Andrew Ross
Overview
Andrew Ross was arrested in December 2024. Ross has spread hatred of Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism.
Ross is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Ross’s activism took place during Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists. Israel launched the war, called called “Swords of Iron,” after a series of Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. The atrocities were executed on October 7, 2023, and left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded.
As of October 2023, Ross served on the advisory board and was a member of the “Organizing Collective” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). In the same month, he said he was part of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), part of USACBI.
Ross is the author of the book “Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel,” published in 2019.
As of October 2023, Ross was listed online as a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University (NYU) in New York, New York.
Arrested December 2024
On December 15, 2024, Ross was featured in an Instagram video, in which he was filmed being arrested outside NYU. During his arrest, Ross was shouting: “Free Palestine! Free Palestine!” while he was being taken into custody by the police.The Instagram post featuring Ross read: “Sociologist Andrew Ross was arrested at New York University while speaking out against Israel and calling for a free Palestine. Ross’s arrest comes amid growing calls to sever ties with the Israeli state.”
Hatred of Israel During a War Against Hamas
On October 25, 2023, following an unprecedented massacre of Israeli Jewish civilians by the terror group Hamas, Ross spoke at an anti-Israel rally on behalf of FJP.In his address, Ross said [00:00:01]: “I’m just gonna say a few words on behalf of Faculty for Justice in Palestine. We formed this group so that students could know that we have your back and whenever you need us we’ll be there…I wanted to say that when the NYU administration speaks about Palestine, the NYU administration only speaks for the NYU administration…Students, staff, faculty are the NYU community. The NYU administration is not a community.”
Ross continued [00:02:06]: “And we’re making this community around the common cause. And that cause is the cause of Palestine.”
Ross then said [00:02:41]: “...colonial war has been going on for 75 years and more. It is not a conflict. It is a colonial war.”
Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)
As of October 2023, Ross served on the advisory board and was a member of the “Organizing Collective” of the USACBI.In 2017, Ross participated in Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).
On February 12, 2016, Ross published an article in response to the death of Srur Abu Srur, who was shot by Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank. In the article, Ross glorified Abu Srur as a “martyr.”
In the article, Ross justified a wave of stabbings carried out by Palestinians, stating: “At the very least, we can say that these clashes and killings are no longer in the realm of ‘weapons of the weak’ (subtle, and barely visible, acts of sabotage that are part of everyday resistance). Significantly, a knife is not a gun, but it is also more than a rock. Active Palestinians may be divided over whether to honor this moment with the label of the Third Intifada, but there is still a general expectation that, as in Yeats’s Bethlehem, something new is about to be born, ‘its hour come round at last.’”
The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.
In October 2015, there was an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” was characterized by young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians. The attacks were incited by Palestinian leaders propagating the libel that Israel intended to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
In the same article, Ross went on to accuse Jewish West Bank residents of greater violence than Palestinian terrorists, stating: “The most grievous killings are at the hands of settlers, who, in response to the recent spate of stabbings by apparently desperate Palestinian youth, feel quite free to use their weapons with impunity.”
Ross’s article chronicled his time in Israel, where he came to make a film called “The Coming Intifada.” The film was screened at an event on September 12, 2015, hosted by NYC Solidarity with Palestine.
In a 2014 article published for the New Labor Forum, Ross advocated for BDS, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and claiming that “Israel’s formal system of legalized discrimination against Palestinian Arabs meets the UN definition of apartheid.” In the same article, Ross described Israel as a “settler colonial” state.
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
Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Ross_(sociologist)University Website:https://as.nyu.edu/faculty/andrew-ross.html
Personal Website:https://andrewtross.com/
