Anna-Belle Newport

Overview

Anna Belle Newport supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and was a team member of the University of Chicago (U of C) BDS campaign UofC Divest.

Newport is a senior at the University of Chicago (U of C), pursuing a degree in political science and government. She serves as the political director for UChicago Democrats and has been active in both local and national politics.

Promoting Anti-Israel Libels

On April 10, 2016, Newport promoted on Facebook the libel that Israel maintains "segregated roads." Newport also promoted the falsehood that Israel denies Palestinians water rights negotiated under the Oslo Accords. This lie has long been used as a weapon to attack Israel.

Newport made these statements as part of a photo campaign promoting UofC Divest.

Newport is a member of the Facebook group "Expats for Palestine." The cover photo for the group’s Facebook page contains a fake quote falsely attributed to Albert Einstein comparing Zionists to Nazis.

Embracing Hate Speech

On April 1, 2016, Newport attended an event titled "Narratives of Resistance," organized by several organizations including Students for Justice In Palestine (SJP) at U of C (SJP U of C) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at UChicago (JVP UChicago). The event featured New York-based poet Remi Kenazi who recites aggressively anti-Israel poetry and Israel-hater Lubna Morrar, who spreads incitement against Israelis in her poems and hatred of America. On March 28, 2016, Newport promoted the event on her Facebook page.

Supporting Student-Killer Rasmea Odeh

On March 31, 2016, Newport posed for a photo with unrepentant terrorist-murder Rasmea Odeh during the "kickoff night" of the UofC Divest campaign.

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

U of C Divest

U of C Divest is a coalition of organizations including JVP UChicago, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at U of C (SJP U of C), Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (M.E.Ch.A) at UChicago and QUIP.

On March 28, 2016, the coalition launched the ‪‎UofC Divest campaign, calling on U of C’s College Council to support divestment from targeted companies doing business with Israel. The launch urged students to sign a petition supporting the resolution.

UofC Divest’s inaugural Facebook post claimed that "we act in direct response to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement" — that lists the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine as the first member of its national committee and takes its financing, inspiration and marching orders from foreign sources.

Also on March 28, 2016 UofC Divest hung banners throughout the (U of C) campus, supporting the divestment resolution. Dozens of BDS supporters held a rally, marching with a huge Palestinian flag through U of C’s central quad.

On March 31, 2016, Students at the U of C who were opposed to UofC Divest responded by launching a counter campaign — "University of Chicago Coalition for Peace."

On April 11, 2016, UofC Divest uploaded a video promoting its campaign. Rubinstein featured in the video, with SJP and JVP members. Rubinstein falsely branded Israel with "Settler colonialism" and “Apartheid.”

On April 14, 2016, two-weeks after the UofC Divest campaign’s launch, the College Council passed the resolution in an 8-4-3 vote.

In a marked departure from prior College Council policy, all photography and voice recordings were prohibited at the divestment vote. Representatives’ individual votes on amendments disassociating the resolution from the international BDS movement and asserting Israel’s right to exist were not captured on the record. Two attempts by the university newspaper to re-poll members of the Council yielded different numbers than the totals from that night — and indicated that at least two representatives misreported their votes.

Following the vote, some students sought to illustrate that UofC Divest was not about human rights, but about singling out Israel. They proposed a resolution to the college council to divest from Chinese weapon manufacturers due to China’s record of human rights violations and its occupation of Tibet. Council members condemned the resolution — and tabled it indefinitely— claiming it was political and offensive to Chinese students.

On April 15, 2016, Newport made her Facebook cover photo an image of the launch of UofC Divest with supporters carrying a large Palestinian flag. She included a link to the UofC Divest Facebook page in the post.

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.