This letter is written in response to an article titled “Kent State alumni join call for university divestment. Is it possible?” published on KentWired on July 29, 2024.

Readers and reporters of KentWired, and interested community members of Kent State University, must be aware of the antisemitic kernel of the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) against Israel movement.

The BDS movement is the current incarnation of the antisemitic Arabic boycott movement that started well before 1948, the year Israel was re-established in modern times as an independent state. The Arab boycott movement started in 1945 with the formation of the Arab League, where its first action as a collective was to boycott products by the Jewish population in the territory referred to by the British Mandate as Palestine. This boycott was the first action of the league, whereas its formal mandate was to make sure that Arab countries do not fight each other.

This current incarnation of the antisemitic boycott of the Jewish state products, the BDS movement, is antisemitic, as well. To separate it from legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actions, we will use the standards defined by Natan Sharansky, a human rights activist, who spent nine years in a soviet prison and was honored the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. The 3D standards: delegitimize, demonize and double standard, were adopted by the U.S. Department of State in 2010, where any set of beliefs or actions that express one of these 3Ds wins the title of being antisemitic.

The BDS scores on all three accounts:

Delegitimize. BDS openly and clearly delegitimizes and denies Israel’s right to exist. BDS goes beyond rejecting the creation of Israel as a state by the United Nations and ignores the factual history of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Leaders of the BDS movement openly express their opinion that Israel should not exist. This is exemplified by the founder, Dr. Omar Barghouti, who is quoted, “I am completely and categorically against bi-nationalism because it assumes that there are two nations with equal moral claims to the land.” Quite ironically,  Dr. Barghouti  is a PhD graduate of Tel Aviv University (noted also for the double standard criterion).

Demonize. BDS demonizes Israel and the Jews, where Israel is described by its propagators as “brutal,” “murderous” and as performing “ethnic cleansing.”  Note the irony, given the repeated attempts throughout the history of Arab world entities to eliminate Israel, and where Israel is currently fighting Islamist terror organizations set to spread the Sharia law. See the antisemitic slurs put forward by related organizations. Here, we point out the pro-Hamas genocidal toolkit put forward by SJP following only few days after the October massacre, where the attack is hailed. SJP is the same organization that promotes the BDS agenda here on campus. (A copy of SJP toolkit was provided for KW review.)

Double standard. BDS is quite the expert in double standard agenda. BDS avoids in its written literature any mentioning or criticism of Hamas, Sharia law and terror attacks, including actions that place Gazan civilians at the eye of the storm as widely performed by Hamas. Furthermore, the BDS leadership never addresses the fact that Israel is the only consistent democracy in the Middle East, while surrounded by some of the most theocratic, autocratic and oppressive regimes. Still BDS singles Israel out for BDS. The plight for human rights of Palestinians across the region and the world is completely ignored. The BDS  and the SJP do not care at all for the Palestinians — if they did, they would have pushed for improving the conditions in the overcrowded refugee camps in Arab countries, where instead they cement their refugee status for generations.

Final note. The BDS text, designed to attract well-meaning liberals, must be called out for its destructive and antisemitic agenda.  All humankind deserves the right to live with safety and dignity. Indeed, to truly help the Palestinians to achieve these rights, the priority must be to call for removing Hamas from any point of governance. So far we see zero pressure applied by international advocacy groups, which claim to be pro-Palestinian, on the Palestinian leadership to act sensibly. In this way, the propaganda as put forward by the BDS and SJP only adds to the bloodshed. Only after that Hamas leadership is removed can we progress toward a sustainable solution and see all the Palestinian people secure these rights.

Barry Dunietz is vice president of the Jewish Faculty, Staff and Friends Association and a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the university. Contact him at [email protected].