Eric Cheyfitz
Overview
Eric Cheyfitz has spread anti-Semitism, defended Hamas terrorists and spread hatred of Israel during a war against Hamas in late 2023 and early 2024.Cheyfitz has promoted pro-Hamas professors, expressed support for violent protesters and dismissed anti-Semitism. He has also demonized Israel, spread hatred of America and engaged in anti-Israel activism.
In 2021, Cheyfitz reportedly helped organize and lead a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) protest at Cornell University (Cornell) in support of anti-Israel violence.
Cheyfitz was a member of Cornell SJP in 2019 and has been affiliated with Cornell SJP since 2012.
As of March 2022, Cheyfitz was the faculty advisor for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at Cornell (JVP Cornell).
As of June 2021, Cheyfitz was a member of JVP and an activist with JVP Ithaca in 2015.
Cheyfitz has represented himself as a founding member of the anti-Israel Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine (CCJP), which officially endorsed Cornell SJP’s divestment campaign in 2019.
Cheyfitz is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of March 2022, Cheyitz was the Ernest I. White Professor of American Studies and Humane Letters at Cornell.
Also as of March 2022, Cheyfitz’s LinkedIn said he received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins) in 1979.
As of the same date, Cheyfitz’s LinkedIn said he was located in Ithaca, New York.
Anti-Semitism
On July 31, 2014, Cheyfitz tweeted: “The terrible ironies of history: Gaza has become an extermination camp, run by Jews.”On May 2, 2017, Cheyfitz co-authored an article with pro-BDS Professor, Mark LeVine, titled: “Israel, Palestine, and the Poetics of Genocide.”
In the article, Cheyfitz and LeVine charged Israel with “deliberately polluting and poisoning of water supplies,” a modern variation of a medieval anti-Semitic blood libel that Jews poison water supplies.
Cheyfitz and LeVine also claimed that the “Chief [Israeli] Army Rabbi...explicitly advocated the rape of ‘gentile women’” and alleged that Israeli officials have publicly “called for rape, mass murder, destruction, and other international crimes against Palestinians.”
On May 7, 2019, Cheyfitz tweeted a quote from Gideon Levy that claimed: “Gaza is a ghetto and what’s happening in the south is a ghetto uprising…”
Also, on May 7, 2019, Cheyfitz tweeted another quote from Gideon Levy that read: “ ‘Anyone who doubts how hollow and destructive the inculcation of the Holocaust is in Israel should look at the responses in Israel to this Gaza Ghetto Uprising..’”
Defending Hamas Terrorists
On November 4, 2023, four weeks after Hamas murdered 1,200 Israeli Jews, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Unlike Al Qaeda or ISIS, Hamas does not advocate universal jihad. It is an Islamic fundamentalist organization, governing Gaza, focused solely on the liberation of Palestine from Zionist fundamentalism (apartheid) and the end of the state of Israel.”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. 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.” As of November 10, 2023, over 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.
On October 10, 2023, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Hamas and the Israeli govt. are mirror images of each other. Hamas represents Islamic fundamentalism; Israel, Zionist fundamentalism. And both target non-combatants: Israel in its continual aggression against the Palestinian people and Hamas in its resistance to that aggression.”
Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence.
In 2014, Cheyfitz published an essay in the Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) Journal titled: “The Force of Exceptionalist Narratives in the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict.”
In his essay, Cheyfitz wrote [p.19]: “Until the U.S. and Israel are willing to listen to and hear the Palestinian narrative, I believe the conflict will continue. This narrative necessarily includes the legitimacy of Hamas based both on its popular victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections and now on its governance of Gaza…”
On September 9, 2014, following Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge (OPE)” against Hamas in Gaza, Cheyfitz published an article for Mondoweiss in which he claimed: “What it is crucial to emphasize at this juncture, in relation to Israeli force, is that it was not Hamas rockets that provoked it.”
Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
On July 28, 2014, Cheyfitz tweeted: “For a cease fire in Gaza: Hamas want an end to the blockade. This is certainly more than reasonable. It's the bottom line of justice.”
The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.
Hatred of Israel during a Hamas War
On February 1, 2024, Cheyfitz tweeted: “‘The condemnation of the killing of civilians and children cannot be addressed through the lens of false equivalency, suggesting all sides are equally guilty in this war’ (Henry Giroux). Hamas’ crimes on Oct. 7 were an event. Israel’s are a structure built in 1948 and maintained.”The modern State of Israel was founded 75 years earlier, in 1948.
On December 11, 2023, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Happy Hanukah!, a Jewish holiday of liberation ironically occurring for the last 75 years as Israel increased its oppression of Palestine, culminating this year with oppression turning to genocide. Let’s support the liberation of Palestine this holiday as thousands of Jews are.”
Hanukah is the Jewish Festival of Lights commemorating the victory of the Jews led by the Maccabees over the Greek Empire in the 2nd century BCE. This resulted in the liberation of Jerusalem and the rededication of the Second Temple.
