BDS | Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion - Part 29
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Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 21, 2016 10 Comments
On Friday morning, September 18, 2015, the third grade classes at the Beverly J. Martin School in Ithaca, NY, heard a presentation on “human rights” by Palestinian activist Bassem Tamimi and local anti-Israel activists, led by Ariel Gold. In fact, through the investigative and litigation efforts of Legal Insurrection, it has become clear that the Tamimi event was an anti-Israel propaganda event targeting young children, and as we just learned, caused at least one student to suffer nightmares.

The Attempt to Portray the Tamimi Event as Loving and Promoting Peace

On Sunday night, September 20, Legal Insurrection broke the story, Anti-Israel activism hits elementary school in Ithaca, NY. Because of Tamimi’s notoriety for exploiting children in videotaped confrontations with Israeli soldiers, Tamimi’s mere appearance in a third grade class raised suspicions about the event.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 20, 2016 2 Comments
This is the first time this semester I'll have a public speaking engagement. My travel schedule and other commitments just haven't permitted it otherwise. In the past, it's been great to meet LI readers at such events, so if you are within driving distance of Cambridge, MA, bookmark December 4. Or maybe you have relatives, friends or children in the area who might be interested. The event title is "War By Other Means: Israel, BDS and the Campus." The day-long event will be held at Harvard Law School, my alma mater. It is open to the public, but non-students have to pay a registration fee (it is free for students). The "early-bird" sign up price is good only through November 23. You can sign up here. My hour-long presentation will be on the history of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (something I write about *occasionally*). LI author Prof. Miriam Elman will be speaking on issues of faculty promotion of BDS and free speech/academic freedom.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 16, 2016 30 Comments
You may remember Joy Karega, the Oberlin College "Social Justice Writing" Professor who put numerous anti-Semitic posts and graphics on Facebook. Karega was a supporter of the anti-Israel boycott movement, and hosted an event promoting BDS right around the time the controversy over her Facebook posts erupted. But she wasn't questioned and didn't get in trouble for her anti-Israel views. Those views, unfortunately, are all the rage at Oberlin and other liberal campuses. Rather, her Facebook posting clearly veered into rank antisemitism. Like this one alleging a conspiracy by the Rothschilds to rule the world:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 15, 2016 7 Comments
I guess this is now a continuing series. Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is gutting any remnants of opposition by attacking numerous aspects of civil society, including particularly academia. Yet *shockingly* none of the progressive professors who demand a boycott of Israeli universities and academia are organizing a boycott of Turkish Universities. We have covered this hypocrisy many times: According to Turkish journalist Mahir Zeynalov, the crackdown on academics continues:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 15, 2016 11 Comments
As reported the other day, Congressman Keith Ellison from Minnesota has the backing of several top Democrats to become Chair of the Democratic National Committee, Top Dems rally around radical Keith Ellison for DNC Chair:
The lesson Democrats are learning from the evisceration of the Democratic Party at the state level, the continuing loss of control of Congress, and the defeat in the presidential election is not that Democrats need to move back to the center. No, it’s that Democrats need to move not just further to the left, but to the fringe left. Several top Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer, are backing Keith Ellison, Democratic Congressman from Minnesota, as the next DNC Chair [as] Daily Kos reports....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 14, 2016 6 Comments
Anti-Israel activists, usually acting under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, repeatedly try to hijack unrelated causes to turn them against Israel. We have documented such actions many times, including with regard to Ferguson (Michael Brown) and Baltimore (Freddie Gray) riots, Eric Garner protests, the Standing Rock Sioux pipeline protest, domestic U.S. police shootings, Reclaim MLK marches, and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others. None of this is solidarity. It's conquest of other peoples and movements to redirect them to and focus attention on the BDS anti-Israel agenda. It is a form of Settler Colonialism, BDS is a Settler Colonial Ideology. Not surprisingly, BDS groups are attempting to inject themselves into and dominate the anti-Trump protests and riots.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 06, 2016 4 Comments
On September 17, 2016, I detailed how anti-Israel groups were organizing to exploit a dispute between the Standing Rock Sioux and an oil company seeking to build a disputed pipeline, BDS Settler Colonial activists exploit Standing Rock Sioux pipeline dispute. In that post, I provided links and images to the efforts to make the Palestinian cause the centerpiece of the Standing Rock protests. It was a classic hijacking of another cause in which expressions "solidarity" are the means to subjugate another cause to the anti-Israel effort. It's part of a pattern I have explored before, BDS is a Settler Colonial Ideology. As I documented, the expressions of solidarity "From Standing Rock to Palestine" put "Palestine" at the center. When the anti-Israel cause comes to town, often in the form of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, it all about them.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 01, 2016 2 Comments
So this is interesting. Students for Justice in Palestine and its related groups are responsible for much if not most of the anti-Israel activity on campuses. We have documented dozens of incidents of intimidation and violence, scroll through our SJP Tag. For additional background, see reports by The Tower Magazine, The ADL, NGO Monitor and AMCHA Initiative. This is one of the milder shout-downs and stage takeovers by SJP:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 31, 2016 9 Comments
We recently wrote about Miko Peled after Jewish Voice for Peace accused him of posting an antisemitic tweet, Jewish Voice for Peace disavows BDS activist Miko Peled: “No place 4 antisemitism in our movement”: https://twitter.com/mikopeled/status/776147480299835392 Peled denied that the tweet was antisemitic, as detailed in the prior post. But the fact that an anti-Israel group like JVP would make this accusation against Peled and would support the cancellation of his speech at Princeton was pretty remarkable.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 29, 2016 7 Comments
Saree Makdisi, professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, has endorsed and is a vocal advocate for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, as demanded by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The American Association of University Professors considers systematic academic boycotts, such as the BDS academic boycott of Israel, to be a violation of academic freedom and a threat to the free exchange of ideas necessary for academic and scientific progress. Over 250 university presidents and large university associations have condemned the BDS academic boycott for these reasons. Which means Makdisi wants to violate the academic freedom not only of Israelis, but of those who want to deal with Israelis.  If the academic boycott Makdisi supports succeeded, breakthrough cancer research conducted by and with Israeli universities would have to be boycotted.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 28, 2016 3 Comments
You may recall Hen Mazzig, an Israeli who worked on campuses in the Pacific Northwest several years ago. The hate he experienced from American BDS activists was almost beyond belief,  Israeli soldier shocked to see ugly side of U.S. campus life Hen was scheduled yesterday to speak at University College London. I knew trouble was waiting when Hen send out this tweet before his scheduled speaking appearance:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 21, 2016 3 Comments
One of the foundational myths of the anti-Israel movement, including the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, is that Muslim Arabs are the indigenous people of all of what now is Israel and Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank"). From that foundational myth comes such vile absurdities as UNESCO -- at the instigation of the Palestinian Authority -- excising the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, which predates Islam itself as well as the Arab conquest of the region. That foundational myth also allows BDS activists misleadingly to claim solidarity with truly indigenous people, such as native peoples in North America, and to hijack indigenous movements and repurpose them for the fight to deny Jews a homeland in the homeland of the Jewish people. An article recently in the Middle East Quarterly examined historical first hand accounts of Arab immigration and migration, Were the Arabs Indigenous to Mandatory Palestine?

