Beverly Voloshin
Overview
Beverly Voloshin has expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and defended anti-Israel Professor and activist Rabab Abdulhadi.Voloshin is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
Supporting BDS
Voloshin signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, demonizing Israel and calling for an end to foreign aid.The July 31, 2014 letter, addressed to former U.S. President Barack Obama and the American Congress, called “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”
The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which Israel commenced in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
In 2002, Voloshin signed a petition demanding “Israeli evacuation of all settlements in the occupied territories except those within the agreed swapped areas.”
The petition said that signatories called “upon the U.S. Government: to suspend military aid to Israel, which is used to maintain the occupation, until Israel withdraws completely from the occupied territories.”
The petition also called on the U.S. “to reduce economic aid to Israel by the amount spent on maintaining the settlements until all are evacuated” and “to redirect this reduction of economic aid toward reconstructing the devastated infrastructure of Palestine.”
The petition additionally claimed that the “U.S. bears a special responsibility for the current tragic impasse, by virtue of our massive economic and military support for the Israeli government...Our country has an extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy.”
The petition concluded: “As American Jews... we call on our government to make continued aid conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement.”
Defending Rabab Abdulhadi
In 2016, Voloshin signed a letter published by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), defending Abdulhadi to SFSU President Leslie Wong. The letter demanded: “from President Wong and his office to issue a clear and firm statement in support of Prof. Abdulhadi.”She has also spread hatred of Zionists on the SFSU university campus and expressed support for anti-Israel agitators.
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
University Website:https://english.sfsu.edu/people/faculty/beverly-voloshin
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- San-Fransico-State
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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