As'ad Abukhalil

Overview

As’ad Abukhalil has pushed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, called for violence against Israel and demonized Zionists. He has also idolized the founder of a terrorist organization and supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Abukhalil maintains a blog, The Angry Arab News Service.

As of March 2020, Abukhalil was reportedly a professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus.

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

On March 8, 2020, during the international Coronavirus outbreak, Abukhalil tweeted: “Israel will—I am sure—have different medical procedures for Jews and non-Jews.Non-Jews will be put in mass prisons.”

On January, 24, 2012, during a lecture at Edinburgh University in Scotland, Abukhalil said that Israel is a state “based on war crimes and massacres…How can I recognize a racist state?” Abukhalil went on to claim that Zionists wanted to “Kill Palestinians and take their place.”

On February 23, 2010, in a televised debate aired on Al-Jazeera TV Abukhalil stated that former U.S. President Barack Obama "has given free rein to the Zionist lobby to do whatever it likes, both in terms of foreign policy and domestic policy."

In the same interview, Abukhalil claimed: “The Zionists want to muzzle us, so that we won't oppose the wars, violence, or hatred of Israel.”

Calling for Violence Against Israel

On May 11, 2013, Abukhalil said that BDS should extend itself to boycotting the “Palestinian Authority and its embassies around the world.” He also said the boycott should include “All Arab regimes,” whom he accused of betraying the Palestinians.

Abukhalil stressed that BDS should strive for the “full liberation of all Palestine, the return of all refugees and the removal of every vestige of Zionism from Palestine.”

Abukhalil went on to say that “BDS is part of a larger resistance movement, and it is not a peaceful alternative.”

In the same speech, Abukhalil argued that violent resistance whether by communist, secular Lebanese or the Lebanon-based Islamist terrorist organization Hezbollah was more effective and desirable than negotiations and peace deals with Israel.

In the same address, Abukhalil whitewashed and lauded Palestinian Arab massacres of Jews as “violent resistance” against Jews in British Mandate Palestine prior to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

Abukhalil concluded by accusing Israel and Zionist organizations throughout the world of a “cheap, grotesque exploitation of the Holocaust for political purposes,” and condemned support for Israel as one of the “dogmas of Zionism” that “penetrated the minds of Europeans.”

In his final words he added — “As mighty as Israel is today, it will undoubtedly serve as a mere footnote in the long span of the history of the Middle East.”

Demonizing Zionists

On October 16, 2014, Abukhalil claimed that the use of the word “colonization” at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to describe the Zionist purchase of land in Palestine for the Jewish people was because Zionists were part of a “climate” of Europeans who believed in “White Supremacy.”

In 2010, during a Q & A session after a lecture at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) on “Israeli Apartheid,” Abukhalil claimed that in 1948, Arab governments were “puppets of Zionism and Britain,” and that they “certainly have facilitated the Israeli conquest against the Palestinians.”

In another lecture in 2012, titled “The Case Against Israel,” Abukhalil alleged that “from the very beginning” Zionist leaders married “racism and mass violence” in dealing with the Palestinians. He also labeled Zionists as the “first pioneers of terrorism.”

In a 2010 UMass lecture Q & A session, Abukhalil likened the reluctant meetings Zionist leaders held with Nazis to the meetings Palestinian leader, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al Hussein, willfully conductedwith Hitler. Husseini met with Hitler to encourage Hitler’s ethnic cleansing of Jews, via murder or deportation.

On December 10, 2015, Abukhalil tweeted — “Trump and Netanyahu: Trump and Netanyahu are different in the same way that Hitler was different from Goebbels.”

Idolizing the Founder of a Terrorist Organization

In 2012, Abukhalil told an audience that one of his greatest inspirations was Palestinian terrorist George Habash.

George Habash, who has been called“the godfather of Middle East terrorism,” founded the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1970, Habash was the mastermind behind the hijacking of four Western airliners known as the Dawson Field hijackings. In 1972, the PFLP collaborated with Japanese Red Army terrorists to massacre 24 people at Israel's Lod International Airport (renamed Ben Gurion International Airport).

Habash, who has been called "the godfather of Middle East terrorism," was the founder of the terrorist organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

In 1970, Habash was the mastermind behind the hijackings of four Western airliners over the United States, Europe, the Far East and the Persian Gulf. In 1972, Japanese Red Army terrorists working with the PFLP massacred 24 people at Israel's Lod International Airport (now called Ben Gurion International Airport).

Abukhalil said he knew Habash personally and was “honored to have known that man.”

Support for BDS

In April 2013, Abukhalil declared that the “real goal” of BDS should be to “end the existence of Israel.”

In a February 17, 2012 article slamming Professor Norman Finkelstein — who critiqued BDS for concealing this goal —Abukhalil wrote: “the real aim of BDS is to bring down the state of Israel. Here, I agree with [Finkelstein]...That should be stated as an unambiguous goal.”

However, on June 22, 2014, Abukhalil denied saying what he wrote in his February 17, 2012 article. On his blog, Abukhalil wrote: “PS And for the umpteenth time, I never said that the real aim of BDS is to tend [sic.] the existence of Israel, I said that it should be that. I wish it is the case but it is not. BDS has not officially endorsed that aim of ending Zionism in Palestine.”

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.