Hamid Dabashi

In a July 2008 editorial, Dabashi referred to a “Zionist cabal,” writing that “[former United States President Barack] Obama began his speech in front of AIPAC by falling right into the oldest trap that the American Zionist cabal has in its bag of tricks -- dispatching its lunatic fringe to spread rumours (via emails) of facts and fantasies…”

In that same editorial, Dabashi also wrote that “[f]or [American Zionists], Israel is a dyslexic Biblical exegesis, a vicarious avocation, a profitable business deal, a dangerous delusion, a Jewish apartheid state”

Dabashi then slammed President Obama’s momentary recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital as giving Jerusalem to a “band of white European colonial settlers and the pack of their billionaire American supporters.”

Dabash also referred to Israel as a “racist apartheid state” and “a colonial outpost of American military barbarism.”  

In a December 2009 article, Dabashi claimed that “the pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US banked and invested heavily in infiltrating, buying, and paying for all the major and minor corridors of power.”

Equating Israel with ISIS and Nazi Germany

On September 16, 2015, Dabashi wrote on Facebook that “Israel is the most well funded terrorist organization on planet earth over the last sixty years plus --the Islamic State looks up to the Jewish State as its exemplary model.”  

On February 15, 2015, Dabashi likened Israel to ISIS on Twitter, writing “Absolutely, marvelously put, bravo Mr Cambadelis--and of course he has compared Israel to ISIS--and rightly…”

On August 8, 2014, Dabashi compared Gaza to Auschwitz, and asked “What are Israelis? Who are Israelis? They are Israelis by virtue of what? By a shared and sustained murderous history - from Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza in 2014. Is that not Zionism, the ideological foundation stone of being an Israeli?”

In a July 19, 2014 Facebook post, Dabashi juxtaposed a picture of the Warsaw Ghetto with a picture in Gaza and wrote: “Warsaw Ghetto 1943 (the site of Jewish uprising against Nazi barbarism)--Gaza 2014 (the site of Palestinian resistance against Zionist militarism)”

In a December 2009 article, Dabashi promoted BDS and also stated that Israel had lost any “moral” claim to the Holocaust, referred to Israelis as a “militant band of European colonizers” and accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing.”

In a September 2002 interview with the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website, Dabashi referred to pro-Israel advocates as "Gestapo apparatchiks" and said that “The so-called ‘pro-Israeli lobby’ is “an integral component of the imperial designs of the Bush administration for savage and predatory globalization...”

Supporting Violent Protests

On May 16, 2018, Dabashi wrote “As of Tuesday 15 May 2018 Israeli army had cold-bloodedly and in full view of the world murdered more than 100 Palestinians... during the Great March of Return protests held in Gaza’s since 30 March.”

Dabashi went on to write that “After this massacre, representative of many more before it, by Israelis against harmless defenseless peaceful Palestinians, every single US president since 1948, both the most popular and the most detested, are accountable and must be charged with aiding and abetting in crimes against humanity — As must Benjamin Netanyahu and every other liked or detested Israeli war criminal that call themselves ‘Prime Minister’.”

In the same post, Dabashi charged that “The Israeli flag, the very term ‘Israel’ are now and forever synonymous with mass murderers... with massacres, with land thieves, with incremental genocide, with war crimes, with crimes against humanity”

On May 15, 2018, Dabashi wrote a post stating that “This was an epic battle between defenseless good and viciously armed evil — with their bare hands and their naked souls and their exposed bodies Palestinians went to face pure evil ... today even Bernie Sanders was exposed for the spineless coward liberal Zionist that he is — blaming and condemning ‘Hamas’ before mildly criticizing the mass murderers who massacred defenseless Palestinians — so you too Bernie Sanders can go to hell!”

In the same post, Dabashi went on to praise the violent protesters, writing that “Palestinians just taught the world a priceless lesson — a master class in their power of dignity and defiance… and in doing so they told the whole pitiful gang of of Zionists from Israel to the US to Saudi Arabia they can go to hell — for Palestinians are not going anywhere from Palestine — Palestine is theirs, they are the master of their own destiny— the inhabitants of their own homeland— neither their own corrupt leadership nor those disgusting colonists occupying their country have a say in the matter.”  

Dabashi  celebrated the attempt to storm the Israeli border as a "bold act of nonviolent revolutionary mobilization..." that "schooled Gandhi and send him and MLK  [Martin Luther King] back to school."

Demonizing Israel

On May 15, 2018, Dabashi wrote on his Facebook, charging that “The Zionist propagandists are cynically abusing the legitimate grievances of Iranian people against their own government to drive a wedge between them and their state support for Palestinians — don’t fall for it — like all other nations around the globe, Iranians are committed to the Palestinian cause.”

On May 2, 2018, Dabashi posted photos on his Facebook of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Dabashi commented on the pictures, calling Netanyahu a “criminally insane creature,” a “leading perpetrator of crimes against humanity, this nightmare who needs to be put in a straight jacket and chained to a cage in an asylum house or a zoo ...”

Dabashi went on to write that “the man Israelis have freely elected as their chief political representative, the man whose pernicious gibberish and flat lies instigating for death and destruction of a sovereign nation every major venue in ‘Western media’ prominently featured . . . is the crowning achievement of ‘Western liberal democracy’ on the last colonial fortress and garrison state of their Enlightenment Modernity …”

On November 13, 2017, Dabashi posted an article to his Facebook about Israeli film star Gal Gadot’s refusal to work with Brett Ratner because of allegations of sexual misconduct. 