On October 8, 2023, Cheyfitz tweeted: “The only question here is whether counter violence is a cogent strategy for resisting the overwhelming force of the terrorist state of Israel, when it is the Palestinian public, particularly in Gaza, who pays the price in life and limb for Hamas’ agenda. What is the endgame?”
On the same date, Cheyfitz tweeted: “...Endgame: if it continues to maintain an apartheid regime, Israel is digging a hole for itself from which it will not be able to climb out, having to spend more and more of its human and material resources on repression.”
Defending Pro-Hamas Professors
Cheyfitz signed a November 2023 letter defending a professor at Cornell who showed support for the Hamas terror group the previous month.The November 21, 2023 letter was authored by “Members of Cornell University’s Faculty” and it called on Cornell to take action following “attacks on a faculty member over comments about Israel’s war on Gaza.”
The letter referred to Professor Russell Rickford, who gave a speech on October 15, 2023, praising [00:00:04] Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. Hamas executed the terror attacks on October 7, 2023, and left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
Rickford said [00:01:39]: “It was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing!” He then said [00:01:47] that if Palestinians “weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!”
Rickford made his statements at a rally hosted by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization.
Al Quds University professor Imad Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, and has called [00:02:43] for killing “Zionist soldiers” and being killed in the name of Islam. In 2016, Barghouthi was sentenced to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.
Supporting Violent Protesters
Cheyfitz signed a petition published on May 6, 2018 by the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper, which accused the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of a “massacre of unarmed Palestinian protesters participating in the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip” and charged Israeli government of “a 50-year occupation, and 70-year ethnic cleansing.”Organizing a Protest in Support of Anti-Israel Violence
On May 12, 2021, Cornell SJP promoted on Instagram their upcoming May 15, 2021 “March for Palestine” on Cornell’s Ho Plaza. The event poster featured calls to: “SAVE SHEIKH JARRAH” and “SAVE AL-AQSA.”
The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before the existence of the modern Jewish state. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.
On May 12, 2021, Cornell SJP promoted their upcoming march on Facebook, calling on their followers to “show support for the ongoing rebellion in occupied Palestine against the Zionist occupation” and condemn “Zionism and Israeli state terrorism.”
On May 15, 2021, Cornell SJP demonstrators participated in the group’s march. Protesters displayed a banner that read: “Stand with Palestinian Resistance,” as well as signs that read: “End the Palestinian Holocaust” and “Stop the US Funding of Genocide.”
At the protest, one demonstrator accused [slide 2] Israel of “white supremacy,” as well as [slide 1] “ethnic cleansing” and “violent brutal occupation.” Joseph Mullen, a newly-elected SA member and march organizer, pledged [00:00:50] “to end Cornell’s relationship with Israel.”
On May 16, 2021, Cornell SJP posted photos of their demonstration to Facebook and commented: “Cornell students and Ithaca residents turned out in force today to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid!” Cheyfitz appeared in one of the photos speaking to the protesters. In his speech, he reportedly “drew parallels to the U.S. and its treatment of Indigenous peoples.”
Dismissing Anti-Semitism
On June 9, 2021, in the wake of Israel’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW)” against Hamas in Gaza, Cheyfitz published an opinion article in Mondoweiss titled: “‘Dear Martha’ — a letter to Cornell’s president on her statement on the alleged rise of antisemitism, and failure to mention Israel’s attacks.”In his article, Cheyitz criticized Cornell’s President Martha Pollack’s May 26, 2021 statement highlighting the “alarming national rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes…amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East” and calling for “rigorous discourse and debate devoid of personal invectives and attacks.”
Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. “more than doubled” during OGW and its aftermath, compared to the same time period in 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
Incitement surrounding Al-Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers from May 10 to 21, 2021. In response to rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel launched “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” striking military targets in the terrorist-controlled enclave.
In May 2021, Cheyfitz signed a letter by the Cornell Arab Student Association (Cornell ASA) condemning Cornell President Martha Pollack’s May 26, 2021 statement.
Demonizing Israel
On November 14, 2021, Cheyfitz tweeted: “...It is Israel that is the terrorist organization, projecting its crimes on the defenders of human rights.”On June 9, 2021, Cheyfitz published an opinion article in Mondoweiss, in which he accused Israel of “73 years of apartheid rule” and “racism.”
On May 17, 2021, during OGW, Cheyfitz tweeted: “...This is not a war. It is Israeli state terror targeting all Palestinians, in an operation that Israel provoked.”
On May 16, 2021, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Apartheid Israel is in its death throes. The symptoms: Violence, in its desperation, is all Zionism can offer the world...”
Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.
On June 24, 2020, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Israel...has become a home for the official murder of Palestinians by the Israeli apartheid state.”
On July 7, 2019, Cheyfitz tweeted: “...Israel continues to murder Palestinians with the ultimate goal of complete ethnic cleansing...”
