George Kadifa
Overview
George Kadifa co-authored and co-sponsored an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement resolution at the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 2013.He was acting in his capacity as a student senator of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC).
As of August 2018, Kadifa’s LinkedIn page said he was a law student at New York University (NYU), slated to graduate in 2018. He graduated UC Berkeley in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in Political Economy.
Also as of August 2018, Kalifa’s LinkedIn lists him as a facilitator at Think Unlimited, at Jordan’s Amman Governorate. He taught courses in social entrepreneurship to Jordanian university students at the American University of Madaba and Zarqa University from August 2014 to June 2015.
BDS Campus Activity
In 2013, Kadifa co-authored and co-sponsored SB-160, a BDS resolution calling on UC Berkeley to divest from “companies that have an active role in materially aiding Israel’s illegal occupation and the resulting human rights abuses.”The resolution passed on April 18, 2013, by an 11-9 vote.
The Berkeley Political Review reported that Kadifa stonewalled all attempts to amend the bill made to better account for the entirely absent Jewish narrative in the bill. Although the appeals acquiesced to the final resolution to divest, Kadifa reportedly asserted that such additions “diverged from [the bill’s] original intent.”
In an April 23, 2013 interview with The Bay Guardian, Kadifa urged student governments on other campuses to follow Berkeley’s lead with similar divestment bills.
On May 26, 2013, the ASUC Judicial Council ruled that SB-160’s clauses requiring the ASUC to divest from companies affiliated with the Israeli military were unconstitutional, since the ASUC had no constitutional power to craft specific investment policies.
Following SB-160’s veto by ASUC’s Judicial Council, Kadifa reportedly penned an open letter claiming that a fellow student senator was “bought” by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Kadifa also attacked “AIPAC and its minions”, writing: “what your arguments lacked in honesty they made up for in creativity. Hopefully that political skill could be better used someplace else."
Kadifa thanked the other ASUC senators who supported the BDS resolution — and admitted none of the companies targeted for divestment were actually held by the ASUC.
He concluded his letter by declaring: “Next stop the Regents.”
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/1224761150
- Status:
- Student
- University:
- New-York,
- more...
- California-Berkeley
- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
Photos & Screenshots
