Hannah Mermelstein

Overview

Hannah Mermelstein [Hannah L. Mermelstein] has spread hatred of Israel as an activist in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In 2013, Mermelstein was reportedly a “leader” in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and was deported from Israel for “altering road signs to read ‘Palestine.’”

Mermelstein was an organizer for Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (Adalah-NY) in 2015. Adalah-NY merged with New York Campaign for the Boycott of Israel (NYCBI) in 2010.

In 2003, Mermelstein co-founded the anti-Israel organization Birthright Unplugge d. In 2014, Mermelstein stated [00:09:02] that the goal of Birthright Unplugged “was always to counter this idea that Jewish people have a birthright to Palestinian land.”

In 2009, Marmelstein was an activist with the Palestine Education Project (PEP).

In 2013, Mermelstein founded an anti-Israel organization, Librarians and Archivists to Palestine (LAP). In 2014, the group changed its name to Librarians and Archivists with Palestine (LAP). LAP describes itself as “a network of self-defined librarians, archivists, and information workers in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.”

As of May 1, 2023, Mermelstein was a Lower School Librarian at Germantown Friends School (GFS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.Mermelstein was a School Librarian at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights, New York, from 2010 to 2021.

As of May 2023, Mermelstein was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

As of the same date, Mermelstein used the handle “@HannahMerm” on Twitter.

Hatred of Israel

On August 16, 2014, Mermelstein featured [00:03:18] as a speaker at an anti-Israel event, where she accused [00:03:27] Israel of “massacres” and [00:03:44] “genocide” during Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge (OPE)” against Hamas in Gaza.

Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

On January 19, 2014, Mermelstein was featured [00:12:07] as a speaker in “The Voice of Palestine” podcast, where she said [00:12:56] that “Israel is an apartheid state” and referred [00:14:09] to Israel’s security barrier as “the apartheid wall.”

Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

In the same talk, Mermelstein accused [00:01:42] Israel of “brutal actions towards Palestinian people during the second intifada.”

The second intifada took place from 2000 to 2005 where Palestinian terrorists carried out over 130 suicide bombings, murdering over 1,000 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Terrorists targeted city buses, shopping centers, dance clubs and cafes. Palestinian leadership encouraged children to carry out “martyrdom” operations against Israel.

On August 5, 2013, Mermelstein wrote an article in Mondoweiss, in which she accused Israel of “settler-colonialism,” the “ongoing Judaization of Palestinian communities” and “forcible land grabs” and “egregious violence.”

In the same article, Mermelstein claimed that the “erasure of Palestinian culture and history [by Israel] is a tactic of war and occupation, a means to further limit the self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

In 2011, Mermelstein published an article titled: “Overdue Books: Returning Palestine’s ‘Abandoned Property’ of 1948,” in which she discussed [p. 47] “Palestine’s looted books in the larger political contexts of Zionism.”

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.

Mermelstein opened her study by claiming [pp. 46-47] that the goal of “the Zionist movement” has been “the disappearance of the Palestinian people” and continued to make a comparison with “other cases of looted cultural property during times of war and occupation, namely that of Jewish property looted by Nazis.”

In the same article, Mermelstein went on [pp. 47-48] to implicate Israel in the “discrimination against Palestinian people,” “cultural genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” She further accused [p. 62] Israel of “ongoing Nakba that continues through simultaneous processes of occupation, colonization, and apartheid.”

The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.

On November 11, 2010, Mermelstein featured as a speaker on a BDS panel, where she said [00:03:58]: “When you talk about a Jewish state in the land where the vast majority of indigenous population is not Jewish, that requires anti-democratic practices and requires ongoing oppression. And that’s what we’ve seen for decades.”

One way anti-Israel activists spread anti-Semitism is by denying [00:17:45] Jewish history, with the aim of delegitimizing restored Jewish sovereignty, attacking Israel’s legitimacy and portraying Jews as foreign to the Land of Israel.

On April 17, 2006, Mermelstein published an article in the Electronic Intifada, where she claimed: “AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] pushes the US government to support Israeli policies which result in the brutal oppression of Palestinian people and denial of their internationally recognized human rights.”

The stated mission of AIPAC is to “strengthen, protect and promote the U.S.-Israel relationship in ways that enhance the security of the United States and Israel.”

In the same article, Mermelstein also wrote: “JCRC [Jewish Community Relations Council], while claiming to speak for all Jews, invests enormous time and energy suppressing any voice of opposition to Israeli policies, especially Jewish voices.”

Mermelstein also quoted herself in the same article as saying: “Our generation has had enough of AIPAC’s and JCRC’s complicity in Israel’s human rights abuses of Palestinians.”

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.