Elijah Ndoumbé

Overview

Elijah Ndoumbé is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and promoted a divestment campaign with Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP) at Stanford University (Stanford) in 2015.

SOOP was formed by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Stanford, reportedly [00:12:50] as a coalition of 19 student groups, with the goal of pressuring Stanford to divest from companies that SOOP claimed: “profit from the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.”

As of July 2020, Ndoumbé’s LinkedIn page said he was a “CULTURAL CONSULTANT / ARTIST / WRITER / DJ,” in Cape Town, South Africa.

Ndoumbé’s LinkedIn page also said that he was a “Content Creator & Intern” at SWEAT in Cape Town, from “Aug 2017 - Present,” was self employed as a DJ from “Sep 2015 - Present” and a “Freelance Photographer” from “Jul 2015 - Present.”

As of the same date, Ndoumbé’s LinkedIn page said he studied African & African American Studies at Stanford, from “2012 - 2017.”

Supporting Divestment at Stanford

Ndoumbé was active in promoting SOOP’s BDS divestment campaign, on campus and social media, in 2015.

Ndoumbé retweeted a January 11, 2015 tweet by SOOP that read: “Please donate to our divestment campaign…” The tweet linked to a GoFundMe fundraising website for SOOP.

SOOP published a BDS resolution available through The Stanford Review on January 27, 2015, that called on the Stanford ASSU Undergraduate Senate to require Stanford to divest from companies SOOP claimed: “violate international humanitarian law by: maintaining the illegal infrastructure of the Israeli occupation…facilitating Israel and Egypt’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians…[and] facilitating state repression against Palestinians.”

On February 9, 2015, Ndoumbé featured [00:03:09] in a video titled: “Stanford Student Groups Support #StanfordDivest,” posted to YouTube on February 9, 2015, as a representative of Stanford’s National Association for Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

In the video, various Stanford student groups expressed [00:03:59] their support for SOOP’s BDS campaign.

That same day, Ndoumbé shared a graphic on Facebook promoting the #STANFORD DIVEST campaign.

On February 10, 2015, Ndoumbé tweeted: “‘Divestment is an act of love - 4 Israelis & Palestinians. We don't have 2 be complicit in the way the world works.’ BAE JLF #StanfordDivest.”

That same day, Ndoumbé featured in a photo shared to Facebook with other SOOP activists on the night before the ASSU Undergraduate Senate was slated to vote on SOOP’s divestment resolution. The post read: “So excited for divestment, we can't sleep...#StanfordDivest.”

The SOOP BDS resolution initially failed [00:00:42] on February 10, 2015, but was later brought forward in a motion calling for a re-vote and passed on February 17, 2015.

On February 17, 2015, Ndoumbé tweeted: “Tonight Stanford Undergraduate Senate passes divestment resolution and stands on the right side of history. So much love”

Later, on April 14, 2015, the Stanford Board of Trustees announced that it would take no action based on the SOOP-initiated BDS Resolution, despite an SJP Stanford request for the Board to do so.

The board said in its statement on the Resolution that the Trustees referred to the board’s “Statement on Investment Responsibility,” focused on “questions of divisiveness and negative impact” and determined that acting on SJP’s request would be “likely to impair the capacity of the University to carry out its educational mission.”

Stanford SJP - Protesting Against a Vigil for Terror Victims

In October 2015, SJP Stanford organized a protest as a “preemptive response” to a vigil scheduled to mourn Israeli civilians and soldiers killed in stabbing and ramming attacks, during the “Knife Intifada,” then occurring in Israel.

SJP Stanford co-president Fatima Zehra was quoted in Stanford’s campus newspaper, saying: “We wanted to do something because we felt that Sunday’s protest was going to be really one-sided.”

October 2015 saw a wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” where young Palestinians throughout Israel were stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians. The upsurge in violence across Israel was incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The attacks were sparked and fueled by Palestinian leaders propagating the libel that Israel intended to desecrate the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

Zehra reportedly considered e-mails advertising the scheduled mourning vigil problematic, because they referred to Israelis who had been murdered as “victims of terror.” Zehra claimed: “There’s implicit racism in that, because it’s like, all Palestinian Arabs are terrorists...”

SJP Stanford - Supporting the “Right To Education” Tour

On November 12, 2014, Stanford SJP hosted an event titled: “Education Under Occupation: A Night With Students From Palestine.” The Facebook event’s description described the event as a “stop of the nationwide Right To Education tour!” at Stanford.

The Right to Education Tour brings Palestinian students from schools such as Birzeit University to U.S. college campuses, where they accuse Israel of obstructing the access of Palestinians to higher education. These students routinely demonize security sweepsby the Israeli military to shut down terror cells. These cells are also linked to Hamas, whose ideology dominates on Palestinian campuses, like Birzeit.

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.

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.