World

‘Divest from Israel’: Decoding the Gaza protest call shaking US campuses

Published

2 years ago

April 30, 2024

‘Divest from Israel’: Decoding the Gaza protest call shaking US campuses

University students are facing threats of arrest or suspension as pro-Palestine protests are burgeoning across campuses in the United States. Students are expressing solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, where more than 34,000 people have been killed in Israel’s war of the enclave since October.

Students are calling on their universities to “disclose and divest” their investments in companies and organisations linked to Israel and its war on Gaza.

On Monday, the president of Columbia University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, released a statement asserting that Columbia will “not divest from Israel”, prompting protesters to occupy a university building early on Tuesday.

So what exactly is divestment and how do the students want their universities to divest? Here’s more:

What does divestment mean?

Divestment is the process through which an organisation sells off its shares, assets or other investments for political, ethical or financial reasons, according to the Cornell Law School website. In the case of a university, to divest would mean to pull out of investments in certain companies made with money from the university’s endowment fund.

The demand for divestment is not new in the movement against Israel’s occupation of Palestine. In fact, divestment is central to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an international effort calling for the boycott of companies accused of being complicit in the occupation of the Palestinian territory, the war on Gaza and violating international law.

What are the students’ divestment demands?

The protesters at Columbia University, who began building encampments on campus on April 17, are calling for Columbia to divest from corporations that they believe profit from Israel’s war on Gaza.
Protesters at Columbia passed around a leaflet during admitted students weekend on April 20 and 21 listing the names of some of these corporations – Lockheed Martin, HEICO, BlackRock, Google and Microsoft – Caroline Anne Bissonnette, a journalism student at Columbia who has been covering the protests since they started, told Al Jazeera.
The New York University (NYU) Alumni for Palestine website calls on NYU to “terminate all vendor contracts with companies playing active roles in the military occupation in Palestine and ongoing genocide in Gaza, namely Cisco, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and General Electric”.
Students at different US universities are calling for greater transparency about their institutions’ investments. A student who is part of the encampments at Tufts University outside Boston told Al Jazeera that one of the “biggest demands of the students” is for the university to disclose its investments.

Why have these companies been named?

The NYU Alumni for Palestine group cited investigations published by the Economic Activism Program of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organisation that promotes lasting peace with justice, which names four specific companies.

An investigation of the US-based technology company Cisco revealed that it had established a long-term partnership with Israel in 2018 to develop government-subsidised co-working hubs to help integrate small towns and remote regions to the Israeli high-tech industry. Some of these hubs have been at least partially established in “occupied Palestine and Syria”. Israel’s occupation of the West Bank (Palestine) and the Golan Heights (Syria) is viewed as illegal under international law by most countries.

Maryland-headquartered Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest military company, and an AFSC investigation found that it supplies the Israeli government with weapons. Additionally, the weapons are sometimes “gifted to Israel through the US government’s Foreign Military Financing program”, the investigation found.

Equipment made by US bulldozer manufacturer Caterpillar has also been gifted to Israel through the US financing programme. The Israeli military routinely uses Caterpillar’s D9 bulldozers to demolish Palestinian properties, the AFSC found.

It added that engines and electric power and mechanical systems of the Boston-based General Electric are integrated into the Israeli military’s fighter jets, attack helicopters and surveillance aircraft.

What impact can divestment have?

“Divestment is really hard to do,” Christopher Marsicano, an assistant professor of educational studies at Davidson College in North Carolina who researched the impact of divestment from fossil fuels on university endowments, told Al Jazeera. It is much easier to divest if you have a very small stake in a company, he explained.

He said that while divestment will probably not have much of an economic impact on either university endowments or the Israeli economy, the political impact could be more significant. “Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has already mentioned student protests at American universities publicly. It is clear that these protests have captured the attention of the Israeli government and are putting some pressure on stakeholders to support a ceasefire,” Marsicano said.

How easy is it to divest?

It could in fact be quite difficult for most universities managing large endowment funds to divest from all the companies that do business with Israel and weapons manufacturers. Marsicano explained that university endowment fund managers at most US colleges are “doing what most Americans who have a retirement plan are doing. They’re investing in index funds and private equity.”

Index funds offer investors exposure to all the companies listed on one specific index of shares. A fund tracking the FTSE 100, for example, holds shares in all 100 of the largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange. Investors in the tracker fund cannot pick and choose which shares to hold. Tracker funds are a popular form of investment for large institutional pension or endowment funds because they provide a good way of diversifying holdings and, therefore, reducing risk.

Furthermore, as companies’ share prices rise and fall, so do their market capitalisations, the value of all of their stocks. That means companies can drop in and out of different indices. It is, therefore, tricky for investors to screen out specific companies.

Can it be economically beneficial to divest?

