Abigail Bakan
Overview
Abigail Bakan [Abigail B. Bakan] justified the Hamas terrorism of October 7, 2023. She has also spread hatred of Israel and Zionism, as well as opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered over 1,200 Israeli Jews, kidnapped hundreds and wounded thousands. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
Bakan is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Bakan also showed support for the pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of Toronto (UofT) in May 2024.
As of July 2024, Bakan was listed as a member of the programmatic board of the “Hearing Palestine” initiative at UofT. The initiative states that its goal is to “Provide an intellectual hub for the study of Palestine.”
Also as of March 2024, Bakan was an activist with the anti-Israel group Jewish Faculty Network. She served on its steering committee in 2022.
As of the same date, Bakan was a member of another anti-Israel group, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV).
As of May 2024, Bakan was listed on the UofT website as a professor in the Department of Political Science, and in the Department of Social Justice Education at UofT’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She reportedly served as chair of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education at UofT from 2013 to 2018.
In 2019, Bakan co-authored an anti-Israel book titled: “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race.”
As of May 2024, Bakan was listed online as having received a PhD in political science in 1984, and a master’s degree in political science in 1978, from York University (York).
As of May 2024, Bakan’s Facebook About page said she was located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The statement said: “We understand that the events of this week did not occur in a vacuum. For two decades, Israel has held Palestinians in Gaza under siege, in an open-air prison, subjecting them to brutal massacres and weapons testing…”
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
The statement further read: “The whole world understood in the case of Ukraine that resistance to military occupation is justified. It is in fact a right guaranteed by international law. The militant reaction from Palestinians in Gaza on October 7, 2023, is a result of decades of cruel and oppressive treatment.”
Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.
The statement also accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza and said: “As artists, cultural workers, and academics, we stand strong in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and against all forms of racism and settler-colonial violence.”
In November 2023, Bakan signed [no. 4] a letter titled: “Open Letter to the Legal Community on Pro-Palestine Speech.”
The letter was in solidarity with students at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law (LASL) facing backlash after they had showed support for the Hamas massacre the previous month.
The letter said: “We reject the notion that it is antisemitic, hateful, or illegitimate to contextualize the October 7th, 2023 attack.”
The letter also claimed that the terror attacks represented “legitimate Charter-protected political expression,” echoing UN “resolutions affirming the right of the Palestinians to resist their demise.”
The letter that Bakan signed referred to a statement published on October 20, 2023 and reportedly signed by 74 LASL students. The statement expressed [photo 1] support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts towards liberation,” and called for [photo 4] the LASL administration to recognize “Palestinian resistance as fundamentally just.”
The LASL statement also claimed [photo 1]: “Israel is not a country, it is the brand of a settler colony.” The LASL statement also said [photo 3] that the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack “was a direct result of Israel’s 75-year-long campaign to eradicate Palestinians, and that Israel is therefore responsible for all loss of life.”
The modern State of Israel was founded 76 years earlier, in 1948.
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.
In the video, Bakan accused [00:00:31] Israel of a “genocidal war on Gaza” and of an [00:04:31] “apartheid orientation.”
On November 27, 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Bakan was featured in an anti-Israel event at Brock University (Brock), titled: “A Panel on Palestine: Decolonization, International Law, Gender, Media and Solidarity.”
During the event, reportedly “all four of the panelists either suggested or asserted outright that Israel was perpetrating genocide…”
On November 26, 2023, Bakan posted on Facebook: “11 Toronto peace activists were arrested last week for allegedly putting up posters at an Indigo/Chapters bookstore naming CEO Heather Reisman’s support for Israeli occupation forces. The arrests are an effort to repress Palestine solidarity peace activism…”
“Israeli Occupation Forces,” or “IOF,” is a derogatory name for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used by anti-Israel activists to demonize Israel’s army.
Bakan’s post was referring to the vandalism of a Toronto bookstore, where anti-Israel activists defaced the building with red paint and papered windows with posters accusing the store’s Jewish founder, pro-Israel philanthropist Heather Reisman, of “funding genocide.”
Police charged eleven suspects with “hate-motivated mischief” and “criminal harassment.” The police said the suspects “engaged in threatening conduct that caused a person to reasonable fear [sic] for their personal safety.”
In September 2023, Bakan signed an “Open letter from Jewish Studies scholars, Jewish academics, and Jewish educators on Ethnic Studies.” The letter criticized Jewish and pro-Israel groups for raising concerns regarding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content in a K-12 ethnic studies curriculum being implemented in California.
