Graduate students at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, USA, have passed a resolution calling for divestment from companies profiting from human rights violations in occupied Palestine and at the US-Mexico border.

According to Electronic Intifada, the resolution singles out the US corporations Caterpillar and Hewlett-Packard, as well as the Anglo-Danish security firm G4S, French multinational Veolia and Israeli companies Elbit Systems (an arms manufacturer that recently won a USD 145 million contract with the US govermment to further militarize the US-Mexico border wall) and SodaStream (which operates inside the occupied West Bank).

The resolution accuses the six companies of aiding and abetting Israel’s policies of demolishing Palestinian homes, land theft, restrictions of freedom of movement, mass incarceration, control of populations, checkpoints, surveillance systems and services to illegal settlements.

It also says that these companies have been “directly engaged by various public campaigns and concerned investors about their complicit involvement in the previously mentioned human rights violations to no avail”.

Consequently, it calls on the University of New Mexico “to refrain from making further investments, and to advocate that the UNM system not make further investments, in any companies engaged in the violation of human rights or other behaviour deemed unethical by the UNM community”.

The call by UNM graduate students to divest from apartheid Israel follows a similar move last week by the student senate at the University of California at Riverside calling on the university to pull its investments from US companies profiting from Israel’s occupation.

The United States and its allies may wrestle with what choice of weasel words to use to describe Israeli apartheid, war crimes and crimes against humanity for fear of upsetting the Zionist lobby.

But civil society has no such fears. Little by little, it will demolish Israel’s edifice of lies and break its network of liars.

The truth will out and there’s no going back.

Sooner or later, the US and its satellites states will have no alternative but to follow the brave voices coming from the grassroots.