Michael Lynk

Lynk is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In July 2023, Lynk was a member of Faculty for Palestine (F4P), which is part of the broader Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid.As of the same date, Lynk was a non-resident fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN).

In March 2023, Lynk was affiliated with Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) and was listed as a member of FOSNA’s “Patrons and Advisory Board” in 2016. Lynk has also been affiliated with the anti-Israel groups Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) Canada since 2018.

Lynk was an associate professor at the Faculty of Law, Western University, in London, Ontario (UWO) from 1999 to 2022. As of July 2023, Lynk has been a member of the Law For Palestine board of trustees since October 2022. Lynk reportedly graduated with a master’s of law at Queen’s University (Queens) in 2001.

In January 2023, Lynk co-authored “Protecting Human Rights in Occupied Palestine: Working Through the United Nations” (Clarity Press, Jan 14, 2023) with anti-Israel professors Richard Falk and John Dugard.

In May 2022, Lynk accepted the Order of the Star of Jerusalem award from Palestine Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas.

As of July 2023, Lynk’s LinkedIn profile said he lived in London, Ontario, Canada.

In 1996, Lynk served as the “Secretary Treasurer” of the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations where he lobbied to restrict Canada’s free trade agreement with Israel. Lynk reportedly [p.11] failed to disclose his affiliation before his appointment.

Support for Terrorists

On April 26, 2022, Lynk tweeted: “Israel has imprisoned a World Vision aid worker from Gaza for almost 6 years on charges of funding terrorism. External audits have found no wrongdoing. His trial has breached due process standards. Say his name: Mohammad el-Halabi.”

In June 2016, the Israeli military reportedly arrested Mohammed El-Halabi, the director of operations in Gaza for World Vision, “a global Christian humanitarian organization.” El-Hababi was accused of funneling large amounts of money designated for humanitarian relief to the Hamas terror organization, reportedly for buying weapons and building attack tunnels.

El-Hababi reportedly began his affiliation with Hamas as a “fighter” in 2014 but Hamas later assigned El-Hababi “to infiltrate World Vision to be an undercover Hamas operative assisting the group.” On June 15, 2022, El-Halabi was convicted on terror financing charges and sentenced to twelve years in Israeli prison.

On April 25, 2022, Lynk tweeted: “I join 11 other UN human rights experts today to request the international community to support the 6 Palestinian organizations under attack by the Israeli government. Defend the defenders.”


Lynk shared a UN press release which he contributed to as a voluntary member of the Human Rights Council’s “independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms.”

The Council called upon the international community to: “Publicly conclude that Israel has not substantiated its allegations against the six organisations; Resume, continue and even increase its financial and political support for the work of these six organisations…”

Hatred of Israel

On July 21, 2023, Lynk published an article in DAWN “Settlements Are the Engine of Israel’s ‘Forever Occupation’ and a War Crime.”

In the article, Lynk referred to his July 2021 report to the Human Rights Council in July 2021 in which he concluded that the settlements "are the engine of this forever occupation, and amount to a war crime."

On May 16, 2023, Lynk tweeted: “Honoured to contribute to a roundtable on the Nabka, organized by DAWN, with leading thinkers from Palestine, Israel and beyond. The Nakba is not just an historical event, but an ongoing injustice.”

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.

Lynk tweet contained a link to a DAWN article titled: “Denying the Nakba, 75 Years Later: A Democracy in Exile Roundtable” which quoted him as saying: “The decision of the fledging United Nations in November 1947—through U.N. General Assembly resolution 181(II)—to partition Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states, against the fervent wishes of its majority indigenous population, laid the groundwork for the Nakba the following year.”

On February 1, 2013, Lynk wrote an article on the anti-Israel website Mondoweiss, Lynk wrote that “the path forward for Palestinian leadership is clear — take Israel to the International Criminal Court.”

Lynk argued that a “victory at the International Criminal Court would isolate Israel, require the West to acknowledge the force of its own laws,” and “re-establish the importance of universal values.”

On June 22, 2022, Lynk published an article in DAWN titled: “Calling Israeli Apartheid What It Is” in which he referred to reports by anti-Israel organizations Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International (AI) when he wrote: “In my March 2022 report to the Human Rights Council, I followed the path of these human rights organizations in adopting the legal definition of apartheid…”

In February 2022, Amnesty International released a 280-page report titled: “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.” The report vilified Israeli military action and policy. It briefly mentioned rocket fire from Gaza, but failed to mention suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings or any other form of terrorism as the reasons behind Israel’s security measures.