The letter Bakan signed claimed that these groups “wielded racist and life-endangering accusations of terrorism” in order to remove “any mention of Palestine, let alone Palestinian liberation struggles” from the curriculum.
The letter also alleged that the groups “frequently target people of color,” and that “Zionist groups have been given countless opportunities to publicly, and under the banners of state government, harass and defame educators of color.”
The letter concluded: “...we call on you to stop lending credibility to these right-wing organizations who attack ethnic studies under pretexts of Jewish inclusion.”
On July 12, 2022, The Political Quarterly published an article that Bakan co-authored, titled: “Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting.”
Bakan wrote that “Jewish Israelis are favoured for full citizenship, representation and resources,” while “Palestinians are effectively the ‘non-white’ victims of repression of the settler-colonial project of Israel.”
In the same article, Bakan called Israel “an apartheid state” and claimed that “efforts to hold Israel to account…are frequently read as unfair, motivated not by justice, but instead by unspoken interests in challenging Israel’s Jewish character.”
Bakan also wrote: “Palestinians are victim-blamed, by discourses which present them as ‘terrorist’, ‘anti-semitic’, and ‘undemocratic.’” She further stated: “Anti-Palestinian racism is also evidenced in efforts to label sites of resistance, including non-violent Palestinian civil society organisations, as illegitimate.”
On June 11, 2021, Bakan was featured in an IJV webinar titled: “The Use and Misuse of Antisemitism Accusations in Canada.” Bakan said [01:12:47]: “Israel presents itself with a Jewish star on its imperial colonial apartheid project. It is not a surprise that many people who have only met a Jewish person on the other side of a violent bayonet think that there is an association between the Israeli state and Jewishness, and they hate it.”
Bakan also claimed that [01:28:16] “the Israeli state is extraordinarily violent, and is a settler state that is dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives. If we’re going to deal with truth and reconciliation here in Canada and recognize the history of indigeneity, we have to recognize that Israel was not a land…for people without a land; it was inhabited. And the inhabited population needs to have the right to return.”
In 2019, Bakan co-authored a book titled: “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race,” which, according to a review, accused Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.”
The same book review also said that Bakan’s book suggested that “Zionism…reshaped Holocaust memory” through “observation of the massacres confined to an atrocity against Jews as opposed to against humanity.”
The IHRA lists as another definition of contemporary anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
On April 11, 2021, Bakan co-authored an article in which she claimed that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism “equates legitimate protest against Israel with antisemitism.”
The article linked to the Jewish Faculty Network statement that Bakan signed, which called the BDS movement “legitimate” and opposed referring to it as being anti-Semitic.
Bakan is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Bakan also showed support for the pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of Toronto (UofT) in May 2024.
As of July 2024, Bakan was listed as a member of the programmatic board of the “Hearing Palestine” initiative at UofT. The initiative states that its goal is to “Provide an intellectual hub for the study of Palestine.”
Also as of March 2024, Bakan was an activist with the anti-Israel group Jewish Faculty Network. She served on its steering committee in 2022.
As of the same date, Bakan was a member of another anti-Israel group, Independent Jewish Voices (IJV).
As of May 2024, Bakan was listed on the UofT website as a professor in the Department of Political Science, and in the Department of Social Justice Education at UofT’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). She reportedly served as chair of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education at UofT from 2013 to 2018.
In 2019, Bakan co-authored an anti-Israel book titled: “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race.”
As of May 2024, Bakan was listed online as having received a PhD in political science in 1984, and a master’s degree in political science in 1978, from York University (York).
As of May 2024, Bakan’s Facebook About page said she was located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Justifying Hamas Terrorist War Crimes
As of October 19, 2023, less than two weeks after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis, Bakan was listed [no. 2287] as a signatory to a statement titled: “Artists & Academics in Canada: Statement of Support for Palestine.”The statement said: “We understand that the events of this week did not occur in a vacuum. For two decades, Israel has held Palestinians in Gaza under siege, in an open-air prison, subjecting them to brutal massacres and weapons testing…”
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
The statement further read: “The whole world understood in the case of Ukraine that resistance to military occupation is justified. It is in fact a right guaranteed by international law. The militant reaction from Palestinians in Gaza on October 7, 2023, is a result of decades of cruel and oppressive treatment.”
Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.
