Latest Divestment Effort Results in Yet Another Failure for BDS Movement

Opponents of Israel have been engaged in efforts to wage economic warfare against the Jewish State via Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns for several years now. The latest such initiative, which failed this week, was a campaign to pressure Sonoma County in Northern California to stop working with Veolia, a French transportation company that is allegedly guilty of “servicing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.”

A resolution to consider not renewing the county’s contract with Veolia, which provides transit services worth $7 million, was considered on Tuesday by the county’s Human Rights Commission.The commission voted 5-4 against the resolution. It will “hear the issue further” at its August meeting, according to news reports.

In the seven years since the formal launch of an international campaign to boycott Israel, no American college campus in the United States has divested from Israel or companies that work with Israel. No church. No retirement fund. Israeli merchandise, including beauty products, hummus, and couscous, continues to be readily available on store shelves around the country.

Despite the obvious lack of mainstream appeal, many domestic anti-Israel groups – including the “North Coast Coalition for Palestine,” which was responsible for the recent campaign in Sonoma County – seem to be unwilling to recognize defeat. Even a petition circulated by the group, which was posted to the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation’s Web site, garnered less than 300 signatures.

While these campaigns are used by anti-Israel activists as a delegitimization tactic, they have never had much chance of success. In this case, even if the Human Rights Commission would have voted in favor, it has no power to enact policy and would only have been able to present a recommendation to the county’s Board of Supervisors. Many divestment resolutions that are considered on college campuses are similarly non-binding.

Jewish Voice for Peace Lobbying Hard for Church Divestment

Update: The Presbyterian Church voted against divestment late Thursday evening, July 5. While ADL welcomed the decision, we are troubled that the issue was decided on such a narrow vote (333-331 with 2 abstentions) and that the debate was biased from start to finish with vehement anti-Israel sentiment.  

Jewish Voice for Peace has been a highly visible and vocal advocate in the General Assembly in favor of the Presbyterian Church’s consideration of a virulently anti-Israel divestment resolution. The resolution, which calls for the church to divest from three companies that allegedly profit from Israel’s occupation (Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard), will be voted on later today by the full plenary after it was passed in committee earlier this week.

There is much to criticize about the problematic nature of the resolution itself, but one of the more disturbing elements of this campaign has been Jewish Voice for Peace’s aggressive lobbying for it.

The group invested significant time and resources to send a delegation of activists to the General Assembly who reportedly testified on the committee floor in favor of divestment and are live-tweeting the conference. A large portion of Twitter chatter about the resolution has been generated by JVP using the hashtag “#churchdivest” to provide updates on the resolution. Of tweets using that hashtag in the last 36 hours, approximately 25% have been generated by JVP and two of its staff people.

JVP activists have also created and distributed a flier called “Divest from Violence. Invest in Peace” which contains several statements from Christians who support divestment, and is circulating a petition that calls on Presbyterians to support divestment. The petition claims that the international community has failed in its efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and it is clear that BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) is now the only option left. The petition ends with, “Can you tell Presbyterians we’ve got their back?”

It is clear that JVP believes it has a very critical role to play in the domestic anti-Israel agenda: JVP promotes itself as representing the views of American Jews and can be seen as trying to provide cover against claims that the Presbyterian divestment initiatives are anti-Semitic. Nobody should be fooled. JVP is a fringe organization with its own anti-Israel agenda.

Troubling BDS News on Campus?

Two developments regarding boycott and divestment activity on college campuses hit the news this week. The first is that the student senate at Arizona State University passed a resolution supporting divestment from a variety of corporations that the proponents claim are “complicit in human rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian Territories and Sudan.” The second is that a student-run café at Evergreen State College in Washington State, The Flaming Eggplant Café, voted to boycott Israeli products.

While these announcements tend to cause rejoicing in the anti-Israel community, it is sometimes best to take stock of the real implications of these developments and consider them in their proper context.

In the case of Evergreen, it is not clear that the store previously carried Israeli products and its decision then to “boycott Israeli products” might be heavy on announcement and light on actual product changes. Similarly, there is no evidence that Arizona State University has investments in any of the companies that were cited in the resolution. If the university doesn’t, the resolution is rendered wholly irrelevant.

But even if the university is invested in some of these companies (which included, among others, Boeing, Caterpillar, Motorola and United Technologies), the resolution is worded so blandly that it doesn’t seem like it has any binding authority. The resolution proclaims, “LET IT BE RESOLVED that Arizona State University Undergraduate Student Government supports on-campus divestment from...” [emphasis added] It doesn’t actually call on the university to divest.

