Elizabeth Dean

Overview

Elizabeth Dean has demonized Israel as an activist within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at UT Austin, where she was also a member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC). PSC is an alternative name for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In November 2015, Dean was reported by UT Austin’s student newspaper to be a senior at UT Austin, studying Linguistics.

As of January 2019, Dean’s Facebook page said she was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since August 12, 2018.

BDS Campus Activism

In April 2015, Dean was involved in “educating the public on BDS” and promoting a UT Divestment resolution sponsored by PSC at UT Austin.

The resolution called on the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO) to divest itself of holdings in companies that “facilitate in the oppression of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel.”

The divestment measure failed to pass in an 11-23-1 vote. During the failed campaign for the UT divestment resolution, in March 2015, Dean provided a running commentary on her Twitter feed.

On November 9, 2015, Dean wrote an article, titled “Palestinians deserve liberation, justice by any means necessary” in the UT Austin student newspaper. In her article, Dean lamented the failure of the April 2015 divestment vote and endorsed violent intifada - quoting from an Electronic Intifada article titled “How obsession with ‘nonviolence’ harms the Palestinian cause.”

In November 2015, Dean co-authored an article with PSC member Seth Uzman, titled “Expanding the debate on BDS”. In the article, the authors claimed that the “divestment fight on our own campus of UT-Austin was enormously important in building our organization, in politicizing the issue on campus, and recruiting new members.”

The authors also stressed that BDS is a “tactic” and warned against divestment becoming “an end in and of itself, rather than a tool to dismantle the state of Israel.”

The authors also claimed that the three demands of BDS are “necessary, but insufficient conditions for the liberation of Palestine from a Zionist settler-colonial regime.”

PSC

The PSC is an alternative name for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In November 2015, PSC posted a call to protest a talk by U.S. Navy veteran Admiral William McRaven, a UT Austin graduate,who led the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. PSC accused UT Austin of hosting "a swarm of US intelligence and military officials on campus" who would “recruit students to a life of crime.”

Also, in November 2015, while Palestinian radicals were carrying out daily stabbings throughout Israel, PSC posted a Facebook event entitled "Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising: Call to Action!" The post expressed the PSC’s support for the violence, stating “ Long “Live the Resistance! Long Live the Intifada!” The Intifadas involve a bloody series of “uprisings” which have variously featured the murder of Israeli civilians via shooting, stabbing, suicide bombing, rock-throwing, rocket fire and car ramming.

In March 2015, PSC organized a protest opposite an Israel Block Party held by Texas Hillel and Texans for Israel celebrating the cultural achievements of the Jewish State. PSC members constructed an "Apartheid Wall" and chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” —a genocidal call for Israel’s elimination.

In October 2014, 15 PSC members disrupted a talk on the creation of ISIS given by Major Gen. Meir Dagan, a former head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. Soon after the talk began, a row of 15 PSC members stood up and began yelling. The group then left, but not before one member declared that anyone who stayed to listen to what Dagan had to say was complicit in the deaths of Palestinians.

PSC - Supporting Intifada

In November 2015, while Palestinian terrorists were carrying out daily stabbings throughout Israel, PSC posted a Facebook event entitled “Solidarity with the Palestinian Uprising: Call to Action!”

The post expressed the PSC’s support for the violence, stating: “Long live the resistance! Long live the intifada!”

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.

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.