Amahl Bishara

Overview

Amahl Bishara frequently demonizes Israel in academic research and on her personal social media. She is an associate professor of Anthropology at Tufts University (Tufts) and a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On her Tufts profile page, she states that Israel practices "settler-colonialism" and refers to the second intifada, which included scores of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, as a period of “popular political action.”

Bishara is a member of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and was part of a group that, in 2016, unsuccessfully attempted to push the AAA to boycott Israeli academic institutions. Bishara is a member of the eight-person organizing collective of Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (Anthro Boycott), which was the primary body advocating for the boycott.

Bishara received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from New York University (NYU). She is married to Palestinian activist Nidal Al-Azraq, who is originally from the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem, a location of central relevance to Bishara’s research.

Supporting Terrorists

On January 4, 2014, Bishara supported the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist Ibrahim Al-Aaraj on Facebook. She wrote: "Allah yarhamuhu [May God have mercy on him]." Al-Aaraj — who went by the nom de guerre “Abu Ali” — was the leader of the PFLP’s Abu Ali Al-Aaraj brigades in Aida. He was killed in Aida by Israeli security forces in 2001.

On February 9, 2012, Bishara supported the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militant Khader Adnan in a Facebook post. She included a link to a Washington Post article about Adnan. It has been reported that the PIJ is backed by Iran and has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks.

A 2007 YouTube video shows Adnan praising and encouraging suicide bombings: "Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?"

On October 24, 2014, Bishara signed a petition defending terrorist Rasmea Odeh, titled "Feminist scholars to Obama: End prosecution of Palestinian survivor of sexual torture."

Demonizing Israel in Scholarship

On April 7, 2014, Bishara wrote an article in which she defended Palestinian prisoners and criticized the Israeli military and prison system. Among the prisoners she argued should be released were Nasser Abu Surour and Mahmoud Abu Surour, who she said spent "over two decades in Israeli prisons." She did not mention that both men are serving life sentences for killing an Israeli intelligence officer in 1993.

On December 14, 2014, Bishara referred to all Israeli Jews as "the settler population" (4:26) and said: “The two state solution will not serve Palestinian citizens of Israel. Certainly, not directly because they will continue to be citizens of Israel, right? And, even worse than that, they won’t have equality. It will, in a sense, shore up Israel’s claim that Israel can be a Jewish state and can marginalize the non-Jewish population.”

Bishara also described Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas as "Israel’s vicious attack on Gaza" (13:18). Israel commenced OPEin July 2014 to stop rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

On May 19, 2015, Bishara — in an essay promoting the Anthro Boycott — praised Palestinians for attempting to illegally enter Israel and criticized Israel’s defending itself. She also praised Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, among whom included PIJ militant Khader Adnan, mentioned above.

Bishara wrote: "[Palestinians] challenge international borders with their feet as they did on the Lebanese and Syrian borders on Nakba Day of 2011. Israeli soldiers shot and killed at least 13 protesters on the border that day. They go on hunger strikes in prison."

On October 10, 2016, Bishara wrote a scholarly paper in which she drew on two lone incidents to push the notion that Israel’s road and license plate system is not about security but about enforcing racism against Arabs.

The first incident involved Bishara joining an Arab Israeli citizen and a European who all entered Israel from the West Bank in a car with Israeli license plates. The second incident involved West Bank Palestinians being illegally smuggled into Israel and then returning to the West Bank.

Bishara wrote in her conclusion: "In crossing the Green Line without being stopped, both groups gained the sense that Israel’s security strategies are more effective at perpetuating a logic of separation and racist demonization of Palestinians than at actually preventing Palestinians from the West Bank from entering Israel."

Bishara’s statement was part of an edited version of a longer paper published in the February 2015 edition of American Ethnologist, a publication of the American Ethnological Society.

Vilifying Israel to Promote BDS

On November 12, 2015, Bishara — in an Anthro Boycott blog post co-authored with Fida Adely — wrote of dialogue regarding Israel: "In this way many dialogue initiatives disguise the real issues of settler-colonialism, oppression, and occupation, and act as a kind of marketing tool rebranding the reality of separation and apartheid as a fantasy of ‘coexistence.’"

Bishara and Adely added that Israel has "pernicious policies of ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem and has engaged in the “creation of an open-air prison in Gaza.”

Bishara and Adely claimed that Israelis and Palestinians need to be viewed exclusively through the prism of "colonizer and colonized," a viewpoint that ignores the nuanced history of the conflict and negates the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel They also touted the fact that the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization endorsed their resolution.

Misappropriating Jewish Culture

On January 24, 2016, Bishara participated in an event hosted by the Boston chapter of JVP. The event marked the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat, which marks the Jewish new year for trees and relates to ancient Jewish agricultural laws in the Land of Israel. JVP Boston tweeted a photo of Bishara speaking and the message: "@amahlbishara talks about farming in #Palestine, lack of resources, & water as a weapon #climatechange #tubishvat."

Vilifying Israel on Social Media

On October 5, 2015, Bishara retweeted a tweet from anti-Israel propagandist Ali Abunimah that read: "It seems the apartheid regime is intent on provoking maximum violence with its wave of brutal repression of occupied Palestinian population."

October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of terrorist violence, known variously as the "Knife Intifada" or the “Stabbing Intifada,” was marked by young Palestinians throughout Israel stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.

On November 11, 2015, Bishara posed for a photo with former PLO spokesperson Diana Buttu at another JVP Boston event. Buttu served in the PLO during the second intifada when the PLO — via Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — perpetrated terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

On December 28 and 26, 2016, Bishara retweeted two tweets from Buttu supporting BDS and claiming that Israel practices "apartheid."

On January 19, 2017, Bishara retweeted a tweet quoting Buttu as saying that Israel has "racist policies" and engages in “ethnic cleansing.”

On January 24, 2017 and on October 5, 2016, Bishara retweeted two tweets defending Dareen Tatour, who was placed under house arrest for inciting violence in the fall of 2015 during the Knife Intifada. Tatour supported PIJ and posted on Facebook "I am the next shahid [martyr]" under a picture of attempted-stabber Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed.

Tatour also posted a Youtube video of a woman reading a poem that glorified violence and ethnic cleansing of Jews. The Arabic poem in the video begins: "Resist, my people, resist them. In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows. And carried the soul in my palm. For an Arab Palestine. I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution,’ Never lower my flags Until I evict them from my land." One of the tweets had an image of Tatour and text which read “POETRY IS NOT A CRIME #UNLESSPALESTINIAN.”

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/658245748/

Twitter:https://twitter.com/AmahlBishara

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC60A-qn7fSuE5hd-rrCqY6w

University Website:https://ase.tufts.edu/anthropology/people/bishara.htm