Alaina Desalvo

Overview

Alaina DeSalvo disrupted a campus event at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

DeSalvo also promoted the UMN Divest campaign, launched by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UMN in 2016.

In 2014 and 2016, DeSalvo was an activist with the Anti-War Committee (AWC), a group that has campaigned to end U.S. aid to Israel.

As of February 2020, DeSalvo’s LinkedIn page said she was the Competitive Grants Administrator at Minnesota’s Office of Higher Education from “Jul 2017 – Present,” and that she received her master’s degree in “Organizational Leadership, Development and Policy - Higher Education” from UMN in 2017.

DeSalvo LinkedIn page also said she received her bachelor’s degree from Montclair State University in New Jersey, in 2009.

DeSalvo’s LinkedIn page also said she was a Coordinating Committee Member of the Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) Twin Cities chapter, from “Oct 2014 - Sep 2016.”

Disrupting A Campus Event

On November 5, 2015, DeSalvo featured [00:00:08] in a Youtube video with other anti-Israel activists disrupting a talk on Ethics and the Law of War by Israeli law professor Moshe Halbertal. The disruption was organized by AWC.

DeSalvo held [00:01:37] a sign that read: “Halbertal’s Speech is Just Fancy Words for a Massacre.”

DeSalvo was one of several activists who were removed [00:02:03] from the lecture hall, following chants of[00:01:55] “Israel is an apartheid state”

On November 3, 2015, three activists were reportedly arrested for disruption of the event and charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing.

During the event, protesters reportedly sat in the audience and then stood and shouted down Halbertal, preventing the professor from speaking and accusing him of being a “war crimes apologist.” The lecture was reportedly scheduled for one hour, but “most of that time was taken up by interruptions.”

After university police escorted protesters from the hall, the agitators reportedly continued disrupting the event by shouting [00:00:01] chants including “free, free Palestine,” which were audible from inside the lecture hall.

Promoting BDS on Campus

On February 15, 2016, DeSalvo changed her Facebook profile and cover photo to a graphic promoting UMN Divest 2016.

DeSalvo wrote: “UMN Divest is a grassroots, student-led campaign calling on University of Minnesota to divest from corporations that are profiting off of human right violations in Palestine. #UMNDivest.”

On February 15, 2016, SJP UMN launched UMN Divest, a campaign suggesting [00:01:53] Israel was like Apartheid South Africa and demanding [00:01:10] that the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) and UMNdivest from all companies “complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”.

On February 16th, SJP UMN issued a press release claiming UMN’s divestment from four companies explicitly targeted by the campaign “would neutralize the University of Minnesota in this conflict [sic] …” and that “The call to divest is a response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.”

UMN’s Chief Investment Officer reportedly told The Minnesota Republic, a student-run newspaper at UMN, that the university had “no direct exposure” to the four companies highlighted by the UMN Divest campaign.

In March 2016, DeSalvo featured [00:02:30] in an SJP UMN produced video divestment promoting UMN Divest.

On March 3, 2016, DeSalvo published an op-ed titled, “Jewish students can support divestment,” in the Minnesota Daily, writing: “Just as students should condemn the colonial settler methods used against American Indian populations in North and South America, so we should condemn Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians.”

On March 8, 2016, the MSA voted [00:26:24] to strike the divestment resolution from the MSA agenda.

In April 2016, the MSA passed a heavily amended resolution that removed all references to Israel and any specific corporations. The amended resolution endorsed divestment generally from “corporations involved in human rights violations,” and from “companies profiting from human rights abuses and violations of international law

AWC Activism

On July 18, 2014, DeSalvo featured in a photo tweeted by anti-Israel activist, Ilana Rossoff. De Salvo’s sign read: “President OBAMA - HOW MANY KIDS WERE KILLED WITHOUT TAX DOLLARS TODAY? END U.S. SPONSORED GENOCIDE NOW.”

The photo was taken at an anti-Israel protest, organized by the AWC, titled: “Community March for Palestine,” scheduled for July 18, 2018.

The Facebook event page for the protest said: “Stand with Gaza & all of Palestine against Israeli terror,” and “No US aid to Israel!”

Some attendees of the protest held [00:00:25] a sign that equated Israel with Nazism, while others accused [00:00:55] Israel of practicing apartheid. One sign said [00:01:20]: “Doesn’t the Holocaust teach us that it must never happen to anyone ever again.”

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.

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish value.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”

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 Students 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.