Three informed sources close to Trinity's student union revealed to MEE that the college council, responsible for significant financial and other decisions, voted to withdraw Trinity's investments from arms companies in early March, Middle East Eye (MEE) reported.
MEE reported in February that Trinity had invested $78,089 in Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.
Israeli drones have been used to murder large numbers of Palestinian civilians in Gaza since the start of the war in October.
Trinity College did not confirm or deny the report about divestment from arms manufacturers, stating only that “Trinity College continues to review its investments regularly.”
Sources speaking with MEE said the college decided not to publicly announce the divestment decision after an activist defaced a 1914 portrait of Lord Arthur Balfour in the college on 8 March, leading to controversy in the UK media.
Balfour authored the infamous Balfour Declaration in 1917, which made the creation of a Jewish state and the facilitation of Jewish immigration to Palestine official British policy.
Universities and pension funds cutting ties with companies supporting the Israeli military and illegal settlements in the West Bank often do not acknowledge the divestment or claim an unrelated reason for it to avoid public criticism from pro-Israel lobby groups.
Trinity has millions of dollars invested in other companies supporting and profiting from Israel's war on Gaza that the college has not committed to divesting from.
MEE notes that Trinity had investments worth approximately $3.2 million in Caterpillar, a US-based heavy equipment company that provides bulldozers to the Israeli army.
The bulldozers have long been used to demolish Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank.
Trinity also has investments in General Electric, Toyota Corporation, Rolls-Royce, Barclays Bank, and L3Harris Industries, which are also involved in Israel's war.
Pro-Palestine protesters continue to demand that all of Cambridge University's member colleges divest from companies supporting Israel's war on Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands and is widely viewed as genocide.
Around a hundred students gathered on the lawn outside King's College Cambridge on Monday, where they established a Gaza solidarity protest encampment like those in some 100 universities worldwide.
The encampment's organizers told MEE they are demanding that Cambridge University disclose all its relationships with companies and institutions “complicit in the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
MNA
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