LA JOLLA- Student leaders at the University of California San Diego have plunged themselves into another polarizing issue.

Late Wednesday night, they were still debating a resolution that criticizes Israel’s human-rights record and calls on the university to pursue divestment from two U.S. companies doing business with the country.

The declaration by the UCSD Associated Students Council cited General Electric and United Technologies as corporations warranting divestiture because of their business ties to the Israeli government and military.

It also referenced Israel’s ongoing blockade of the Palestinian-controlled Gaza area and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank region.

“This resolution takes a neutral stance in the conflict and stands as a principled expression of ethical and peaceful investment practices supporting universal human rights and equality,” according to the measure.

Ahead of the Wednesday vote, a letter signed by five Nobel laureates described the resolution as “an expression of the very radicalism and historical blindness that drives the conflict and blocks reconciliation.”

The laureates, including professors at Harvard and Cornell universities, also questioned why the student body singled out Israel for criticism without including other groups and nations in the region known for their human-rights violations, such as Iran, Syria and Sudan.

The resolution was sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, the Student Sustainability Collective and other campus organizations, according to a report in The Guardian, the university newspaper. It resembled one passed by the University of California Berkeley’s student senate in March but vetoed by its student-body president.

Supporters of the UCSD measure said it was written broadly enough to apply to other countries.

“We really tried to make the bill more universal and clarify that to uphold the ideals of corporate social responsibility, we should divest from U.S. companies that are benefiting from occupancies elsewhere,” said Leena Barakat, a UCSD senior who was quoted by The Guardian and identified as a co-author of the resolution.

UCSD music technology professor Shlomo Dubnov disagreed strongly enough to gather the Nobel laureates’ signatures through Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, an international grass-roots organization with a chapter on the La Jolla campus.

“These students have freedom of expression, but they also have responsibilities in terms of how they present their arguments,” he said.

The timing of the vote, coming after a recent string of racially charged incidents at the university, risks further stoking emotions, Dubnov said. “It degrades the whole academic enterprise by poisoning the debate and inflaming hatred,” he added.

The UCSD student government’s resolution is part of a larger effort to delegitimize the state of Israel at universities across the United States, said Jacob Dayan, the consul general of Israel in Los Angeles.

“What some students are trying to do is misinform people,” he said. “They mention the (Israeli) military operations in Gaza, but it came after seven years of 7,000 missiles being fired on dense populations in Israel.”

Other campuses within the University of California system have dealt with their own racial or political controversies in recent weeks.

At UC Davis, swastikas were carved into walls, bulletin boards and a freshman student’s dormitory door.

In February at UC Irvine, several students repeatedly interrupted a speech by Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

University of California President Mark Yudof addressed the issues at a March 24 meeting in San Francisco. “What we have witnessed in the past few weeks are the worst acts of racism and intolerance I’ve seen in 20 years,” he said.