Yale is Complicit

U.S.-Israeli Police Exchanges

For decades U.S. law enforcement officers like our own Yale Police Chief Anthony Campbell have traveled to Israel to observe Israeli techniques for surveilling and incarcerating Palestinians. These exchanges have frequently been facilitated by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America’s (JINSA) Homeland Security Program. JINSAs exchanges were produced in response to 9/11, as the U.S. carceral state reoriented itself towards the new ‘threat’ of Muslims and Arabs. Endorsed by national U.S. police organizations, JINSA’s exchanges have brought thousands of American cops to Israel to study with the Israeli military and police. Steven L. Pomerantz, a retired FBI agent whose career began with the Bureau’s COINTELPRO effort against the Black Panthers, has led the JINSA program since its inception.The state of Georgia is a leader in bringing Israeli tactics to the U.S. through its Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE), a state-funded program within Georgia State University. Through GILEE over 33,000 U.S. law enforcement officers have visited Israel to train. The city of Atlanta’s Video Integration Center, a Minority Report-style effort to integrate all municipal CCTV systems into one police surveillance hub, was explicitly “modeled after the [Israeli] command and control center in the Old City of Jerusalem” following a visit by Atlanta’s police chief.

In Connecticut, officers from Stamford, New Haven, and Yale have received similar Israeli training. New Haven’s former police chief attended a JINSA exchange in 2013, and current Yale Police Department chief Anthony Campbell participated in an Anti-Defamation League sponsored “National Counter-Terrorism Seminar” in the summer of 2018. Chief Campbell was said to have encountered “a whole new level of training from the Israeli police.” Campbell, then Chief of the New Haven Police Department, received “briefings, presentations, and site visits” to “gain a deeper understanding of Israel’s approach to fighting terrorism” like the tactics currently on display in Gaza. Chief Campbell later told reporters that the training was "by far one of the most profound and life changing experiences I've ever had," and that “every police chief in the country should have to take this counterterrorism seminar[.]" You can follow Chief Campbell’s day-to-day itinerary here.

• Campbell's Itinerary

Yale’s Endowment Managers Invest in Genocide

Routed through scores of shell companies, the University keeps its $40.7 billion endowment away from anything resembling light and truth. It’s scrupulous, though, in picking the best investment managers in the game—if the game is investing in Israeli settlement infrastructure and weapons manufacturing. Per its latest tax filings, $1,307,102,382 of Yale’s endowment is managed by Farallon Capital Management, alongside another $341,684,738 in the care of Freshford Capital Management. Today, Farallon’s warfare investments include shares of Aerojet Rocketdyne, an engine manufacturer named “crucial to the defense of Israel,” and Howmet Manufacturing which boasts online about producing the “backbone” for F-35 fighter jets used to attack Gaza. Freshford’s investment strategy includes holding shares in contractor KBR, a close partner of IDF defense firm Elbit Systems.Propping up colonialism isn’t new for Yale’s endowment. In 2017, several of Yale’s investment managers held billions of dollars in Puerto Rican debt, letting Yale “profit off of the crisis” on the island in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. After Yalies organized the Endowment Justice Coalition and demanded that Yale’s managers cancel the debt, firms like the Baupost Group abandoned their holdings. Baupost, which holds about $734,439,936 of Yale’s endowment, didn’t divest from colonialism; they moved elsewhere. In early 2023, Baupost bought nearly 4 million shares of Altice USA, a company whose European analogue provides television and mobile service for settlers in the occupied West Bank. Through the Klarman Family Foundation, Baupost’s CEO Seth Klarman also funds a host of Zionist foundations like the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces, JINSA, and the settler association Friends of Ir David.

