update-277-gaza-strip
[13] Khatib, R., McKee, M., & Yusuf, S. (2024). Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential. The Lancet, 404(10449), 237-238. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01169-3
[14] One year of a war without rules leaves Gaza shattered. (2024, October 2). Doctors Without Borders. Retrieved from https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/one-year-war-without-rules-leaves-gaza-shattered
[15] UN: Over 80% of Gaza's buildings destroyed. (2024, August 20). Middle East Monitor. Retrieved from https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240820-un-over-80-of-gazas-buildings-destroyed/
[16] United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. (2024). Fact sheet: movement and access in the West Bank. Retrieved from https://www.unocha.org/publications/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/fact-sheet-movement-and-access-west-bank-august-2024
[17] United Nations Human Rights Office. (2024). OPT: West Bank raids, detention and ill-treatment of Palestinians. Ramallah, Palestine: UN Human Rights in Occupied Palestinian Territory. Retrieved from https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/un-human-rights-office-opt-west-bank-raids-detention-and-ill-treatment-palestinians
[18] Armed Conflict Location & Event Data. (2024). Civilians or soldiers? Settler violence in the West Bank. Grafton, WI: ACLED. Retrieved from https://acleddata.com/2024/06/10/civilians-or-soldiers-settler-violence-in-the-west-bank/
[19] Cobban, H. (1990).The PLO and the "Intifada," Middle East Journal, 44(2), 207-233. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4328099
[20] Stand, K. (2024, April 25). From World War II to Gaza: U.S. labour opposition to war and fascism. The Bullet. Retrieved from https://socialistproject.ca/2024/04/from-wwii-to-gaza-us-labour-opposition-war-fascism/
[21] Palestinian Civil Society. (2005). Palestinian civil society call for BDS. Retrieved from https://bdsmovement.net/call
[22] Abunimah, A. (2024, November 22). Day 411: Stopping Israel's weapons flow. Electronic Intifada. Retrieved from https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/day-411-stopping-israels-weapons-flow
[23] Office of the New York State Comptroller. (2023, October 13). DiNapoli: NY State Pension Fund purchases $20 million in state of Israel bonds [Press release].
[25] Investigate. (n.d.). Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. Retrieved from https://investigate.afsc.org/company/hewlett-packard
[26] Reichman University. (n.d.). University community mobilization in the Iron Sword War. Retrieved November 27, 2024, from https://www.runi.ac.il/en/students/rights-of-reservists/the-mobilization-of-the-university-in-the-iron-swords-war-en/
[27] Stony Brook University. (n.d.). Undergraduate Bulletin. Retrieved November 27, 2024, from https://www.stonybrook.edu/sb/bulletin/current/courses/mar/
[28] Charny, B. (1985, September 25). SUNY Board of Trustees votes to divest South African funds. Statesman, 1.
