Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

BDS Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 14, 2014 13 Comments
In February and March 2014, Vassar witnessed ugly and racialized taunting of professors and students regarding a class trip to Israel, Anti-Israel academic boycott turns ugly at Vassar.  The administration took a hands-off approach. Starting shortly after my appearance at Vassar on May 5, to speak against academic BDS, Students for Justice in Palestine began a social media campaign focused on the race of the crowd as a means of denigrating my appearance as an old white Zionist alumni intrusion onto campus. SJP's social media then devolved further, into tweeting and posting of white nationalist and neo-Nazi anti-Zionist material: [caption id="attachment_86121" align="alignnone" width="549"]Vassar SJP Twitter Nazi Poster Screen Shot 2014-05-12 at 12.03.51 AM (Image via Prof. Rebecca Lesses)[/caption] The tweets and postings were documented by Ithaca College Professor Rebecca Lesses at her blog, Mystical Politics.  SJP initially defended the conduct at its Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr and Twitter accounts, but then apologized on Sunday, May 11 and again on Tuesday, May 13:

Posted by CampusClimatologist on May 13, 2014 4 Comments
Legal Insurrection has learned that Students for Justice in Palestine-backed UCLA student president-elect Devin Murphy, whose supporters accused his anti-divestment opponent of corruption and conflict of interest for taking a sponsored trip to Israel from a pro-Israel organization, took a sponsored trip to Israel from a pro-Israel group in January 2013. Murphy, who defeated anti-BDS candidate Sunny Singh by a mere 31 votes in an election with 8,200 cast, went to Israel on a California Student Leaders  trip sponsored by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange. http://youtu.be/jUGZwLb2XiE?t=3m15s That Murphy went on such a sponsored trip but is pro-divestment, shows that such trips are merely educational, and do not dictate a particular pro- or anti-divestment result. SJP filed a judicial board conflict of interest complaint not only against Singh for going on a trip sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League, but also against Lauren Rogers, another anti-BDS council member who also went on a Project Interchange Trip. Murphy also signed a letter pledging not to take sponsored trips to Israel from various groups, which accused numerous pro-Israel organizations of promoting bigotry against Muslims, Blacks, and Armenians. Questioned about his trip (video clip here, and embedded below), Murphy claimed that he had no conflict of interest because he was not a member of the council at the time.  He also did not indicate that he would recuse himself from related matters while on council.

Posted by CampusClimatologist on May 12, 2014 3 Comments
Two months ago, after a contentious meeting that lasted until dawn, UCLA’s student government (USAC) defeated a BDS resolution on a 7-5, essentially party-line vote.  The hard work of hundreds of students and alumni, aided by numerous pro-Israel organizations, secured a hard-fought victory. But Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and their allies dried their tears, regrouped, and returned for another round.  Their strategy was two-fold:  Cut off the vital supply lines between campus activists and the real world, then use the morally-backwards campus environment to wield the myriad "anti-racist" tools as weapons against Israel and Jews. [caption id="attachment_85855" align="aligncenter" width="475"]Screenshot 2014-05-11 20.44.54 Students gather to hear USAC election results at UCLA on Friday afternoon[/caption]

