Sim Kern
Overview
Kern is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In July 2021, Kern tweeted about attending the first meeting of a new Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapter in Houston. Another Twitter user indicated that Kern helped found the chapter.
As of July 2021, Kern’s Twitter bio said Kern was a “Climate fiction writer” and “journalist.” As of the same date, Kern’s LinkedIn page said Kern was a writer based in Houston, Texas.
Kern’s LinkedIn page also said Kern graduated from Oberlin College (Oberlin) with a bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing in 2007, and graduated from the University of Houston (U of H) with a master’s degree in Education in 2016.
Trivializing Anti-Semitism
Kern retweeted a May 26, 2021 tweet during Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW), that said: “When you hear zionists claim there’s ‘surging antisemitism’ right now, please know that this is what the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] pretends is antisemitic.”In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.
Kern retweeted a May 25, 2021 tweet that said: “It looks like the conversation has shifted from focusing on Israel’s atrocities and war crimes to one on antisemitism. It’s a classic deflection tactic. The struggle for Palestinian liberation is anticolonial & anti-racist. Keep your eyes on Israeli settler colonialism and racism.”
On May 23, 2021, Kern tweeted: “Of all the behaviors disgusting me today, it’s the disingenuous pearl-clutching of certain white Jews who are conflating anti-apartheid protests with antisemitism. Y’all are not my kin.”
Kern retweeted a May 19, 2021 tweet that said: “i’m tired of white people posting more about being ‘careful of being antisemitic’ and ‘criticizing the israeli gov. and not people’ rn than the genocide in gaza and ongoing ethnic cleansing. do you not realize that even when we’re being massacred you center white jews’ feelings?”
Hatred of Israel
In the video, Kern said [00:00:03]: “Because some of my fellow Jewish leftists have really been disappointing me. Because you’re hanging on to this premise the Jews need their own theocratic ethno state. No, no one gets a theocratic ethno state… and I get why you think this, because we are fed this from birth and ritually reminded of it every year as part of our religion. That we have suffered so much and that we need a homeland, but it’s just ahistorical…”
For more information on the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas. The atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians included mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. The attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
Kern retweeted a June 2, 2021 tweet that said: “Wondering how Americans feel about #Israel asking for an additional urgent $1B in aid after the $735M weapon deal & nearly $4B annually in military aid. Your taxes are killing children in #Gaza instead of building & strengthening your country, are U ok with that? #FreePalestine.”
On May 15, 2021, Israel carried out a targeted bombing of a high-rise building in Gaza that was used as a base for Hamas operations. Hamas was reportedly developing technology inside the building that would block Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system, which is designed to intercept and destroy rockets and artillery shells.
Massive Palestinian rocket attacks have strained the Iron Dome, forcing Israel to request additional urgent financial aid from the U.S.
Kern retweeted a May 19, 2021 tweet that said: “...The same Zionist militias that massacred us 73 years ago are terrorizing us today. Zionism is death. Zionism is theft.”
On May 18, 2021, Kern tweeted, accusing Israel of “settler colonialism.”
Kern retweeted a June 27, 2021 tweet that said: “13 Palestinian families in the Bustan neighborhood in Silwan, #Jerusalem are reaching the deadline Israeli settlers issued to them to demolish their own homes and spaces. And if they don’t, #Israel will demolish them and the families the fee costs. This is ethnic cleansing.”
Ilhan Omar was elected to the U.S. Congress in 2018. In February 2019, top Congressional leaders denounced Omar for tweeting anti-Semitic remarks.
On May 15, 2021, Kern tweeted: “...It’s truly all American Jews’ moral responsibility to denounce Israeli apartheid & colonization.”
On the same day, Kern tweeted: “The point is genocide. They don’t care about it ‘working.’ The Israeli military wants Palestinian people not to exist. That’s pretty clear by now. And they’re severing electricity and media across all of Palestine right now so they can commit more war crimes in the dark.”
On the same day, Kern tweeted: “Today is the 73 anniversary of the Nakba, when Israeli forces massacred Palestinians, stole land, & made them refugees in their own country. Right now Israeli forces are mass-murdering their descendants with US taxpayer money...”
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.
Kern retweeted a May 15, 2021 tweet that said: “...ISRAEL IS A TERRORIST STATE. ANYONE SILENT ABOUT IT IS COMPLICIT. EVERY DIPLOMAT ENJOYING AN EXPENSIVE APARTMENT IN SHEIKH JARRAH WHILE BEING SILENT ABOUT THIS FASCISM CAN SUCK MY D**K.”
On May 14, 2021, Kern tweeted: “Every journalist and editor using passive voice to describe the atrocities committed AGAINST Palestinians BY Israeli forces, using ‘dislocation’ and ‘clashes’ and ‘conflict’—the blood of genocide stains your hands. For shame. Absolutely disgusted by all the mainstream coverage.”
On May 12, 2021, Kern tweeted: “And I know, we’ve got family members who might disown us for publicly speaking out against Israel, but the alternative is having no spine, letting your moral integrity rot, and staying silent in the face of genocide. I mean, your pick.”
On February 21, 2021, Kern tweeted: “As a leftist Jew, I say it with my whole heart: Israel is an Apartheid State.”
Hatred of America
On July 6, 2021, Kern tweeted: “I’m against all imperialist powers occupying indigenous land including Israel and the US.”Kern retweeted a May 17, 2021 tweet that said: “Joe Biden and the American government are facilitating crimes against humanity.”
Kern retweeted a May 16, 2021 tweet that said: “The USA has been Israel’s strongest ally partly because of shared values — European settler colonialism and racial apartheid.”
On June 22, 2020, Kern tweeted: “My generation of white people was conditioned since birth to be ‘race-blind’ and never voice the inner racial anxieties and biases that are a non-stop interior monologue when you move through the systemically white-supremacist apartheid nation that is the USA.”
Anti-Israel Activism
On July 6, 2021, Kern tweeted: “Y’all, some very amazing students at my alma mater, University of Houston, are fighting back against efforts to ban student participation in BDS and organizing in support of a free Palestine. Take a sec and sign to help out these young organizers?”On July 5, 2021, Kern tweeted: “Tonight, I’m attending the first ever meeting for a Houston chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. All the respect to @bordes_suaves for organizing our chapter! #tikkunolam #FreePalestine #SaveSilwan #SaveSheikhJarrah.”
On May 15, 2021, Kern tweeted: “One way is to call your representative and use this call script to urge them to support legislation that would condition aid to Israel, so we don’t keep sending them billions for war crimes.”
On May 14, 2021, Kern tweeted: “I know ‘calling your reps’ often feels futile in the US, where most issues are partisanly set-in-stone, but if your rep is a dem, please call them to stand with Palestine & condemn Israel’s genocide this week. The moral horror & hypocrisy is glaring. Then get in the streets.”
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.
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.”
Social Media and Weblinks
Personal website: https://simkern.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simone.kern.31 [Private]
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/sim_bookstagrams_badly/
Twitter:https://twitter.com/sim_kern
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sim-kern-04bb40157/
Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_GKrR9P-1KNi0B-0MrP6pA
Photos & Screenshots
