The question approved by students calls on the prominent university at the major city in midwest US to divest its funds from “corporations that manufacture weapons and provide surveillance technology to Israel, army and prison services,” including Hewlett-Packard, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Caterpillar.

These companies, the question states, “profit from Israel’s violation of the human rights of Palestinians and minorities within Israel” and help “violate people’s rights to life, movement, healthcare, education and freedom.”

“It is clear that Palestinian human rights, the rights of minorities within Israel and ethical investment are issues that concern the DePaul student body,” DePaul Divest, the student coalition supporting the initiative, state in a press release sent to The Electronic Intifada on Friday.

“This victory did not come without immense outside interference by pro-Israel lobbyist group StandWithUs, whose paid staff frequently presented themselves as individuals affiliated with DePaul University, canvassed the student body in a counter campaign to DePaul Divest,” the release states.

“Scare tactics were used to deter the student body from voting to affirm the human rights of Palestinians, but our victory today is evidence that this was not enough to stop DePaul students from standing on the side of justice,” campaign organizer and DePaul Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Areej Hamdan is quoted as saying in the release.

As part of the counter campaign, the Israeli regime's consulate general in Chicago actively worked and organized against the referendum question.

DePaul SJP member Hanna Alshaikh explained in an op-ed for The Electronic Intifada last month that activists had decided to go for a campus-wide referendum precisely because they thought that such lobbying would be less effective on the student body as a whole than it has been on student legislatures on other campuses.

NTJ/MB