Campus Lawfare As Political Tool

As reported here last week, SJP filed a case with USAC’s judicial board, claiming two anti-BDS-voting council members, Sunny Singh and Lauren Rodgers, had violated conflict of interest rules by receiving a free educational trips to Israel.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 11, 2014 34 Comments
On May 5, 2014, I gave a lecture at Vassar College against the academic boycott of Israel. Originally I had challenged the 39 professors who signed a letter defending the academic boycott of Israel to debate, but none accepted the challenge. During the Q&A, I learned for the first time from student organizer Luka Ladan that one of the professors had called for a boycott of my lecture. The full video is here. The two anti-Israel speakers I referenced were Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah, who appeared in an event sponsored by several academic departments, the week before. Those same academic departments were asked to sponsor my appearance, but none did. I had not made a big deal about it, although it troubled me that a professor would call for a boycott of a lecture simply because of a difference of opinion. When I saw a Wall Street Journal column posted late this afternoon, I remembered that statement about boycotting me. Ruth Wisse, professor at Harvard, writes, The Closing of the Collegiate Mind:
There was a time when people looking for intellectual debate turned away from politics to the university. Political backrooms bred slogans and bagmen; universities fostered educated discussion. But when students in the 1960s began occupying university property like the thugs of regimes America was fighting abroad, the venues gradually reversed. Open debate is now protected only in the polity: In universities, muggers prevail....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 08, 2014 22 Comments
Soon after the defeat of anti-Israel divestment resolutions at U. Michigan and UCLA, I began to see anti-Israel advocates single out pro-Israel students who had gone on trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel groups, or had received advocacy training from pro-Israel groups. These trips and advocacy training are critical because some campuses have become openly hostile to pro-Israel students as a result of "direct action" and other intimidation by relatively small but highly coordinated anti-Israel groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. Professors actively participate in demonizing pro-Israel students.     So I was not completely surprised when I learned from reader emails over the past several days that there is an attempt at UCLA to disqualify any student who received pro-Israel training or trips from being on the Student Council. Because of my trip to Vassar and follow up, I didn't have time to write it up. So I'm glad that two others have done so. Jonathan Tobin at Commentary writes, The Next Step in the Campus War on Jews:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 27, 2014 13 Comments
One of the beauties -- and sometimes nightmares -- of Twitter is that sometimes people tell you how they really feel without filters. Such as the NYU Dorm Stormers at Students for Justice in Palestine, who sent out the tweet in the featured image above. That tweet puts the lie to the claims of SJP and similar anti-Israel groups on campus that they do not seek the destruction of Israel, and merely want to have Israel leave Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank). http://youtu.be/TQxzojmhWW0?t=53s There are naïve followers of these groups who actually believe that spin, but that's not what the groups are about. When they say "Justice in Palestine," what they really mean is that Israel has no right even to exist. NYU SJP was called out on the tweet at Truth Revolt: Truth Revolt NYU SJP denies Israel's right to exist A funny thing then happened. The tweet was deleted, rendering this image at the Truth Revolt post:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 26, 2014 7 Comments
We mentioned before how Christian Zionist college student Chloe Valdary has come under highly racialized attack from anti-Israel Jewish leftists like Richard Silverstein, The ugly, repugnant attack on a pro-Israel black American student: https://twitter.com/richards1052/status/437086594546536448 She also is a frequent target of other anti-Zionist fanatics who find a unique threat in a black American female Zionist, because dividing people along racial lines is a key anti-Israel boycott tactic. In this interview at the AIPAC conference, Valdary explains how she has dealt with the attacks, how her Zionism is consistent with that of the great civil rights leaders of the 1960s and why (at 2:20):
"As a free woman of color, of course I would be a Zionist, it's only natural"
Valdary also discussed her own experiences in Israel, and the modern blood libel that Israel is an Apartheid state (at 8:45):
"There is no Apartheid in Israeli society ... it's an insult to the people who suffered from Apartheid in South Africa"
(Via CiFWatch) Valdary goes into even more depth about the racism of the anti-Israel left in this interview:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 26, 2014 14 Comments
We covered the NYU "Dorm Storming" by Students for Justice for Palestine. It's now received national attention through Greta Van Susteren, who I think did a good job in this interview with Laura Adkins at focusing on the provocative nature of the act. That's something we've focused on. Of course it's part of a greater BDS movement to demonize Israel, but it's also an attempt to intimidate students in their bedrooms. Local ABC News reports (if video doesn't load, click on link): It violated NYU rules, which protect the privacy of students. If NYU takes no action, which is what I expect, then it has rendered students captives in their own dorm rooms. Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 738 (1970)
“We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another…. That we are often ‘captives’ outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.”
So what is NYU going to do?

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 21, 2014 8 Comments

I had the pleasure of appearing tonight on The Mark Levin Show. We covered the anti-Israel boycott movement, and why it should matter to conservatives. Thanks to Mark for shining a spotlight on this issue. Thanks also to our friends at The Right Scoop for pulling the audio...

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 17, 2014 4 Comments
As mentioned last night, and as expected, there was a protest by student groups seeking divestment from companies doing business in Israel in reaction to last week's 15-8-1 decision of the Cornell Student Assembly to table indefinitely the proposed divestment resolution. About 75 protestors attended the Student Assembly meeting. I heard one of them refer to hundreds, but it was not that many, and many drifted out after a while. Here's a video of the pro-divestment students walking from their gathering area to Willard Straight Hall, where the Assembly meets. You can see there just weren't that many, certainly not hundreds. A disappointing turnout considering the priority the anti-Israel groups place on the protest. The Assembly then voted to suspend the rules and its session, in what appeared to be a preplanned maneuver, according to multiple people who were in the room at the start. I arrived later, because I had class. Effectively, the Assembly went out of session, and then let the anti-Israel students spend almost two hours giving speeches, in what the protesters termed an alternative assembly. There also were other unrelated topics, such as free bus passes, that consumed some of the protest discussion. Here's the Alternative Agenda: Cornell Alternative Assembly Agenda 4-17-2014 The only interesting part was that David Skorton, President of Cornell, previously was scheduled to appear before the Assembly, and kept that appointment. So the President was present during part of this alternative assembly, but not because of the protest. There were some minor theatrics as protestors vented a little, but nothing major. Skorton gave a short speech about improving the process, and left:
Accessibility by WAH