The statement also accused Israel of “war crimes” in Gaza and said: “As artists, cultural workers, and academics, we stand strong in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom and against all forms of racism and settler-colonial violence.”
In November 2023, Bakan signed [no. 4] a letter titled: “Open Letter to the Legal Community on Pro-Palestine Speech.”
The letter was in solidarity with students at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law (LASL) facing backlash after they had showed support for the Hamas massacre the previous month.
The letter said: “We reject the notion that it is antisemitic, hateful, or illegitimate to contextualize the October 7th, 2023 attack.”
The letter also claimed that the terror attacks represented “legitimate Charter-protected political expression,” echoing UN “resolutions affirming the right of the Palestinians to resist their demise.”
The letter that Bakan signed referred to a statement published on October 20, 2023 and reportedly signed by 74 LASL students. The statement expressed [photo 1] support for “all forms of Palestinian resistance and efforts towards liberation,” and called for [photo 4] the LASL administration to recognize “Palestinian resistance as fundamentally just.”
The LASL statement also claimed [photo 1]: “Israel is not a country, it is the brand of a settler colony.” The LASL statement also said [photo 3] that the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack “was a direct result of Israel’s 75-year-long campaign to eradicate Palestinians, and that Israel is therefore responsible for all loss of life.”
The modern State of Israel was founded 76 years earlier, in 1948.
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.
Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” As of November 10, 2023, approximately 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.
A terrorist detained by Israel admitted he raped an Israeli woman when he broke into a kibbutz house during the October 7, 2023 attack. In March 2024, a former hostage of Hamas publicly stated she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity.
For more information on the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.
Hatred of Israel and Zionism
On March 28, 2024, Bakan was featured in a video posted on YouTube by the Jewish Faculty Network, titled: “Why anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”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.
In the video, Bakan accused [00:00:31] Israel of a “genocidal war on Gaza” and of an [00:04:31] “apartheid orientation.”
On November 27, 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas, Bakan was featured in an anti-Israel event at Brock University (Brock), titled: “A Panel on Palestine: Decolonization, International Law, Gender, Media and Solidarity.”
During the event, reportedly “all four of the panelists either suggested or asserted outright that Israel was perpetrating genocide…”
On November 26, 2023, Bakan posted on Facebook: “11 Toronto peace activists were arrested last week for allegedly putting up posters at an Indigo/Chapters bookstore naming CEO Heather Reisman’s support for Israeli occupation forces. The arrests are an effort to repress Palestine solidarity peace activism…”
“Israeli Occupation Forces,” or “IOF,” is a derogatory name for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) used by anti-Israel activists to demonize Israel’s army.
Bakan’s post was referring to the vandalism of a Toronto bookstore, where anti-Israel activists defaced the building with red paint and papered windows with posters accusing the store’s Jewish founder, pro-Israel philanthropist Heather Reisman, of “funding genocide.”
Police charged eleven suspects with “hate-motivated mischief” and “criminal harassment.” The police said the suspects “engaged in threatening conduct that caused a person to reasonable fear [sic] for their personal safety.”
In September 2023, Bakan signed an “Open letter from Jewish Studies scholars, Jewish academics, and Jewish educators on Ethnic Studies.” The letter criticized Jewish and pro-Israel groups for raising concerns regarding anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content in a K-12 ethnic studies curriculum being implemented in California.
The letter Bakan signed claimed that these groups “wielded racist and life-endangering accusations of terrorism” in order to remove “any mention of Palestine, let alone Palestinian liberation struggles” from the curriculum.
The letter also alleged that the groups “frequently target people of color,” and that “Zionist groups have been given countless opportunities to publicly, and under the banners of state government, harass and defame educators of color.”
The letter concluded: “...we call on you to stop lending credibility to these right-wing organizations who attack ethnic studies under pretexts of Jewish inclusion.”
On July 12, 2022, The Political Quarterly published an article that Bakan co-authored, titled: “Anti-Palestinian Racism and Racial Gaslighting.”
Bakan wrote that “Jewish Israelis are favoured for full citizenship, representation and resources,” while “Palestinians are effectively the ‘non-white’ victims of repression of the settler-colonial project of Israel.”
In the same article, Bakan called Israel “an apartheid state” and claimed that “efforts to hold Israel to account…are frequently read as unfair, motivated not by justice, but instead by unspoken interests in challenging Israel’s Jewish character.”