Posted by Joel Griffith on October 19, 2016 1 Comment
The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, recently rebranded as the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian rights, is one of the most virulently anti-Israel activist groups. Legal Insurrection recently covered how the US Campaign’s plan to hold a seminar on Capitol Hill was canceled when it became known just how extremist it was, Report: Pro-BDS event on Capitol Hill canceled after nature of group exposed. Last weekend I attended the U.S. Campaign's Annual Conference. us-campaign-annual-conference-2016-poster

Posted by Joel Griffith on October 16, 2016 3 Comments
The U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation is one of the most virulently anti-Israel activist groups. Legal Insurrection recently covered how the US Campaign's plan to hold a seminar on Capitol Hill was canceled when it became known just how extremist it was, Report: Pro-BDS event on Capitol Hill canceled after nature of group exposed. Perhaps to escape its past, U.S. Campaign is rebranding itself and renaming itself as the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. This weekend the U.S. Campaign held its Annual Conference in Northern Virginia, attended by about 200 anti-Israel activists. Panelists and experts instructed activists within churches, academia, and community organizing on how to leverage their influence against Israel. I attended the annual meeting. In this first report, I will focus on how plans were unveiled by Kairos USA, an anti-Israel church group, to ramp up the efforts to turn churches against Israel by leveraging concerns about Black Lives Matter within Black Churches, and the rollout of a new crowdsourcing and organizing portal, Palestine Portal.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on October 08, 2016 2 Comments
WAJ Intro: The post below is by Prof. Cary Nelson, a leading scholar and expert on issues of academic freedom and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He was co-Editor of The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel (2014)(from the cover of which the Featured Image was taken) and was Editor of Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and the Movement to Boycott Israel (2016). Prof. Nelson's very important research report addresses the lack of academic freedom at Palestinian universities. That subject has been of interest to me for some time, but has not been well documented. There are few if any investigative groups who can operate and write freely in areas controlled by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, including universities. Reporting critical of the regimes is suppressed violently.