Clayton Evans

Clayton Evans co-authored a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolution as a member of Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP), at Stanford University (Stanford), in 2015. He has also demonized Israel.

As of 2015, SOOP was reportedly a coalition of 19 student groups campaigning for Stanford to “divest from corporations profiting from human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.” The campaign was initiated [00:12:16] by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

As of October 2019, SOOP’s Facebook page said its mission was “To end Stanford's investments in corporations which profit from the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.”

Evans majored in Mechanical Engineering and was slated to graduate from Stanford in 2015. 

Supporting BDS

In February 2015, Evans was one of four authors of a SOOP BDS resolution. 

The resolution that Evans co-authored called for Stanford University Trustees to divest from companies that it alleged: “violate international humanitarian law by: maintaining the illegal infrastructure of the Israeli occupation.”

The resolution also called for divestment from companies it claimed facilitates Israel’s “collective punishment of Palestinian civilians… [and] state repression against Palestinians.” 

On February 8, 2015, The Stanford Review, a student-run political magazine reported that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings showed no evidence that Stanford has been invested in any of the companies that SOOP targeted for divestment over the last ten years, with the exception of Raytheon, for one filing period.

The resolution initially failed [00:00:42] to garner the required 66% majority senate approval, in a vote held on February 10, 2015. 

Senate Chair Ana Ordonez then brought forward a motion calling for a re-vote. Ordonez reportedly initially abstained from voting and was later quoted in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, as saying: “Now that the noise has subsided, I know that I voted incorrectly.” 

Ordonez voted in favor of the resolution in the re-vote, which passed on February 17.

On April 14, 2015, however, the Stanford Board of Trustees announced that Stanford would take no action on SJP’s request. 

In accordance with the board’s Statement on Investment Responsibility, the board said in its statement on the resolution that they focused on “questions of divisiveness and negative impact” and determined that acting on the request would be “likely to impair the capacity of the University to carry out its educational mission.”

Demonizing Israel

On February 6, 2015, Evans co-narrated a SOOP Divest campaign video with fellow anti-Israel activist Manny Thompson, titled: “#FilasteenFridays - Mass Incarceration.” 
 
In the video, Evans claimed [00:00:52] that “conditions for Palestinians while detained are continual insults to all standards of human decency.”

Thompson alleged [00:00:26] in the video that “almost 40% of the male Palestinian population” had been arrested by Israel.

On November 23, 2014, Evans and “the students behind Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine” published an op-ed promoting BDS. Evans and his co-authors claimed: “The narrative of the Israeli state cannot be equated with the narrative of those they occupy.”

The article also said that “international corporations in Palestine/Israel and the United States” formed “interconnected systems of oppression.”

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.