Anna Zalik

Overview

Anna Zalik has demonized Israel, supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and signed a letter that minimized anti-Israel terrorism.

Zalik is an associate professor of Environmental Studies at York University (York).

Demonized Israel 

Zalik signed a February 10, 2016 statement defending a mural on display at York, depicting “a young Palestinian who is looking at an Israeli bulldozer destroying an olive tree and pondering whether to throw the rocks.” The Palestinian in the mural wore a scarf depicting the borders of Israel as the country of Palestine.

In 2009, Zalik signed a petition “rejecting a claim by Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and others that the [York] campus has become a hotbed of antisemitism.”

The petition came in response to numerous incidents and allegations of anti-Semitism at York. Signatories of the letter dismissed concerns of campus anti-Semitism, writing that they “are entirely inaccurate, if not libelous, and amount to nothing but fear-mongering.”

In March 2009, Zalik signed a statement titled “Jewish Canadians Concerned about Suppression of Criticism of Israel,” which sought to protect “those organizing Israel Apartheid Week or supporting an academic boycott of Israel.”

The statement said: “We do not believe that Israel acts in self-defense. Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, receiving $3 million/day... It is crucial that forums for discussion of Israel's accountability to the international community for what many have called war crimes be allowed to proceed unrestricted by specious claims of anti-Semitism.”

Supporting BDS

Zalik signed her name to a letter, published on February 9, 2012, “to congratulate The Daily Pennsylvanian for its coverage of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions conference, the University of Pennsylvania for hosting the conference, and most of all, the organizers of the conference for their courageous and hard work.”

The letter went on to state that “BDS is a tool that — as in the case of the movement against apartheid in South Africa — challenges racial inequality, dispossession, displacement and genocidal violence.”

In March 2011, Zalik signed a Students Against Israeli Apartheid (University of Toronto and York University) Divestment Petition, which called on York and the University of Toronto to divest from companies that do business with Israel. 

Zalik is a member of the group, Faculty for Palestine (F4P), whose stated purpose includes support for BDS and “freedom of expression on Canadian campuses around Palestinian solidarity and Israeli apartheid.”

Zalik signed another F4P petition calling on Universities Canada to cancel an agreement that would foster institutional ties between Canadian and Israeli universities.

Zalik also signed a petition, published by the BDS movement on January 12, 2009, calling upon the Canadian government to sanction Israel. 

Zalik signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama, published on January 12, 2009, which accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and concluded that Israel “maintains an apartheid regime.”

After charging Israel with inflicting “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times,” the signatories called upon Obama to join in the BDS movement. 

Minimizing Terrorism

Zalik signed a July 24, 2014 open letter, sent to members of the Canadian government from individuals who were “profoundly perturbed by the unbalanced and partisan position adopted by the Canadian Government and federal political parties regarding the current violence in Gaza.”

Signatories went on to condemn the Canadian government whose “official statements have focused exclusively on denouncing Hamas’s rocket strikes (responsible for two fatalities) and uncritically proclaiming Israel’s right to self-defence.”

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

Personal Website:http://azalik.apps01.yorku.ca/

University Website:http://fes.yorku.ca/faculty/full-time-faculty/member/?mid=571558

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-zalik-65822966/