In a May 1, 2022 PRC webinar, Lynk said [00:44:58]: “In 2018 was the Great March of Return where thousands of almost entirely unarmed Palestinians would march towards the fence…separating Gaza …from Israel and Israel employed hundreds of Israeli army snipers, over 200 palestinians were shot dead almost all of them unarmed…”

Throughout 2018, Hamas organized and funded the “March of Return” riots where tens of thousands of Palestinians approached the Israel-Gaza border, attempting to breach Israel’s security fence. They sent explosive devices into Israel, shot firearms and threw projectiles at Israeli soldiers, necessitating the use of live fire in response. One Hamas leader declared [00:00:30]: “We will take down the border and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.” The riots intended to highlight the “right of return,” a Palestinian demand long discredited as a way to destroy Israel.

On March 21, 2022, a month before the end of his mandate at the UN, Lynk published his twelfth and final report to the UN Human Rights Council in which he concluded [p.17]: “the political system of entrenched rule… satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid.”

Lynk wrote [p.10]: “The past 70 years has taught us that a covetous alien power has two choices: either to abandon the fever-dream of settler-colonialism and recognize the freedom of the indigenous people, or instead to double-down with increasingly more sophisticated and harsher methods of population control as the inevitable consequence of entrenching permanent alien rule over a people profoundly opposed to their disenfranchisement and destitution.”

Lynk concluded [p.18]: “56. This is apartheid. It does not have some of the same features as practised in southern Africa…With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.”

On July 11, 2019, Lynk was quoted in an Al Jazeera article titled: “UN official devises blueprint for Israeli accountability,” with the subheading: “A UN investigator [Lynk] says the world should consider cutting ties with Israel in support of Palestinian quest for statehood.”

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

On March 16, 2023, Lynk was a featured speaker at a “Lecture on Palestine & Apartheid” co-hosted by the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) at the University of Toronto (UofT) as part of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is presented as “an international series of events that seek to raise awareness of…Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people” and build support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On February 27, 2023, Lynk tweeted that he was part of a delegation hosted by the anti-Israel Trade Union Congress (TUC) in London from January 31 to February 2, 2023.

During his presentation to trade unionists and government officials, Lynk reportedly “shared demands put forward by the New Democratic Party (NDP) with respect to Canada’s policy and practice on Israel and Palestine” including “ending all trade and economic cooperation with the illegal settlements” and “suspending the bilateral trade of all arms” with Israel.

Lynk reportedly also called for the “Realisation of the Palestinian right to self-determination” and “Recognition that Israel is a bad-faith occupier” as a precursor to peace talks with the Palestinians.

On May 11, 2022, Lynk featured in a live-stream webinar with Nasim Ahmed, senior researcher at the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), an organization that reportedly has significant ties to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and Hamas and has regularly hosted Hamas leaders at its annual conferences, including Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

On December 1, 2020, Lynk featured in a video promoted by Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) as part of Virtual Lobby Day for Palestine. In the video, Lynk accused [00:03:56] Israel of attempting “to devour the land meant for a Palestinian state” and called [00:04:53] on the Canadian government to enforce a boycott against Israel.

Lynk also called [00:05:13] “for the imposing of travel bans on Israeli settlement leaders and for the supporting of the UNHRC’s [BDS] database as an ongoing living tool.”

On January 31, 2019, Lynk spoke at an event co-hosted by Solidarity for Human Rights (SPHR) chapter at McMaster University (McMaster) and a number of anti-Israel organizations including the Hamilton chapters of Canadian for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and IJV Canada.

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

In 2017, Lynk met with PRC members in London, including PRC’s executive director, Tarek Hamoud, PRC’s general director, who reportedly celebrated the Hamas kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in June 2014.

Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers from a bus stop on June 12, 2014. The abducted boys were murdered by their captors, and their bodies were found buried in Palestinian-controlled territory on June 30, 2014.

On May 25, 2017, Lynk participated in an event titled: “Accountability and Human Rights at 50 years of Occupation” co-hosted by Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP). MAP has reportedly worked with groups linked to PFLP.

Lynk reportedly worked for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) has been accused of hiring militants and providing armsto Hamas terrorists. Hamas rockets have been found in UNRWA schools on numerous occasions.
 
In 2015, the U.S. Congress found that "[t]he curriculum of UNRWA schools, which use the textbooks of their respective host governments or authorities, has long contained materials that are anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and supportive of violent extremism.” 
 
UNRWA school teachers have reportedly carried terrorist acts while working at UNRWA and frequently posted anti-Semitic cartoons and texts.  

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/michael.lynk.08

Facebook 2:https://www.facebook.com/michael.lynk.009

Twitter:https://twitter.com/MichaelLynk5

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-lynk-420a5765

Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lynk

University Website:http://law.uwo.ca/about_us/our_people/faculty/michael_lynk.html