Ben Bienstock

Overview

Ben Bienstock has expressed support for violent protesters, spread hatred of Israel, promoted anti-Israel agitators and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS) at Brown University (Brown).

Bienstock is reportedly a member of Brown Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Brown Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Bienstock’s Facebook page said he started at Brown in September, 2016. Bienstock is slated to graduate in 2020. As of April 2020 , Bienstock was listed as a participant in Engaged Scholars program, with a concentration in History.

As of April 2020, Bienstock’s Twitter bio said he was managing editor of the College Hill Independent, Brown/RISD [Rhode Island School of Design]'s alt-weekly newspaper. Bienstock was also a member of the band “Hollywood Royalty” and hosted a student radio show.

Supporting Violent Protesters

On November 26, 2019, Bienstock published an article in “New Voices” titled: “I Became an Anti-Zionist the Same Way I Became a Jew.”

In his article, Bienstock stated: “I marched in the spring rain with hundreds of Jews, Palestinians, and other New Yorkers to mourn the Palestinians whom the Israeli military had killed during the Great March of Return.”

Spreading Hatred of Israel

In his November 26, 2019 article, titled: “I Became an Anti-Zionist the Same Way I Became a Jew,” Bienstock discussed how disaffiliated he was his whole life with Judaism and how his current association with his religion is through his activism for Palestine.

Bienstock recounted: “it wasn’t until I arrived at school and came to the very simple understanding that the victim of Israel’s aggressions was not some contested piece of land that deserved to be a state (or two), but rather oppressed Palestinian people who deserved justice and equality. 

Bienstock claimed Israel uses that “Jewish victimhood” to “justify victimizing Palestinians in our [Jews] name.”

Bienstock appreciated the anti-Zionist Jewish groups he joined, because they showed him “how to embrace the memory of the Holocaust and experiences of antisemitism to advocate for Palestinians as Jews.” 

Further, Bienstock “learned about how to mobilize Jewish identity to enact solidarity with Indigenous peoples in the Americas and in Palestine.”

Summarizing his current connection to Judaism through his anti-Zionism, Bienstock said: “I am building an identity based in opposition.”

Promoting Anti-Israel Agitators

Bienstock helped organize a November 18, 2019 event promoting BDS, which was co-hosted by SJP and JVP. The event featured a panel showcasing BDS founder Omar Barghouti , anti-Israel agitator Linda Sarsour and JVP co-director, Alissa Weiss. 


In response to an editorial in Brown’s student newspaper from a Jewish student who said “I am a Jew. Linda Sarsour is anti-Semitic. You cannot tell me that I’m ‘taking her statements out of context’ or ‘that’s not what she really meant’ — what Sarsour said has hurt me,” Bienstock said “the claims against Sarsour represented the ‘weaponization of anti-Semitism’ used to ‘attack women of color who have some sort of tangential tie to Louis Farrakhan and who support the rights of Palestinians.’”

Bienstock also signed a March 2019 open letter titled: “We Stand with Ilhan,” which was co-signed by anti-Israel activist Rebecca Vilkomerson of JVP and BDS activist Ilan Pappé.


The letter Bienstock signed said that “When asked to clarify who is paying members of Congress “to be pro-Israel,” Omar replied: ‘AIPAC!’” 

Supporting BDS

In a November 17, 2019 article for the Brown Daily Herald, titled: “Understanding BDS beyond the headlines,” Bienstock compared the boycott of Israel to that of the “anti-apartheid movement targeting South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.” 

Bienstock stated: “Israel must recognize the right of Palestinian refugees — and their descendants — to return to their homeland, from which they were violently expelled.”

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.

Bienstock also wrote: “Brown Students for Justice in Palestine and Brown Jewish Voice for Peace are proud to be hosting a panel for community members to learn about the BDS movement beyond the headlines...We want to start a genuine discussion about BDS and explain why we’re proud to support it.”

Bienstock claimed “Critics of BDS rarely actually deny Israel’s oppression of 
Palestinians and the state’s violations of the Palestinians’ human rights...defenders of Israel’s racist policies attempt to shift the conversation away from the country and toward BDS.”

Bienstock reportedly told The Brown Daily Herald that the panel was not related to Brown Divest, which campaigned to pass a student referendum

Bienstock claimed: “The broader BDS movement is somewhat ancillary to the very specific demands that Divest is making on non-Israeli companies.”

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.

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 values.”

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.”

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.