It is not likely that these recent developments in the boycott and divestment campaign on campus will have any concrete impact. What is unfortunate, however, is that they have the potential to isolate pro-Israel students and further corrode the atmosphere on these campuses.

University of Texas Rightly Refuses to Give in to Anti-Israel Boycott Effort

A project by the University of Texas to publish an anthology of stories by Middle Eastern women has been canceled after many of the Arab authors threatened to withdraw their contributions if they would be published alongside stories by two Israeli female writers. UT rightly refused to exclude the Israeli writers.

Several of the Arab contributors to the book, Memory of a Promise: Short Stories by Middle Eastern Women, specifically cited the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign as the reason for their decision. They initially requested that the project’s organizer, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, remove the stories written by Israeli women. When the Center refused to do so, citing a commitment to academic freedom and non-discrimination, many of the Arab authors threatened to withdraw their contributions (“virtually all,” according to an e-mail by the Center’s director, Kamran Scot Aghaie), that the Center was forced to kill the project completely.

The boycott effort was spearheaded by a Dubai-based Palestinian novelist named Huzama Habayeb. In an interview with the Gulf News, Habayeb declared that she is “so proud of having the book cancelled” and called it a form of “resistance” to the “Israeli occupation of my homeland.” She had written a letter to other Arab contributors urging them to join the boycott and refuse to share space with “writers who reflect the voice of an obnoxious occupier,” according to an op-ed she published in the Gulf News. In the op-ed, Habayeb describes Israel in blatantly hyperbolic terms, accusing it of “‘genocidal’ practices against Palestinians” and referring to it as a “killer state.”

This incident represents a radical and nefarious turn for supporters of the BDS campaign in that it is an outright rejection of the “Israeli.” Reasonable people may disagree about the efficacy and legitimacy of protests against Israeli government officials or a boycott of Israeli products that are produced in the settlements. This is way beyond that. The two Israeli women who had contributed to the book, Yehudit Hendel and Orly Castel-Bloom, are both accomplished authors who do not represent Israeli policy or the Israeli occupation. Hendel has won numerous prizes and accolades for her literary prowess, including the Jerusalem Prize, The Bialik Prize and the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement. Refusing to share a publication with these illustrious women is extreme and extremely troubling.

Desmond Tutu: Endorsement of BDS Veers into Religious Anti-Semitism

In an open letter to members of the United Methodist Church, retired South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu endorsed a proposed resolution calling for Church divestment from companies “that sustain Israel’s occupation.”

Although the resolution was rejected at the United Methodist Conference currently underway in Tampa, Florida, Tutu’s last ditch attempt to avert defeat veered into classical religion-based anti-Semitism when he speaks of the punishment of the Jews in the past who “disobeyed G-d:”

Hebrews…were oppressed as slaves in another land. As time moved on, this people disobeyed God and time and time again the prophets had to call them back to their deepest values.

Tutu then calls on activists to take action to punish Israel for their policies today:

But God, who is the same yesterday, today and forever, neither slumbers nor sleeps. Prophetic voices have been calling this empowered people who were once oppressed and killed, to their deepest values of justice and compassion, but they have refused to listen even to the most reasonable voices. The human community cannot be silent in the face of the gross injustice being meted out to the people of Palestine. If international courts and governments refuse to deal with this matter, we in the churches and in the rest of civil society really have no choice but to act in small ways and big ways.

Tutu also uses shocking language about the Holocaust, including an apparent condemnation of the very founding and existence of the State of Israel:

The Jewish Holocaust, engineered and implemented primarily by Europeans, gave some ideologues within the Jewish and Christian community an excuse to implement plans that were in the making for at least 50 years, under the rubric of exceptional Jewish security. In this way began the immense oppression of the Palestinian people, who were not at all involved in the Holocaust. Not only is this group of people being oppressed more than the apartheid ideologues could ever dream about in South Africa, their very identity and history are being denied and obfuscated. What is worse, is that Europe and the USA are refusing to take responsibility for their actions with regard to both the Holocaust and the over-empowering of the Israelis, their disregard for the international conventions and regulatory framework of the nuclear industry and their continued oppression of the Palestinian people.

