Erin Oakes

Erin Oakes promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at the University of Maryland (UMD), in 2017 and 2019.

 
As of August 2019, Oakes was listed on Facebook as an Admin and Moderator of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) at UMD Facebook group. UMD YDSU was a supporter of the spring 2019 divestment bill at UMD and part of the Divest UMD campaign.

As of August 2019, Oakes’s LinkedIn page said she was a student at UMD, College Park from “2016 - 2018” where she majored in Cultural Anthropology. Her LinkedIn also said that she was an “Associate” in the “Service Sector” since 2009. 

Promoting BDS

On April 24, 2019, Oakes was featured [00:00:52] in a video posted on Facebook by Divest UMD speaking before the UMD Student Government Association (SGA), urging the SGA to pass a BDS bill. The bill was launched by Divest UMD.

Divest UMD is a campaign that calls on UMD to divest from companies that do business with Israel. 

In the video, Oakes said [00:00:52]: “My name is Erin Oakes, I am a senior and Anthropology major and I am here in support of the bill.”

The clip was taken from another video shared on Facebook by the UMD SGA on November 17, 2017, where Oakes was featured [00:53:05] speaking in support of a divestment bill at an SGA meeting.

Oakes said [00:53:14]: “Israel is colonizing Palestine with full impunity. Stealing land by illegally settling on Palestine lands by the hundreds and thousands.”

Oakes continued [00:54:13]: “BDS… is a peaceful solution... to put pressure... on the political heads in Israel.”

On November 20, 2017, UMD’s online student magazine Unwind reported that the UMD SGA Student Affairs Committee voted against the BDS bill in a 1-21 vote.

On April 25, 2019, Divest UMD announced on Facebook that following a UMD student government vote, the BDS bill failed to pass with “a vote of 9 for, 25 against, and 2 abstentions.”

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:www.facebook.com/850179087      

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-o-a8298016a/