Overview
Ahmad Dallal was a
member of “The Georgetown Faculty for Gaza,” from which he
espoused anti-Israel views at Georgetown University (Georgetown).
Dallal
accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and
suggested that American support for Israel was a motivating factor behind the September 11, 2001 terror attacks against the United States.
Dallal is an
associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies and chair of the Arabic and Islamic Studies Department at Georgetown.
In June of 2017, Dallal was
appointed dean of Georgetown University in Qatar.
In
June 2021, Dallal was
named President of the American University in Cairo (AUC) and was slated to commence his appointment on October 15, 2021.
Anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel Activism on Campus
The group organized controversial events on campus, which were reportedly designed to disseminate “a lot of unnecessary anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli sentiment.”
Dallal also
co-authored an article on January 23, 3009, on behalf of the organization, characterizing Operation Cast Lead as a “massacre of innocent Palestinian civilians.”
The authors charged that “Israel imposed a stringent blockade on the territory, forcing the inhabitants to live on the edge of starvation and effectively turning Gaza into a large concentration camp.”
In 2008, controversy
erupted at Georgetown in response to an Arabic textbook which reportedly espoused anti-Western and anti-Israel views.
As chair of the university’s Arabic department, Dallal responded to the controversy by defending the textbook and stating that he couldn't “possibly imagine what anyone would object to in this book” adding that it was “by far the best book in the field.”
Support for BDS
In his previous position as provost of American University in Beirut (AUB), Dallal
penned a letter reaffirming AUB’s commitment to boycotting Israeli institutions and scholars.
Dallal’s letter came in response to a controversy that erupted between several AUB professors, after one professor co-authored a book with two Israeli scholars.
On July 2, 2006, Dallal
signed a petition denouncing the
2006 Lebanon War as an act of “Israeli aggression… motivated by both historical ambitions vis-à-vis Lebanese territory and waters and by a racist supremacist ideology.”
The petition also called for the Lebanese government and intellectuals around the world to join the BDS movement.
The petition called upon the Lebanese government to “take a stand against all kinds of normalization with Israel, by closing down the Israeli embassies and government offices located in Arab countries, and by boycotting products of Israeli and pro-Israeli companies, whatever their nationality.”
The petition then extended this call to action to “pressure the American and European governments to halt their military and material maintenance of the Zionist killing machine.”
On August 6, 2014, Dallal
signed a petition of Middle East scholars and librarians, calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
The petition accused Israel of carrying out an “ongoing siege” and “ongoing massacres” and concluded with a “pledge not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”
Support for Terrorism
On September 23, 2004, Dallal
signed a petition opposing the American State Department’s decision to revoke, under the
Patriot Act, a work visa granted to Islamic Studies Professor
Tariq Ramadan to teach at Notre Dame, based on his connections to known terrorist organizations.
The act denies entry to persons who have used a “position of prominence within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity.”
Ramadan has also made
financial contributions (p. 13) to French charities linked to
Hamas and his visa was
revoked by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) because of a violation of the "ideological exclusion provision" of the US Patriot Act.
Ramadan is the grandson of the founder of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and has been accused “of giving intellectual aide and comfort to terrorist groups.”
Demonizing Israel
On December 18, 2002, Dallal
signed a petition which preemptively
accused Israel of using the U.S. war in Iraq as a pretense to “ethnically cleanse” Palestinians.
In an article titled “Blame America First Again,” Dallal was
quoted blaming the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks largely on America’s support for Israel.
In the article, Dallal stated, “While the September 11 acts were criminal, the grievances that fed and inspired them were real… The list of grievances is long, but it invariably boils down to the... indifference to the loss of Palestinian lives from among a brutalized population reduced to dismal existence by an ever more atrocious occupation.”'
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