Tutu is a prominent supporter of the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanction) campaign against Israel and a generally harsh critic of Israel. He has declared time and again that Israeli policies towards Palestinians are the same or worse than those imposed against black South Africans under apartheid.

Tutu’s April 26 letter, posted on the website of “United Methodist Kairos Response” (Kairos is a highly problematic anti-Israel document prepared by Palestinian Christians), is a retread of many of his old accusations and assertions.

Tutu appears to be engaging in an all-out campaign to further his anti-Israel agenda. In a May 1 op-ed in The Tampa Bay Times he endorsed action by the Methodist Church, called the 1,200 American rabbis who had signed an open letter to “our Christian neighbors” opposing Church divestment initiatives, “sadly misguided” and said “it is long past time for them to remove the blinders from their eyes and grapple with the reality that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights…”

BDS Movement Gains Support of Activist Chicano Student Group

Leaders of the National Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA), a Chicano student organization, recently voted to endorse the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS). The endorsement was approved at the group’s 18th annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on March 30. A press release issued after the conference noted that BDS is necessary in light of Israel’s “military occupation and settlement of Palestine.”

The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona helped MeChA arrive at its endorsement and, according to the statement, led several workshops on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the conference.

One of the sessions was called “Concrete Connections,” which compared the U.S.-Mexico border fence to the Israeli security fence in the West Bank, and explored the potential for “cross-movement building” for Palestinians and Latin-Americans. The statement about the conference concluded with, “Together, these civil societies – from Arizona to Palestine – are working towards one goal of fighting oppression and resisting everyday injustice.”

Earlier this week, the Pacific Northwest chapter of MeChA held a regional conference at The Evergreen State College (TESC) in which it endorsed BDS as well. During the conference, MeChA-Evergreen invited other activists involved in the divestment campaign (known as TESC Divest!) to participate in a teach-in connecting the BDS movement to the “indigenous struggles in the Americas.”

A statement issued by the group read, “We recognize that our peoples’ historical and present struggles - against deportation, occupation, exploitation, and dehumanization - in Arizona, in the border, and in the United States - not only coincide, but are also connected to Palestinians’ struggle against Israeli military occupation and settlement of Palestine.”

TESC Divest! has been spearheaded by SJP at Evergreen, as well as the newly formed Olympia, Washington, chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

In recent years, there has been growing collaboration between MeChA, which has approximately 400 chapters around the United States, and Palestinian solidarity groups. Campus chapters of MeChA and SJP (largely on West Coast campuses and especially at University of California schools) have co-sponsored a variety of events seeking to highlight connections between Palestinians and the Latino-American community.

MeChA chapters have even co-sponsored anti-Israel events on campus that have featured extreme speakers and anti-Semites, including an appearance by Amir Abdul Malik Ali at the University of California, Riverside in May 2009. At the appearance, Malik Ali claimed that U.S. politicians are controlled by Israel, warned that although “many are afraid of Zionists…Muslims are not afraid” and described Israelis as “the new Nazis.”

Divestment Effort at the Methodist General Conference in Tampa

Should the United Methodist Church divest from its investments in “companies that sustain the Israeli occupation?”

The answer to that question will be decided in Tampa, Florida, at this year’s General Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC). The conference began on Tuesday and is scheduled to take place through May 5, 2012.

The UMC includes on its agenda a list of “major issues” that will be addressed at the conference, including the church’s stance and efforts regarding abortion, gay rights, bullying and immigration. Also included in the agenda is a resolution on divestment from three American companies – Caterpillar, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard – until they “end their involvement in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.” The resolution further calls on “the United Methodist Church boards and agencies, annual conferences, local churches and individuals to prayerfully consider corporate involvement in Israel’s occupation when making investment decisions.”

The resolution is being presented to the General Conference by the United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR), an anti-Israel contingent that was formed in 2010 following the release of the “Kairos Palestine Document.” That document, which calls for a global BDS campaign, denies Jewish connection to the Holy Land and justifies terrorism.

If the resolution is passed, UMC general boards will be required to present reports on their respective progress at the church’s 2016 conference.

UMKR has a document on its website listing individuals and groups that support the resolution and it takes care to specifically highlight the Jewish anti-Zionists who support BDS. This is likely an attempt to obviate allegations of anti-Semitism. The resolution has received support from Jewish Voice for Peace, a variety of Israeli anti-occupation activists and two anti-Zionist Holocaust survivors, Hedy Epstein and Hajo Meyer. In his statement, Meyer claims that, as a survivor of Auschwitz, he “[refuses] to belong to a group which is a perpetrator, and therefore I do not agree to allow the state of Israel to commit its crimes in the name of Judaism.”

