Eli Grossman

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. 

Hatred of Israel

On May 8, 2024, the ProvidenceJournal.com reported that Grossman, representing the Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) said, regarding a Brown donor: “We sincerely appreciate [the donor’s] prior generosity in helping make our education at Brown possible, but we are disappointed that [the donor] would choose to leverage his financial influence over our institution to stifle the overwhelming calls from our university community to take a stand against the genocide in Gaza…”

On April 12, 2024, the BrownDailyHerald.com news site published an op-ed by Grossman titled: “...President Paxson, would you have divested from South Africa?” Grossman wrote: “the present administration remains silent on the subject of the ongoing apartheid regime and genocide in Gaza perpetrated by the Israeli state…”

On February 20, 2024, Grossman co-wrote an article for the anti-Israel news site Mondoweiss titled: “Our hunger strike is over but we won’t stop pressuring Brown University to end its complicity with genocide.”

Grossman wrote: “We chose to miss classes, to organize, join rallies…Ours is a movement that will continue to fight for divestment for however long it takes to end our university’s complicity in the bombing, starvation, and ethnic cleansing of 2.3 million Palestinians.”

Anti-Israel Activism (Brown University Encampment)

On April 24, 2024, while Grossman was an activist with Brown Divest Coalition (BDC), Brown students set up an anti-Israel encampment titled “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at the school’s campus in violation of the university’s policy. BDC organized the encampment as part of a wave of protest encampments across North American campuses that started at Columbia University.

At the encampment, anti-Israel activists chanted [00:00:03]: “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!”

The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.

Speakers at the encampment included Mumia Abu-Jamal, who spoke by phone from prison where he is serving a life sentence for the 1981 murder of a police officer. Abu-Jamal said [00:01:33]: “....what we’re dealing with here…is a settler colonial state.” Abu-Jamal concluded [00:04:49]: “...keep doing what you’re doing…fight settler colonialism…”

Encampment protesters wearing black-and-white keffiyehs spoke against Israel standing in front of tents with signs, including one which read [00:00:40]: “END ISRAELI APARTHEID.”

The keffiyeh is a Palestinian headdress traditionally worn by men, which has become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.   

On April 30, 2024, ThePublicsRadio.org reported that: “The main demand from encampment protesters was for the school’s board to vote on a proposal to divest its $6.6 billion endowment from companies they say profit from human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories.”

The encampment ended on April 30, 2024, after a deal was reached between anti-Israel activists and the school administrators that allowed for a vote on divestment to take place in October 2024. Grossman signed the “vote agreement” on behalf of BDC.

On October 9, 2024, Brown University reported that Brown rejected protesters' demands to divest from companies with ties to Israel.

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

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100010414422722

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/eli-grossman-173590176/