Ash Cestone

In January 2024, more than 2,250 SUNY faculty, staff and students reportedly signed an anti-Israel statement endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling on all 64 SUNY schools to fully "break their economic ties with and divest from Israel."

Signatories added their names to the statement about three months into Israel's war against Hamas. Israel launched the war after the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered about 1,200 Israelis.

On multiple occasions, the statement accused [pp. 1-2] Israel of "genocide" during its war against Hamas. The statement demanded SUNY's "ending recruitment to major weapons manufacturing companies, divesting endowments and pensions from funds that support Israel, and implementing a boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions and organizations that profit from and perpetrate the genocide."

The statement also accused [p. 1] Israel of “colonization,” as well as “apartheid, and ethnic cleansing.” It called for the removal of the "separation wall," a term anti-Israel activists use to demonize Israel's security barrier, which was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks and in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

The statement called [p. 1] for the "right of return," which is a 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.

As mentioned earlier, the anti-Israel statement was crafted in January 2024, during Israel's war against Hamas.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, thousands of 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.”

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.

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 infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. 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 and pro-terror activism on campus.