In addition to the divestment resolution, participants at the conference may be asked to vote on other virulently anti-Israel resolutions, including one regarding endorsing the Kairos Palestine Document.

Efforts by Methodist anti-Israel activists to divest from Israel began in 2008. Then, the UMC voted to continue to allow its agency staff to make comparisons of Israel to the apartheid regime that existed in South Africa and participate in the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. The General Council did not, however, vote in favor of divesting from Israeli companies.

Does Jimmy Carter Endorse BDS?

It is no secret that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is harshly critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank. There are now, however, indications that Carter may have entered a new realm of anti-Israel advocacy with an implied endorsement of the campaign to boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel.

As quoted by Al-Jazeera in an April 25 piece, Carter states that he thinks the BDS movement has “been effective on a wide-ranging basis, otherwise the Israelis would not be so upset about it” and that it is “gaining in strength.”

Just as Carter’s 2007 book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” attempted to mainstream the apartheid analogy commonly used within the anti-Israel movement, his apparent validation of BDS could lead others to believe that this extreme and divisive tactic is legitimate.

Jewish Voice for Peace Promotes Anti-Israel Hagaddah

As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Passover this Friday night, one Jewish organization has opted to use the holiday as an opportunity to promote an anti-Israel agenda.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization, recently published an alternative Hagaddah that compares the Jewish people’s exodus from Egypt to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, replete with asserting that the third of the four cups of wine represents the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, the Ten Plagues represent the “Ten Plagues of Israeli Occupation” and that the maror (bitter herbs) represents the “bitterness of life under occupation.”

While some elements of the alternative text focus on social justice and progressive causes (and includes texts and poems from some of the moral leaders of our time), much of the Hagaddah tries to exploit the text to advance anti-Israel initiatives. The introduction, for example, compares Moses’s famous declaration to Pharoah, “Let My People Go!” to the efforts of the Gaza Flotilla to “free” the Palestinian people by breaking Israel’s blockade of Gaza.

According to JVP, the third cup of wine, which is traditionally consumed after the meal portion of the Seder, represents BDS and Seder participants are encouraged to “make a L’Chayim” to BDS.

The constant supremacy of the Palestinian cause is also startling. When the text, for example, reaches Yachatz, the breaking of the middle matzah, the text reminds participants to acknowledge the “break that occurred in Palestinian life and culture with the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.”

JVP had trouble inserting two additional core parts of its agenda into the Hagaddah text and instead included them as “Addendums” at the end. The first is a letter about “pinkwashing,” which details a recent success by anti-Israel activists in Seattle to cancel an event with Israeli LGBT people. The second is a letter signed by JVP’s Rabbinical Council opposing a war against Iran.

Toulouse Jewish Day School Shooter Linked to Banned Forsane Alizza

Update: French authorities have confirmed the death of Mohammed Merah after a 30-hour standoff at his home. A former spokesman for Forsane Alizza denied that Merah was ever a member.

French media is reporting that Mohammed Merah, the suspect behind Monday’s deadly shooting at a Jewish day school in Toulouse, France, has links to Forsane Alizza, a radical organization that was banned by the French government in January 2012 for supporting terrorism and preparing its members for “armed struggle.” 

During a standoff today between Merah and French authorities, Merah reportedly said he is a member of Al Qaeda and that he carried out the attacks as revenge for Palestinian children and as a reaction to French military intervention overseas. Merah, a French citizen of Algerian decent, has also been linked to two earlier attacks on French military.

Forsane Alizza (Arabic for "Knights of Honor"), which advocates a Salafist ideology that rejects democracy, sought to recruit members with martial arts training. “We are looking for all kinds of skills but soldiers above all,” read a statement on the group’s website. “So if you enjoy martial arts and are quick to respond when we call on you, then you are a good fit, inshallah [God willing]." The website, which featured videos of Anwar al-Awlaki, also expressed the group’s support for “mujhaideen wherever they are in the world.”

The group, which advocates for BDS on its website, organized several protests against Israel in France. In September 2011, its members disrupted the El Al counter at Roissy airport in Paris, shouting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to Jews!” In June 2010, they protested at a McDonald’s, telling customers that McDonald’s supports Israel.