Along with the article, Dabashi wrote “She is against sexual assault on white woman but she is for the mass slaughter of Palestinian women men and children — of course she is the sweetheart of Israeli, European, and US press.”

In a March 2015 article, Dabashi wrote that “the majority of Israelis... are delusional fanatics who have worked themselves into a frenzied stupour [sic] to murder more Palestinians, steal more of Palestine, wage war against Lebanon, Syria or Iran, and do whatever other murderous mischief is necessary to convince them from within that self-propelling hurricane of death and destruction that they are right and the whole world is wrong.”

Dabashi has also accused Israel of committing an “incremental genocide“ of the Palestinian people and has described Israel as "a military garrison that has stolen another people's homeland at gunpoint and forced them into exile and refugee camps. Like the rest of Palestine, Jerusalem belongs to Palestinians".

In July 2015, Dabashi posted on Facebook that “There must be a global uproar against the thuggish vulgarity of Netanyahu and his Zionist gangsters in Israel and the US Congress to force them to dismantle their nuclear program--systematically used to terrorize and murder Palestinian people and steal the rest of Palestine!”

On August 21, 2014, Dabashi posted on Facebook that Operation Protective Edge (OPE) was “the continuation of the selfsame logic of Zionist conquest and depopulation of the entirety of Palestine.”

In a 2012 article, Dabashi claimed that Israel attacked Gaza in Operation Pillar of Defense (OPD) to gain political standing (rather than to stop the Hamas rocket attacks fired at civilian population centers) and is “interested in nothing but maiming and murdering more Palestinians.”

On April 10, 2012, Dabashi published an op-ed praising former Waffen SS member Günter Grass for writing a poem demonizing Israel. Dabashi went on to claim that Israel is a “racist apartheid state” and that its founding was an extension of European colonialism.

Promoting BDS and Anti-Israel Activism at Columbia

In March of 2016, Dabashi signed a petition, created by a student initiative, to rebrand BDS at Columbia as: Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). 

In March 2015, Dabashi moderated a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) event at Columbia University (Columbia) to kick-off Israeli Apartheid Week.

In 2004, Dabashi was investigated following accusations of anti-Semitism made by Jewish students at Columbia University. The accusations were bolstered by an article Dabashi wrote for the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram.

In the article, Dabashi wrote that “What they call 'Israel' is no mere military state. A subsumed militarism, a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional to the very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of what these people have to call their 'soul.'"

Describing Israelis, Dabashi also wrote that “Half a century of systematic maiming and murdering of another people has left… its deep marks on the faces of these people, the way they talk, walk, the way they greet each other… There is a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture.”

Dabashi later defended his article, arguing that “That passage could have easily been written about North Korea, Cuba, or about Pinochet's Chile, the Shah's or Khomeini's Iran, Apartheid South Africa, Nazi Germany, the French in Algeria, the Belgians in Congo, the British in India, the Americans in Iraq, or the Janjaweed in Darfur.” 

In 2002, Dabashi cancelled his Columbia class to attend an anti-Israel rally on campus, citing his “moral duty” to attend.  

Anti-Israel professor Joseph Massad was reported to have addressed the rally, proclaiming that Israel is "a Jewish supremacist and racist state" and that "every racist state should be threatened." Another professor, Nicholas De Genova, also stated that "the heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. The state of Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust."

The Columbia Hillel rabbi at the time, Charles Sheer, questioned the decision of Dabashi and another Columbia professor, George Saliba, to cancel classes in order to attend the anti-Israel rally.

In response, Dabashi wrote in the Columbia Spectator that Rabbi Sheer had "taken upon himself the task of mobilizing and spearheading a crusade of fear and intimidation against members of the Columbia faculty and students who have dared to speak against the slaughter of innocent Palestinians."

Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia

On April 22, 2024, Hamid Dabashi, along with other Columbia faculty members, participated [00:01:31] in the “‘Faculty Walkout’ rally…to support Palestine and Liberated Zone Encampment.” The event was held in support of the students arrested by the New York Police Department (NYPD) and suspended by the university. Dabashi can be seen in the video wearing a green beanie and sunglasses and holding a sign that said: “RESTORE FACULTY GOVERNANCE.”

Faculty members carrying signs that said [00:00:35]: “END STUDENT SUSPENSIONS NOW” and “HANDS OFF OUR STUDENTS” walked out of their classrooms and made their way to the steps of the library facing the encampment. A crowd gathered and chanted: “Disclose! Divest! We will not stop, we will not rest!” Many walkout participants addressed [00:00:14] the crowd, expressing faculty support for their students and the encampment.

The walkout occurred during Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group, launched after the October 7, 2023 terror attacks.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis, kidnapped hundreds and wounded thousands. War crimes included mass rape and torture. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” For more information, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

On May 20, 2024, Middle East Eye published an article by Dabashi, titled: “US campus protests: Edward Said would have treasured this moment,” which was n support of the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia and other U.S. colleges.

In the article, Dabashi wrote: “The year 2023 will be remembered as the point in our history when genocidal Zionism was finally put on trial at American university campuses.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture. Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.

Dabashi further stated: “US college campuses are today the site of the end of Zionist hegemony…”

On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.

Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”

The encampment was also in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Student Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/dabashi/ [Deleted]

Twitter: https://twitter.com/hamiddabashi [Deleted]