Point Counterpoint: Aim to promote human rights of the Palestinians.

I am coming to the University of Pennsylvania this week to incite violence against the State of Israel - pro-Israel groups and commentators have contended - and, along with hundreds of students and other speakers who will attend the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Conference, to engage in an "act of warfare."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, we are coming together to push forward an inclusive movement that supports nonviolent action to promote the human rights of the Palestinian people, because only full respect for these rights can lead to peace. Today, millions of Palestinians live without basic rights under Israeli rule. This intolerable situation is at the root of problems that affect the whole world.

People everywhere, whether they consider themselves "pro-Israel" or "pro-Palestinian" or both, want to see justice and peace. Yet, in recent years, the U.S.-brokered peace process has seen failure after failure.

Amid election-year politics, President Obama and his Republican rivals are pledging ever more unconditional support for Israel, even as Israel openly flouts U.N. resolutions and U.S. policy by building Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land and depriving Palestinians of their rights, including hundreds of children who languish in Israeli military prisons.

There's no chance that the United States will use the billions of dollars it gives Israel in aid as leverage to compel an end to these practices and respect for Palestinian rights. So should we just give up?

The answer from Palestinian civil society is a clear "no." All of us can play a role in ending this terrible situation and securing equal rights for Palestinians rather than superior rights for Jewish Israelis.

In 2004, the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, ruled that the wall Israel built across Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank was illegal and was aimed at confiscating more land. Frustrated by the inaction of governments, 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, including labor unions, student groups, and cultural and social organizations, came together to issue the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel in 2005.