On March 26, 2019, Cheyfitz tweeted: “...Destroying Palestine has become the national pastime” for Israel.
On July 28, 2014, Cheyfitz tweeted that “Jews [were] committing genocide” in Gaza.
Hatred of America
On September 11, 2021, the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, Cheyfitz tweeted, accusing the United States of “a history of violence at home and abroad.”On January 6, 2020, Cheyfitz promoted on Twitter his 2019 book The Disinformation Age: The Collapse of Liberal Democracy in the United States and commented: “...Your [America’s] ‘shining city on the hill’ is the seat of Native genocide, coups against democratically elected governments, torture programs, and a war on terror that is terror itself.”
On December 19, 2020, Cheyfitz tweeted that America was: “...in sum a failed state.”
Anti-Israel Activism (JVP)
As of November 2021, Cheyfitz was listed on the Cornell campus group’s website as the JVP Cornell faculty advisor. He has promoted on Twitter multiple JVP initiatives and JVP-sponsored petitions.On May 14, 2021, during OGW, Cheyfitz promoted on Twitter a CODEPINK campaign titled: “Tell The House Foreign Affairs Committee to STOP Funding Apartheid,” which called on House Foreign Affairs Chair Gregory Meeks to conduct a hearing on ending U.S. military aid to Israel.
On February 19, 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic, Cheyfitz promoted on Twitter a CODEPINK campaign that accused Israel of “vaccine apartheid.”
Supporting BDS
On December 16, 2019, Cheyfitz tweeted: “I am on the Canary Mission ‘hit list’ of professors who support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement (BDS) against Israeli apartheid. I have to say their information is correct: I proudly support BDS, Palestinian Rights, and oppose Israeli settler colonialism.”On March 29, 2019, Cheyfitz promoted on Twitter a BDS initiative at Pitzer College (Pitzer) to suspend the college’s study abroad program with the University of Haifa in Israel.
On March 27, 2019, Cheyfitz posted to his Facebook and Twitter an opinion article promoting Cornell SJP’s BDS campaign. The article was titled: “A Jewish Case For Divestment.”
In the article, the authors said they must “voice our unequivocal opposition to the State of Israel as it exists now.”
On February 18, 2019, Cheyfitz appeared in a Cornell SJP group photo with fellow activists as they delivered a letter to Cornell’s President Martha Pollack calling on the University to “divest from companies profiting from morally reprehensible human rights violations in Palestine.”
In February 2019, Cornell SJP launched an anti-Israel divestment campaign, introducing and pushing S.A. Resolution 36, “Urging Cornell to Divest from Companies Profiting from the Occupation of Palestine and Human Rights Violation.”
Cornell SJP’s resolution called on Cornell to divest from Cornell Tech’s partnership with the Technion. Cornell Tech is Cornell’s technology, business, law and design campus.
Cornell SJP also called on the university to divest from Tata Motors, Ingersoll-Rand, Raytheon, G4S, and Hewlett-Packard and any other companies SJP Cornell claimed “profit directly from Israeli military occupation.”
On January 11, 2018, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Please join me in working peacefully for Palestinian liberation through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. I just donated to the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the Palestinian civil society coalition that leads the #BDS movement...”
On April 18, 2017, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Support the BDS movement: Sign Petition Against MLA Resolution 2017-1!” and included a link to a petition against MLA Resolution 2017-1.
In 2016, Cheyfitz signed an open letter calling for the academic boycott of Israel. The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
On April 11, 2014, Cheyfitz tweeted: “Cornell Student Assembly votes against democratic process, denies SJP a voice” and shared an article from the student newspaper, The Cornell Sun, in which he was quoted as saying: “The fact that the resolution was tabled without discussion only adds insult to injury.”
On April 8, 2014, Cornell SJP proposed Resolution 72, “Urging Cornell University to Divest from Companies Profiting from Israeli Occupation and Human Rights Violations” to Cornell’s Student Assembly (SA) to be voted on at an SA meeting on April 10, 2014. The resolution was introduced shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover.
On April 10, 2014, Cornell’s SA voted [00:02:17] to indefinitely table Resolution 72 with a 15-8-1 vote. Cornell SJP and BDS activists then led [00:00:52] a walkout, shouting expletives [00:00:51].
On February 25, 2014, Cheyfitz reportedly spoke at Cornell to promote a resolution by the American Studies Association (ASA) calling for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.
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.
Social Media and Weblinks
Twitter:https://twitter.com/echeyfitzFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/eric.cheyfitz
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/cheyfitz/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-cheyfitz-75246969/
EverybodyWiki.com:https://en.everybodywiki.com/Eric_Cheyfitz
University Website:https://english.cornell.edu/eric-cheyfitz
_203x172_vmsAJF.jpg "Professor Eric Cheyfitz")
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Cornell
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- JVP,
- more...
- Related Profiles:
- Alec Desbordes,
- Russell Rickford,
- Kat-Yang Stevens,
- Lisa Kahaleole Hall,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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