Two members of the group were convicted by a French court on charges of “inciting racial hatred” and shouting anti-Semitic remarks at the restaurant. That same month, the group participated in a pro-flotilla rally in Paris.

Forsane Alizza seems to be currently operating with “Force de Défense Musulmane sur Internet.” Its stated goal is to remove online materials that they consider to be offensive to Muslims and Islam and to provide resources to those who are engaged in the same activity. Its activity is similar to that of Revolution Muslim, a fringe anti-Semitic Muslim organization that was based in New York and that attracted a radical following online.

French authorities indicated that Merah has been under surveillance for at least several years due to his radical beliefs. There have also been reports that he traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan for militant training, but French authorities say that they have no evidence that he had been in contact with terrorist groups.

Upcoming Conferences to Promote Anti-Israel Initiatives

Two upcoming left-wing antiwar conferences, one taking place at Pace University in New York next weekend and the second taking place in Stamford, Connecticut the weekend after that, will have a significant Israel angle. These conferences are scheduled to include sessions on a one-state solution, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel, opposition to a U.S. or Israel attack against Iran, and more.

The antiwar and anti-Israel movements have long sought to create common cause and unite their objectives. In recent years, many of the larger anti-Israel rallies and gatherings have been co-organized by local and national antiwar organizations like ANSWER. In turn, antiwar events are often marked by anti-Israel slogans and claims that Israel is responsible for pressuring the U.S. into wars in the Middle East.

The following are some details about the planned anti-Israel sessions at the two upcoming conferences:

Left Forum:

Every year, left-wing activists participate in a major gathering called “Left Forum.” The conference, which in the past has attracted several thousand attendees, is titled “Occupy the System: Confronting Global Capitalism.” It will take place at Pace from March 16-18, 2012. 

The conference appears to have an anti-Israel agenda that goes beyond Israel’s alleged role in U.S. foreign policy. It will include sessions on Israeli “pinkwashing” (the claim that Israel showcases its progressive record on LGBT issues to cover up its policies toward Palestinians); a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; “resisting” a U.S.-Israel war against Iran; Israel as representative of the global 1%; and BDS as a form of “corporate resistance.”

A description for the 1% session, titled “Israel: Strategic Asset to the Global 1%,” reads:

“We will analyze the impact of Zionist strategies in the US including the increased violation and erosion of civil rights, attacks on our movements, and the escalated targeting of Arab, South East Asian, and Muslim communities and communities of color.”

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference:

UNAC, a newly formed coalition comprised of two dozen antiwar groups, will hold its first annual conference in Stamford, Connecticut from March 23-25.

Conference attendees will vote on two major agenda items during the conference, one of which is a proposal on ending U.S. aid to Israel. The conference will also include a session on BDS as tool of “nonviolent resistance” featuring Nancy Kricorian, an activist with CODEPINK, and Ethan Heitner, an anti-Israel cartoonist.

Mock “Apartheid” Wall Kicks off Palestine Awareness Week at UCLA

Monday, February 27, marked the start of Palestine Awareness Week at the University of California - Los Angeles. The weeklong event, timed to coincide with the Israeli Apartheid Week is sponsored by the university’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the primary organizer of anti-Israel activity on campus.

A large outdoor “apartheid wall” containing extreme anti-Israel imagery and text has been erected at the university’s central public gathering space, Bruin Plaza. Texts on the panels include accusations that Israel is an apartheid state that persecutes and deprives Palestinians of their fundamental rights.

“Apartheid Wall” at UCLA

There are also Holocaust analogies comparing the Nazi ghettos of Europe with conditions facing Palestinians in Gaza. Comparisons to the Holocaust are displayed under the banner of “Never Again? History Repeats Itself.” The panels also feature statistics and “facts” portraying a skewed and inaccurate image of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The “apartheid wall” has also been displayed at a public area across the Student Activities Center in Wilson Plaza in order to more broadly reach the student public.

In addition to the “apartheid wall,” SJP members gathered Tuesday evening to denounce Israel with delegitimizing slogans like “Israel is a terrorist state.” Other events scheduled for Palestine Awareness Week include a one-state solution lecture by UCLA professor Sari Madison and a panel on Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Gilad Atzmon Scheduled to Speak at Israeli Apartheid Week in Colorado

Gilad Atzmon, an anti-Semitic author, writer and musician based in London, is scheduled to make two speaking appearances as part of Israeli Apartheid Week in Colorado.