Not necessarily. The concept of ethical investing – choosing only companies that behave ethically or screening out companies that do not – is no guarantee of good investment returns, Marsicano said. While proponents of divestment say “investing in opportunities that do good in the world will also lead to good investment returns, endowment managers aren’t so sure”, he added.

“What our work showed with fossil fuels [was] that at worst there are negligible effects to the endowment and at best there are positive returns due to divestment. If that world comes, you might see endowment managers make the decision to divest,” Marsicano said.

Will US universities divest from Israel?

Shafik’s statement on Monday indicated that Columbia would not be divesting any part of its $13.64bn endowment fund.

Shafik added, however, that Columbia has offered to develop an “expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters”.

Additionally, Shafik said, Columbia is offering more transparency about investments by allowing students to access a list of Columbia’s direct investment holdings, those not held via a tracker or other form of investment fund. Columbia has also offered to update that list more frequently.

However, in a statement posted to X on Monday, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine claimed the direct investments account for “a mere 6.12 percent of Columbia’s $784m publicly traded investments”. The statement called on Columbia to divest from weapons manufacturers that “profit off the thousands of bombs that have decimated Gaza”.

NYU’s student newspaper, Washington Square News, reported that NYU spokesperson John Beckman said the university is not divesting because it is trying to maximise returns on its endowment to “help the university fulfil its research and educational mission”. Beckman added that NYU’s endowment, valued at $5.9bn, is smaller than that of its peers.

The endowment fund for Northwestern University in Illinois is valued at $14.4bn while Yale University’s endowment is valued at $40.7bn.

Students made efforts to persuade NYU to divest from companies including “GE, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar and Boeing because they do business with Israel” in 2018, according to a statement released by Beckman in December 2018. “The University opposes this proposal,” the statement read, adding: “It is at odds with the Trustees’ well understood position that the endowment should not be used for making political statements.”

The 2018 statement also said divestment would be an operational challenge because NYU’s endowment assets “are invested through independent financial managers who operate funds in which our assets are co-mingled with others. NYU cannot unilaterally direct those fund managers not to select certain companies’ stock.”

Besides divestment, what do the students want?

Students in the US and abroad are also calling on their institutions to boycott Israeli universities and exchange programmes, to have open dialogue about the war on Gaza, to condemn the killing of Palestinian civilians and to protect students, faculty and staff who are speaking up for Palestine from harassment and censorship.

What’s the latest on the college protests for Gaza?

Columbia issued a deadline on Monday for students to dismantle the encampments of about 120 tents by 2pm (18:00 GMT). They were also asked students to sign a form guaranteeing they would abide by university rules through June 2025. Students who refuse to do this could be suspended pending further investigation.

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine released a statement on X about four hours before the deadline saying, “Columbia University illegally fabricates a ‘state of emergency’ to mass suspend, expel, and evict hundreds of peaceful protestors by 2 PM today.” The statement added that the protesters had informed the university they were prepared to “escalate their direct actions if Columbia does not adopt basic standards of conduct for negotiations”.

On Tuesday morning after Columbia’s refusal to divest, protesters occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall academic building, in a move reminiscent of the 1968 protests in Columbia against the Vietnam War. They renamed the building Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl killed in Gaza.

hamilton hall occupied by columbia students, renamed Hind’s Hall in honor of our martyr Hind Rajab. pic.twitter.com/Rwlu9mSwYn
— maryam مريم🇵🇸🍁 (@bluepashminas) April 30, 2024
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Another statement released by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine on X on Tuesday said the protesters intend to occupy the hall until Columbia concedes to the protesters’ demands, including divestment. The statement warned Columbia against bringing armed soldiers or police officers on campus. “Students’ blood will be on your hands,” it said.

PRESS RELEASE by @ColumbiaBDS about the occupation of Hamilton Hall. An autonomous group of students reclaimed the building as “Hind’s Hall” in honor of Hind Rajab, a six year old girl from Gaza. We continue to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Liberation. ❤️‍🔥 pic.twitter.com/LIm8cScPpD
— Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (@ColumbiaSJP) April 30, 2024

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World

Trump targets Maduro as Western Hemisphere becomes ‘first line of defense’ in new strategy

Published

3 hours ago

December 17, 2025

Press Room

Trump targets Maduro as Western Hemisphere becomes ‘first line of defense’ in new strategy

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The Trump administration has moved its hemispheric security doctrine into full force in Venezuela, ordering a sweeping naval blockade on sanctioned oil tankers and labeling Nicolás Maduro’s government a Foreign Terrorist Organization — a dramatic escalation aimed at choking off the regime’s primary source of revenue and confronting what the White House calls a growing threat of cartel-driven “drug terrorism” and foreign influence in the region.

Announcing the move on social media, Trump said Venezuela was now “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the history of South America,” a strike at an oil sector that accounts for roughly 88% of the country’s export earnings.

The administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) places the Western Hemisphere at the center of U.S. national security planning, elevating regional instability, mass migration, cartels and foreign influence as direct challenges to American security. While the document does not single out Venezuela by name, its framework positions crises like Venezuela’s collapse as central to protecting what the strategy calls America’s “immediate security perimeter.”

MADURO’S FORCES FACE RENEWED SCRUTINY AS US TENSIONS RISE: ‘A FORTRESS BUILT ON SAND’

According to the NSS, U.S. policy toward the hemisphere now focuses on preventing large-scale migration, countering “narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations,” and ensuring the region remains “reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration.” It also pledges to assert a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, aimed at blocking “hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets” by strategic competitors.

A senior White House official said the Western Hemisphere chapter is designed to “reassert American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” by strengthening regional security partnerships, curbing drug flows and preventing pressures that fuel mass migration. The official said the strategy situates the hemisphere as a foundational element of U.S. defense and prosperity.

Newly released footage shows U.S. forces securing a Venezuelan oil tanker. (@AGPamBondi via X)

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said the NSS reflects what the administration sees as a historic realignment of U.S. foreign policy. “President Trump’s National Security Strategy builds upon the historic achievements of his first year back in office, which has seen his Administration move with historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad and bring peace to the world,” Kelly told Fox News Digital.

“In less than a year, President Trump has ended eight wars, persuaded Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense, facilitated US-made weapons sales to NATO allies, negotiated fairer trade deals, obliterated Iran’s nuclear facilities, and more.” The strategy, she added, is designed to ensure “America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history.”

Melissa Ford Maldonado, director of the Western Hemisphere Initiative at the America First Policy Institute, said Venezuela illustrates why the hemisphere is now treated as America’s “first line of defense.”

“The Maduro regime functions as a narco-dictatorship closely tied to criminal cartels, which are now considered foreign terror organizations, and supported by China, Iran, and Russia,” she said. “Confronting this criminal regime is about keeping poison off our streets and chaos off our shores.”

MADURO’S FORCES FACE RENEWED SCRUTINY AS US TENSIONS RISE: ‘A FORTRESS BUILT ON SAND’

President Donald Trump signs a series of executive orders at the White House on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington, DC. Trump’s new National Security Strategy puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of U.S. security planning, a senior official said. (Jabin Botsford /The Washington Post via Getty Images)

She called the NSS “the most radical and long-overdue change in U.S. foreign policy in a generation,” arguing that instability in Latin America now reaches the United States “in real time” through migration surges, narcotics trafficking and foreign intelligence networks.

Some analysts caution that the strategy’s sharper posture could become destabilizing if pressure escalates into a confrontation.

Roxanna Vigil, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the path ahead depends heavily on how forceful the administration’s approach becomes. “If it goes in the direction of escalation and conflict, that means there’s going to be very little control,” she said. “If there is a power vacuum, who fills it?”

HEGSETH HINTS MAJOR DEFENSE SPENDING INCREASE, REVEALS NEW DETAILS ON TRUMP’S ANTI-NARCOTERRORISM OPERATIONS

Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro. (AP)

Vigil warned that without a negotiated transition, a sudden collapse could produce outcomes “potentially worse than Maduro.” She said armed groups, hardline regime actors and cartel-linked networks would all compete for power, with potential spillover effects across a region already strained by mass displacement.

Jason Marczak, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said the NSS underscores why the administration views Maduro’s continued rule as incompatible with its regional priorities.

“All of those goals cannot be accomplished as long as Nicolás Maduro or anybody close to him remains in power,” he said, pointing to the strategy’s focus on migration, regional security and countering foreign influence. “Venezuela is a conduit for foreign influence in the hemisphere.”

US SET TO SEIZE TENS OF MILLIONS IN VENEZUELAN OIL AFTER TANKER INTERCEPTION, WHITE HOUSE SAYS

In this April 13, 2019 file photo, Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, speaks flanked by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, right, and Gen. Ivan Hernandez, second from right, head of both the presidential guard and military counterintelligence in Caracas, Venezuela. (Ariana Cubillos/AP Photo)

Marczak said Venezuelans “were ready for change” in the 2024 election, but warned that replacing Maduro with another insider “doesn’t really accomplish anything.” He argued that only a democratic transition would allow Venezuela to re-enter global markets and stabilize the region.

Both Marczak and Vigil noted that the danger extends beyond Maduro to the criminal ecosystem and foreign partnerships that sustain his rule. Without a negotiated transition, Vigil said, the forces most likely to prevail are those already controlling territory: militias, cartel-linked groups and pro-Chavista power brokers.

Ford-Maldonado said that reality is precisely why the administration’s strategy elevates Venezuela’s crisis within its broader Western Hemisphere doctrine.

