Presentations focused on assessing the path of the movement, inspiring future work, and skill building.

Featured speakers included Mohammed Abed of the Wisconsin Green Party, co-author of the US Green Party divestment resolution, and Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah.

Sue Blackwell from Britain spoke about the Association of University Teachers’ boycott of Israeli Universities. Tel Aviv University student Omar Barghouti described his work organizing a cultural and social boycott.

In a full assembly of the conference, Abed read divestment resolution 190 of the US Green Party and spoke about the need to have the Palestine solidarity movement led by those who reject Zionism.

The July 2005 call for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) from 170 Palestinian organizations, demands for equal rights within Israel and the full right of return for refugees were reiterated throughout the conference. Participants agreed that "End the Occupation" was an inadequate slogan to convey the minimum requirements for a just solution.

The analogy of the Zionist state to apartheid South Africa was heard repeatedly. Anti-apartheid campaign veteran Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, of the DC Statehood Green Party and INCITE, called on divestment activists to reach out to some of the people with star power who stood up to apartheid and ask them to take a stand for Palestinian rights.

Many at the conference urged linking up with other struggles against colonialism and racial subjugation such as Native Nations sovereignty movements and the movement for reparations and justice for the descendants of African Slaves.

Differences over resistance

A conference principle of unity was "our tactic is divestment," but several speakers went further and came out against militant resistance. Blackwell condemned martyr attacks and Barghouti equated indiscriminate killing of Israeli civilians with the oppression that Palestinians face.

Abunimah said that anything other than non-violent means could foreclose the possibility of Jews and Palestinians being able to live in a shared peaceful future. He didn’t explain why Palestinians could learn to live in peace with people who sought their genocide, but Israeli Jews could not learn to live with people who fought back against their oppression. Whether out of fear of US, UK, or Israeli government reprisal—Britain has just made it illegal to "glorify terrorism"—or for principle, the logic was not compelling for everyone. Several attendees stated that solidarity movements in countries that are facilitating genocide should not try to dictate the forms of resistance to that genocide.

Official registrants included five members of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), an organization founded by Meir Kahane that is listed by the FBI as a "domestic terrorist organization." JDL has been linked to several bombings and murders in the US.

A call by right-wing Zionists to protest the conference was heeded by only a handful of white males who waved Israeli flags and chanted "USA, USA" like sports fans. Cops forced them into a protest pen.

Another protest pen was occupied for awhile by a handful of activists chanting, "Zionism is Racism." Later in the day, dozens of Rabbis and Rabbinical students of the anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta International were there. Rabbi Dovid Weiss took part in a Conference workshop, where he explained how Zionism runs completely counter to Judaism.

Aimee Smith, a conference participant, works with the Peace Committee of the US Green Party. She was the Green-Rainbow candidate for Cambridge City Council in 2003.