Q: What are divestment and exclusion targets?
A: The BDS movement works to pressure governments, institutions, investment funds, city councils, etc. to exclude from procurement contracts and investments and to divest from, as the case may be, as many complicit companies as practical, especially arms companies and banks.
Intel is one of several divestment and exclusion targets listed for complicity in genocide by the BNC.
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so much this, but now can we apply the same concept to domestic issues? I would love to see a crowd picket, I dunno, fucking Hobby Lobby for killing women with pregnancy complications
unknown, as i don’t think divestments work for companies not publicly traded (edit: looking back at this they probably actually do, the mechanisms are probably slightly different tho!)
you are asking the right questions though :)
Here I go shilling again!
But I don’t think divestment ever works tbh. We’ve got decades of data that show it takes an insane amount of divestment to shit a stock’s price even a tiny bit.
edit: the person i am responding to chose to become very belligerent. they are correct in stating that divestment does not have long term consequences on the stock prices of businesses, but i have never sought to contest that straw man.
the goal of BDS continues to be misrepresented by them as exclusively economic pressures in nature, but it’s super important to recognize that social, cultural, and political pressures and awarenesses are also key, and have already manifested in material changes on the ground. of course, these changes do not amount to the dissolution of apartheid yet, but of course nothing else had either.
to those interested, here is a list of successful changes brought about by BDS.
- July 21, 2021 – Ben & Jerry’s announces their decision to stop selling ice cream in illegal Israeli Jewish-only settlements on stolen Palestinian land. Read the joint statement from our organizations, “Where We Stand on Ben & Jerry’s.”
- December 2, 2016 – Following years of BDS campaigns, G4S ends most illegal business in Israel, sells most Israel business
- March 9, 2016 – G4S announces plans to leave Israel
- March 9, 2016 – Ahava Announces Factory Relocation Outside of Occupied West Bank
- August 28, 2015 – Veolia divests completely from Israeli market
- October 29, 2014 – SodaStream moves factory out of Palestinian West Bank
Your study looks at returns mainly over one day… bad press hurts stock prices for a day… that doesn’t mean divestment works. Also:
Not all events underperformed relative to the market index. Seven of the twenty-four events had a positive cumulative average abnormal return (CAAR) over the estimation period
I’m shocked you would use that article to support your point. Did you read it before linking it? I mentioned decades and you link to a study about single-day returns??
I see your point, but when I speak of “decades,” I was referring to the data timeframe, not suggesting that divestment aims to cause stock prices to fall over decades. That would indeed be a misinterpretation at best, or a moving of the goalposts at worst.
The goal of divestment is primarily to exert pressure for political change, not to drive down stock prices over extended periods. It seems there might be a misunderstanding about the core objectives of divestment, and that you are asking the data to prove your predetermined assumptions about the goals of BDS, rather than the actual motivations.
There is no pressure when the stock bounces back the next day. I am honestly astounded that article made it past peer review. It demonstrates nothing in the data to support the idea that divestment has any impact.
You are ignoring the part where I said that the long term stock value actually isn’t the point.
Like, protesters picketing a business might also result in a one-day stock drop that is reversed the next day. But that reversal does not mean there is no pressure. Just means that that pressure does not have a long lasting effect on the market value of shares.
Again, to be clear, you are applying your own assumptions of what BDS means and using them as a measure of efficacy instead of BDS’s own clearly stated goals.
(That said, I’ll rescind my citation of that article. It was backing up a point that doesn’t even matter to my position and your criticisms of it are valid.)
Thanks for these. Per my other comment, it looks like you were misunderstanding the goals of divestment, especially in the context of BDS. These articles seem to frame divestment as useless unless they can significantly affect the bottom line—this of course not being the goal. The goal is to exert political pressure, and that is done in combination with boycotts and sanctions. Additionally, you misconstrue the goals of BDS to be exclusively economic in nature, when cultural and social elements are also crucial to its goals.
Edit: I will say that in the context of fossil fuels and using divestment as a tool to achieve fundamental changes in our reliance on fossil energy, these resources are pretty damning and new information to me, so thanks. I especially note how environmentally conscious parties selling shares is effectively them relinquishing potential board control of those institutions. Wild stuff. Again though, entirely different goals at play in the pro-Palestine movement than in the battle against fossil fuels. :)
I literally cannot tell if you don’t understand what you’re talking about or you’re trolling me rn. You think a one day minor change in stock price is a metric that anyone at a corporation gives a shit about?
Just to clarify: divestment doesn’t work. Boycotting doesn’t work. But you think they do because…? Of that one really terrible article whose data doesn’t support the conclusions? And the multiple articles that I’ve shown about those strategies not changing corporate behavior are bad because they don’t agree with your preconceived notions?
Just to clarify again, since you don’t seem to understand the goal of the BDS movement yourself or you somehow feel the need to make a mockery of it, success would mean actually changing corporate or government behavior. Or, maybe even registering to them as something more than a laughing matter for the board to joke about.
I feel obliged to state this: I am very much pro-palestine and pro BDS.
Can I ask why expanding the definition of violence is so important? Why do we have to say intel is “violent” instead of just “intel received a grant from a state that is committing genocide” or “intel financially supports a state that is committing genocide”?
I’m not making a direct comparison but this feels similar to witch hunts where we have people being harassed for being associated with someone who worked with someone who had problematic views. Those witch hunts happen because people equate association with someone who commits an act with committing the act.
Am I literally committing violence if I forget about the boycott and buy dominos pizza? Because I bought a dominos pizza the other day before I heard about the boycott.
idk. I’m ranting, please don’t murder me. I’m open to anyone who can explain to me how this benefits the cause.
Expanding the definition of violence to include actions like those of Intel can simply make it easier to communicate and understand the varying degrees of harm involved. Seeing violence as a sliding scale means we acknowledge it’s not always a simple yes or no, but rather varies based on context. Calling Intel’s actions “violent” highlights the severity of their support for a state engaged in genocide, which might hit home more than just saying they got a grant or financially back such a state.
Concerning your worry about witch hunts and guilt by association, it’s important to separate recognizing institutions’ complicity from unfairly targeting individuals for minor connections. Your Domino’s pizza example doesn’t really fit here; no one’s saying buying pizza is violent. It’s about holding accountable those bigger players who contribute to or enable harm.
Your skepticism makes sense, and it’s good to question language and tactics in advocacy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and I hope this explanation clarifies why broadening the definition of violence can help the cause.
I appreciate your response.
Do the best you can to be the best person you can whenever you can and you’re doing enough.
If you know better and can act better, do so. It isn’t your responsibility to change the world alone, just do your part where you can.
Eat pizza because life is fucking hard and sometimes we deserve pizza, do your best to purchase it ethically but don’t kill yourself over having to live in the unethical world that you didn’t create.
Do what you can to change the environment around you for the better, but this is your life and the only one you get so don’t live guilty either. Do your best.
Pretty much all microprocessor companies (Intel, AMD, ARM, Apple) have R&D facilities in Israel. For some reason, there are a lot of semiconductor specialists there.