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Military strikes on suspected narco-trafficking vessels have killed some 37 people since September. (Department of War)

“Confronting a narco-regime tied to foreign adversaries is not a distraction from America First — it’s the clearest expression of it,” she said. “What’s ultimately being defended are American lives, American children, and American communities.”

The administration’s adoption of a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine indicates a more assertive U.S. stance toward the hemisphere, framing Venezuela not only as a humanitarian or political crisis but as a critical test of the strategy’s core principles: migration control, counter-cartel operations and limiting foreign adversaries’ reach. Within this framework, experts say the consequences of inaction could create security risks that extend well beyond Venezuela’s borders.

Efrat Lachter is an investigative reporter and war correspondent. Her work has taken her to 40 countries, including Ukraine, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Sudan and Afghanistan. She is a recipient of the 2024 Knight-Wallace Fellowship for Journalism. Lachter can be followed on X @efratlachter.

World

Louvre reopens partially after workers extend strike in aftermath of heist

Published

4 hours ago

December 17, 2025

Press Room

Louvre reopens partially after workers extend strike in aftermath of heist

Some areas of the world’s most visited museum were not accessible to the public on Wednesday due to the strike.

Published On 17 Dec 2025

The Louvre management has said the landmark Paris museum was partially reopened on Wednesday amid an ongoing strike by workers in the wake of purportedly difficult conditions after the stunning jewel heist in October.

“The museum is open, but some areas are not accessible due to the industrial action,” a spokeswoman said.

Team Races Against Time to Save a Tangled Sea Lion in British Columbia

Published

14 hours ago

December 16, 2025

Press Room

Team Races Against Time to Save a Tangled Sea Lion in British Columbia

A team of marine mammal experts had spent several days in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, searching for a sea lion with an orange rope wrapped around its neck. As the sun set on Dec. 8, they were packing up, for good, when a call came in.

The tangled animal, a female Steller sea lion weighing 330 pounds, had been spotted on a dock in front of an inn, leading into the bay in southwestern Canada.

The rope was wrenched four times around her neck, carving a deep gash. Without help, the sea lion would die.

The team had been trying to find the sea lion for a month, and on that day, with daylight running out, the nine members that day knew they needed to work fast. They relaunched their boats and a team member loaded a dart gun and shot her with a sedative.

“Launching the dart is the easiest part of the whole operation,” said Dr. Martin Haulena, executive director of the Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society, which conducted the rescue alongside Fisheries and Oceans Canada. “It’s everything that happens after that, that you just have no control over.”

Steller sea lions, also known as northern sea lions, are the largest such breed. They are found as far south as Northern California and in parts of Russia and Japan. A male Steller sea lion can weigh up to 2,500 pounds.

The Cowichan Tribes Marine Monitoring Team assisted the rescue society, calling it whenever the sea lion was spotted. The tribe named her Stl’eluqum, meaning “fierce” or “exceptional” in Hul’q’umi’num’, an Indigenous language, according to the rescue society.

After Stl’eluqum was sedated, she jumped from the dock into the water. Recent torrential rains and flooding had stirred up debris, making the water brown, and harder to spot the sea lion, Dr. Haulena said.

Several minutes after the sea lion dived into the bay, the drone spotted her and the team moved in.

The rope had multiple strands and it was wrapped so deeply that she most likely wasn’t able to eat, Dr. Haulena said. At first, the team had trouble freeing her.

“You couldn’t see it because it was way dug in underneath the skin and blubber of the animal,” Dr. Haulena said.

After unraveling the rope, the team tagged her flipper, gave her some antibiotics and released her.

Freeing the sea lion was the culmination of weeks of searching and missed moments. The first call about the tangled marine mammal was made to the Fisheries and Oceans Canada hotline on Nov. 7, according to a news release from the rescue society. Then the society logged more calls.

The Vancouver Aquarium Marine Mammal Rescue Society, a nonprofit that works in partnership with the Vancouver Aquarium, searched for several days for the sea lion. The day they found her was the last of the rescue effort because bad weather was forecast for the area around the bay. The call that led them to Stl’eluqum came from the Cowichan Tribes, Dr. Haulena said.

The society, Dr. Haulena said, cares for about 150 marine mammals from its rescues every year — sea lions, otters, harbor seals and the occasional sea turtle. The group gives medical care to animals it takes in, such as Luna, an abandoned newborn sea otter who was three pounds when she was found and still had her umbilical cord attached.

Many of the society’s rescues involve animals tangled in garbage or debris, Dr. Haulena said.

Stl’eluqum was tangled in nylon rope commonly used to tie boats or crab traps, he said. When sea lions get something caught around their necks it can grow tighter until it cuts into their organs, sometimes fatally, he said.

“It’s our garbage; it’s our fault,” Dr. Haulena said. “It’s a large amount of animal suffering and not a good outcome unless we can do something.”