Atzmon is scheduled to speak at the University of Colorado in Boulder on March 1 during an event titled “A Musical Conversation about Israel.” The event, which will include a discussion of “Jewish Identity Politics and the Oppression of Palestine,” is being sponsored by Students 4 Peace and Justice and CU-Divest. On March 2, he is scheduled to speak at the Buntport Theater in Denver.

Past “Israeli Apartheid Week" events have been marked by extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, including accusations of Israeli racism and apartheid, and calls for boycotts and divestment actions against Israel.

For over a decade, Atzmon’s writings have employed traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes while demonizing Israel, Zionism and Jewish culture and identity. He is an outspoken and prolific promoter of classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control over American foreign policy, and has written that Jews have a plan for world domination. He has trafficked in anti-Semitic canards such as the notion that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus.

Anti-Israel Hostility Pervades Penn BDS Conference

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference held at the University of Pennsylvania last weekend featured speakers representing a wide range of strategies used to delegitimize Israel. As expected, many of the speakers promoted mistruths and biased narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and offered strategies on how to advance BDS initiatives and to further delegitimize Israel.

Several of the anti-Israel activists who headlined the Penn BDS conference are scheduled to next month’s One-State “Solution” Conference at Harvard, including Ali Abunimah, Dalit Baum and Sarah Schulman.

Below is a sampling of statements made at the Penn conference:

• Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, claimed that Israel is governed by an “extremist ideology” and that it is a “racist oppressor” and an “apartheid state.” Barghouti also made reference to the disproportionate role “Israel’s lobby groups” play in the U.S., adding that “it is crucial to reveal how Israel is right at the center of the 1% agenda,” referring to the Occupy Wall Street movement. 

• Cyrus McGoldrick, Civil Rights Manager of the New York branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), reportedly said, “Zionism depends on Islamophobia.”

• Ali Abunimah, the founder and executive director of “Electronic Intifada,” an anti-Israel Web site,  reportedly said, “Nakba denial is the equivalent of Holocaust denial.”

• Professor Amy Kaplan, professor in the English department at the University of Pennsylvania, offered suggestions in a Q&A session on how BDS could be integrated into the classroom. According to an audio recording of her response, Kaplan said, “you take a thematic course and you bring in themes from this issue [BDS], and literature is really a great way to teach students about what’s going on.”

Israeli Apartheid Week Video Legitimizes Violent Resistance

A newly released promotional video for this year's Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) contains the type of provocative message that is often promoted at anti-Israel events, including IAW programs in recent years.

About 20 seconds in, the video depicts a Palestinian with a keffiyeh covering his face and aiming a slingshot. The text reads, "When a people fight the occupier, it is not terrorism. It is resistance." 

Similar messages, which deliberately downplay the ongoing threat of terrorism faced by Israelis, have been expressed at past IAW programs. For example, during the IAW event at Yale University in 2011, Mazin Qumsiyeh defended Palestinians' right to resist by any means. Speakers at other IAW programs have described Hamas as a "resistance" organization and chants of "Long live the Intifada," which celebrate a violent uprising against the State of Israel, have marked IAW rallies.

Since its inception in 2005, IAW has served as an annaul platform for anti-Israel activists to focus on ways to demonize and isolate Israel, including through BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns.

The Penn BDS Conference Opens Tonight

In advance of this weekend’s BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania, we are highlighting five of the most anti-Israel individuals scheduled to speak at the conference.

Today we profile Philip Weiss, a writer and the founder of an anti-Zionist blog called “Mondoweiss.”

Weiss regularly tries to portray Israel as the only antagonist in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including describing much of its history asa “neocolonialist landgrab.” Weiss alleges that Israel abuses the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify the “endless mistreatment of Palestinians” and that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians is a sort of vicarious revenge for the Holocaust, with Palestinians standing in for the Nazis and the “abused becoming the abuser.”

After a visit to Gaza in 2009, Weiss described the Gaza War as an “assault…[that] reminded me of what I had heard about the Jews in Warsaw and in Germany and Austria in the runup to the Second World War. Those Jews were persecuted; and these Palestinians were too.”

Weiss has also frequently alluded to an excessively powerful pro-Israel lobby, even claiming that President Obama’s insufficient focus on the revolution in Egypt during his 2011 State of the Union address was a result of “the unwavering influence of the Israel lobby in our public life.”