Yale Indirectly Invests in Companies Complicit in Occupation and Genocide

For the share of the endowment Yale reserves to invest by itself, it places $642,222 in ITOT, a stock market ETF that tracks America’s largest businesses. Scores of those companies are complicit in Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Five companies—Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), Boeing, L3 Harris, and Northrop Grumman—make the bombs, planes, and weapons used to carry out Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Gaza. Eight are key targets of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign including Caterpillar whose bulldozers are used by the IDF to demolish Palestinian homes and attack children. Six have been linked by the United Nations to materially or financially supporting illegal Israeli settlements. Technology companies like Dell, Microsoft, and IBM enable Israel’s repressive surveillance state, detention system, and Palestinian population registry. And a host of others have fueled IDF aircraft, produced settlers’ energy infrastructure, and planned hotels on occupied Palestinian land.With 18.56% of ITOT invested in companies that aid Israel’s colonial project, at least $119,000 of Yale’s endowment—and likely unknown billions more managed by secretive firms using shell companies—finances businesses complicit in occupation and genocide.

Elbit Systems and Motorola Solutions

TIAA-CREF has invested 1.7 million dollars into Elbit Systems, the largest Israeli arms manufacturer and the material backbone of the Israeli Defense Forces. In 2021, nearly 20% of Elbit’s revenue came from procurement contracts with the Israeli military. Elbit Systems supplies the IDF with two of the three drones in its fleet: the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900. Armed Elbit drones are being used in the cruel aerial bombardment on Gaza, attacks in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank and have previously been used by the IDF in bombing campaigns in Syria and Lebanon. The Israeli Government also contracted Elbit Systems to build and operate the Apartheid walls in the West Bank and Gaza and provide associated military surveillance systems.TIAA-CREF has 37,857 shares in Motorola Solutions, Inc., valued at $10,850,951. In 2014, Motorola received a contract from the Israeli Ministry of Defense to be the sole provider of the 4G network for the Israeli Military, and has supplied military smartphone devices to the IDF since 2016. Motorola also provides communications services to the Israeli Police, Ministry of National Security, the Israeli Prison Service, and to illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. Motorola also helps to maintain systems of surveillance in Israeli checkpoints throughout the West Bank, and is the supplier of communications radios for the Supervision Unit of the Civil Administration, which is “in charge of enforcement and security legislation of Israeli military law in the occupied West Bank.”

• Elbit

Northrop Grumman and Boeing

TIAA-CREF has 32,136 shares in Northrop Grumman, valued at roughly $14,000,000. Northrop Grumman manufactures weapons systems and radar for the Lockheed Martin-made F-16 aircraft, 196 of which have been purchased by the Israeli Air Force and used in successive bombing campaigns in Gaza. In another joint venture with Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman helped equip IAF Apache attack helicopters with radar systems specifically for use with Hellfire laser-guided missiles.TIAA-CREF has 126,663 shares in Boeing, valued at roughly $30,000,000. The Israeli Military, using US tax dollars, purchases a multitude of weapons and military aircraft from Boeing, including Apache helicopters, “Hellfire missiles, MK-84 2000-lb bombs, MK-82 500-lb bombs, and Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kits that turn bombs into “smart” GPS-equipped guided bombs.” According to analysis in the Guardian, the Israeli Air Force almost certainly used a Boeing manufactured, 2,000 pound in its devastating bombing of Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza City on October 31, 2023, which killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. On October 10, 2023, Boeing announced that it was accelerating the delivery of 1,000 250-pound small diameter bombs to the Israeli Air Force, to be used in the ongoing bombardment of Gaza.

• Boeing

General Dynamics Corp.

TIAA-CREFF has 50,197 shares in General Dynamics, valued at roughly $11,000,000. The Israeli Military, again using US tax dollars, purchases various weapons made by General Dynamics, including 5,000 and 2,000 pound bombs, guns and ground surveillance systems installed on Israeli Air Force fighter jets, and engines for the Merkava IV tank, the main battle tank used by the IDF. On a conference call of General Dyamics executives and external investors, the firm’s CFO Jason Aiken spoke of the potential for “the Israel situation…to put upward pressure on demand”, saying that the firm was “working ahead of schedule to accelerate [artillery] production capacity up to 85,000 even as high as 100,000 rounds per month.”

• General Dynamics