Bakan also wrote: “Palestinians are victim-blamed, by discourses which present them as ‘terrorist’, ‘anti-semitic’, and ‘undemocratic.’” She further stated: “Anti-Palestinian racism is also evidenced in efforts to label sites of resistance, including non-violent Palestinian civil society organisations, as illegitimate.”
On June 11, 2021, Bakan was featured in an IJV webinar titled: “The Use and Misuse of Antisemitism Accusations in Canada.” Bakan said [01:12:47]: “Israel presents itself with a Jewish star on its imperial colonial apartheid project. It is not a surprise that many people who have only met a Jewish person on the other side of a violent bayonet think that there is an association between the Israeli state and Jewishness, and they hate it.”
Bakan also claimed that [01:28:16] “the Israeli state is extraordinarily violent, and is a settler state that is dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives. If we’re going to deal with truth and reconciliation here in Canada and recognize the history of indigeneity, we have to recognize that Israel was not a land…for people without a land; it was inhabited. And the inhabited population needs to have the right to return.”
The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
In 2019, Bakan co-authored a book titled: “Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race,” which, according to a review, accused Israel of “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.”
The same book review also said that Bakan’s book suggested that “Zionism…reshaped Holocaust memory” through “observation of the massacres confined to an atrocity against Jews as opposed to against humanity.”
Opposing the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism
On February 27, 2020, Bakan signed [no. 109] an IJV open letter opposing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. The letter claimed that the definition “is worded in such a way as to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism,” and that it “undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism.”The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) highlights multiple forms of contemporary anti-Semitism related to Israel, including “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” The U.S. State Department adopted the IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism in 2016. Over 40 other countries have adopted the definition as well.
The IHRA lists as another definition of contemporary anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”
On April 11, 2021, Bakan co-authored an article in which she claimed that the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism “equates legitimate protest against Israel with antisemitism.”
The article linked to the Jewish Faculty Network statement that Bakan signed, which called the BDS movement “legitimate” and opposed referring to it as being anti-Semitic.
Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at UofT
Bakan showed support for the pro-Hamas protest encampment at UofT in May 2024.Bakan showed support for the encampment by signing on to a statement put out by UofT community members in May 2024. The May 20, 2024 statement was part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
The statement backed all the encampment’s demands, including divesting from the alleged “apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
To show support, Bakan submitted a “support selfie,” where text beside her face said: “DISCLOSE. DIVEST. CUT TIES.” Bakan’s selfie featured her holding a sign that said: “Disclose / Divest / Cut Ties.”
On May 2, 2024, UofT Occupy for Palestine (Occupy UofT) activists “stormed down” fencing around UofT’s Kings College Circle and set up a pro-Hamas and pro-BDS encampment called the “People’s Circle for Palestine.” Protesters chanted [00:02:59] for “intifada” and celebrated “resistance” [00:02:45]. Both terms are calls for terrorism. Activists chanted [00:01:28; 00:02:21] for Israel’s destruction multiple times.
After the October 7, 2023 massacre of nearly 1,200 Israelis, the inverted red triangle -
- became a Hamas symbol. It appeared on large signs at the encampment and was featured in other encampment-related activism. Openly pro-Hamas marches began elsewhere in the city and ended at the encampment. In one incident, pro-Hamas activists punched a Jewish man, stole his Israeli flag and shouted anti-Semitic slurs.Protesters occupied [00:00:17] the area from May to July 2024, despite UofT warning they were trespassing. On July 3, 2024, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued an injunction at UofT’s request, requiring the encampment to be cleared. Occupy UofT dismantled the encampment and wrote a statement that ended: “Long live the intifada.”
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
University Website:https://politics.utoronto.ca/faculty/profile/295/University Website 2:https://discover.research.utoronto.ca/21517-abigail-bakan
University Website 3:https://utoronto.academia.edu/AbigailBakan
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/abbie.bakan
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/abbie.bakan
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/abigail-bakan-2bba0139/
Website:https://theconversation.com/profiles/abigail-b-bakan-1214086
Academia.edu:https://utoronto.academia.edu/AbigailBakan
Research Gate:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Abigail-Bakan
Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Bakan
Videos
2 videos
Photos & Screenshots
59 images
Infamous Quotes
“Israel presents itself with a Jewish star on its imperial colonial apartheid project.”
"Palestinians are effectively the ‘non-white’ victims of repression of the settler-colonial project of Israel.”
“Anti-Palestinian racism is…evidenced in efforts to label sites of resistance…as illegitimate.”