Number 5: J Kehaulani Kauanui

Number 4: Helena Cobban

Number 3: Kristin Szremski

Number 2: Ali Abunimah

Two Days to the Penn BDS Conference

In advance of this weekend’s BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania, we are highlighting five of the most anti-Israel individuals scheduled to speak at the conference.

Today we profile Ali Abunimah, the founder and executive director of “Electronic Intifada,” an anti-Israel Web site. Abunimah is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at this weekend’s conference.

In his book “One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse” and during various speaking appearances, Abunimah advocates a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which would dismantle the Jewish state. He has not hesitated to compare Israel to South African apartheid and Nazi Germany, including describing Gaza as a “ghetto” and a “concentration camp” and arguing that “Zionism is not atonement for the Holocaust, but its continuation in spirit.”

Abunimah also claims that many of Israel’s security-related policies are predicated on racism and not genuine security concerns. For example, in a June 2011 interview on the news channel Russia Today, he claimed that Israel imposes a blockade on Gaza “because they are not Jews” and described it as “fundamentally racist.”

Number 5: J Kehaulani Kauanui

Number 4: Helena Cobban

Number 3: Kristin Szremski

Three Days to the Penn BDS Conference

In advance of this weekend’s BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania, we are highlighting five of the most anti-Israel individuals scheduled to speak at the conference.

Today we profile Kristin Szremski, the media director of American Muslims for Palestine, an extreme anti-Israel group based in Chicago that spends significant resources on organizing and coordinating anti-Israel activity on college campuses.

Szremski will speak on the topic of “Talking to Beginners about BDS, Israel and Zionism.”

During a presentation in Washington DC in September 2011 with a fellow activist from the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Szremski spoke about “legal and popular approaches to challenging Zionist organizations” and advocated against interfaith dialogue with Jewish groups because it leads to “creeping normalcy” with Jews who may be Zionists.

On her Twitter page, Szremski has described Illinois Senator Mark Kirk as an “Israel-firster,” alleging that he has more loyalty to Israel than the United States.

She has also stated that Israel controls the American media, a typical anti-Israel conspiracy theory. Speaking at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign several years ago about the Gaza War, Szremski cryptically alleged: “The media that is supposed to be in the position of power is [subjecting] itself to censorship…It’s impossible to get fair coverage from one source who controls all that power.”  

Number 5: J Kehaulani Kauanui

Number 4: Helena Cobban

Four Days to the Penn BDS Conference

In advance of this weekend’s BDS conference at the University of Pennsylvania, we are highlighting five of the most anti-Israel individuals scheduled to speak at the conference.

Number 4: Helena Cobban

Today we profile Helena Cobban, an anti-Israel writer, publisher and the former executive director of the Council for the National Interest, an organization that regularly sends delegations of its supporters to meet with Hamas and Hezbollah representatives in the Middle East.

Cobban consistently tries to portray Israel as the only guilty party in the conflict and has alleged that Israel’s military engages in “voluntary ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinians. In January 2009, shortly after the Gaza War ended, Cobban spoke at an event at Georgetown University where she harshly criticized Israel and Israelis, saying she can’t believe “how stupid Israelis are” and claimed that Israelis are “incapable of empathy and compassion for other people.”

Number 5: J Kehaulani Kauanui

Five Days to the Penn BDS Conference

Now that the Penn BDS conference is officially less than one week away, it’s time to take stock of how ADL has advocated on this issue. Since learning about the conference about six weeks ago we have:

·       Worked with several Jewish community organizations to issue a “Statement of Solidarity” condemning the goals of the conference.

·       Briefed members of the Jewish community and Hillel in Philadelphia about the conference’s invited speakers and posted background materials about the conference on our Web site.

·       Issued a statement expressing our concern with the conference.

And now, five days before the event in question, we’d like to draw your attention to some of the more virulent anti-Israel speakers who plan to attend this weekend’s conference. For the next five days, we will spotlight 5 of the most anti-Israel speakers on the conference agenda.

#5 J Kehaulani Kauanui

Professor Kauanui is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Anthropology at Wesleyan University and an advisor to the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Kauanui is scheduled to participate in a breakout session called “The Academic Boycott” during the conference. Academic boycotts, for those who aren’t familiar, focus on boycotting Israeli academic institutions and universities as part of a larger effort to paint every aspect of Israel life as complicit in the Israeli government’s policies.

Kauanui, in a February 2009 article, stated that Palestinians “have the right to engage in armed resistance” against Israel because of the occupation. Stay tuned for #4 tomorrow.