Christopher Stone

Overview

Christopher Stone has supported a convicted murderer of two students on social media. He has also advocated for the release of an academic who called upon students at a Palestinian university to design weapons to kill "Zionist soldiers in their bedrooms."

Stone’s Twitter feed is replete with demonization of Israel, as well as condemnations of "liberal Zionism." Stone uses his Twitter account to promote the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has referred to BDS as the “[d]efining political issue of our time” and encouraged his Twitter followers to donate money to their cause.

Stone is a member of CUNY4Palestine, a self-described "diverse group of students, faculty, staff, and community members at CUNY that organize around the BDS movement and build solidarity for Palestine." Stone has also endorsed the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Stone has attended events held by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and frequently tweets support for the group.

On November 6, 2015, Stone advertised an employment opportunity at Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP ) to his Twitter followers.

On June 1, 2013, Stone became director of Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) — established in 1967 to offer intensive advanced Arabic language training at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. Under Stone’s directorship CASA will be administered from The Graduate Center, CUNY, through 2018.

Stone is an associate professor of Arabic and Head of the Arabic Program at Hunter College (Hunter) and an affiliate of the Master’s Program in Middle Eastern Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center (CUNY GC).

Demonizing Israel

On January 7, 2017, Stone tweeted: "‘Zionists (and US govt) constitute the biggest threat to Free Speech in US: Fordham Bans #SJP’ #BDS".

On April 3, 2017, Stone tweeted that Israel is "arguably worse” than apartheid South Africa.

On January 22, 2015, Stone tweeted: “Don't go to Israel, New York City Council members” alongside a picture of protesters holding a sign with the words “Don’t Tour Apartheid Israel.”

On January 12, 2015, Stone tweeted: “ ‘Israel moves quickly to exploit Paris attacks.” Stone’s posted his tweet the same day a terrorist killed three people at Brussel Belgium’s Jewish Museum — and shortly after Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to attend a solidarity march, following the the Charlie Hedbo attacks in Paris, which included the murder of four people at a Jewish grocery store.

On December 5, 2015, Stone spoke on an SJP Hunter panel titled "What does Palestine have to do with a Liberated CUNY?" The event description promised to explain the connection between “Ever increasing tuition, heightened admissions standards, hyper-militarization, and investments into mass incarceration” and “the Palestinian struggle.”

The prior month, on November 12, 2015, demonstrators at CUNY had blamed university tuition hikes on "Zionists" and chanted on repeated occasions, the mantras: “Zionists out of CUNY!” “Long live the Intifada,” “F**k Zionists” and “There is only one solution; Intifada, Revolution!” SJP CUNYhad previously released a statement blaming the “Zionist administration” for CUNY tuition hikes.

On December 10, 2015, Stone tweeted: "#CUNY must divest from the private prison industry & its links to [Israeli] occupation! #StopTheRepressionCUNY #Liber8CUNY".

On October 23, 2015 — after United States cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” purportedly stolen by Israel — Stone tweeted: “MSNBC apologizes for showing truths about Palestine.”

In a December 2008 letter to the New York Times, Stone accused Israel of "state terrorism."

Depicting A Terrorist As A Victim

On October 5, 2015, Stone tweeted an article titled "Video of 18-year-old Palestinian chased by Jewish mob and killed by police shocks global audience." The article linked to a video titled, “Israeli police kill Fadi Alloun in cold blood.”

Fadi Aloon was shot by Israeli security forces after he stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy. Several hours before the attack, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page.

Propagating Anti-Semitic Incitement

On November 11, 2014, Stone retweeted a tweet that claimed a Jewish group was fundraising to “destroy Al-Aqsa mosque.”

The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been a traditional pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before the existence of the modern Jewish state.

The New York Times reported that the belief in "threats of a Jewish takeover of Al Aqsa" contributed to the November 18, 2014 Har Nof Massacre, where two terrorists used a gun, axes and butcher knife to murder a Druze security guard and four rabbis during morning prayers, in a Jerusalem synagogue. Also in November 2014, a music video promoted widely over Palestinian social media advocated running over Israelis for the glory of Al-Aqsa. The song’s lyrics urged: “Run [them] over, destroy, annihilate, blow them up; ‎Don’t let the Zionist live long. O Al-Aqsa, we’re your defenders‎ …”

Such propaganda also served as the excuse for an upsurge in Palestinian violence that flared in the fall of 2015 and incited Palestinians to attempt mass casualty attacks on Israeli civilians in July of 2016.

Supporting A Militant Professor

In 2016, Stone was a signatory to a letter campaign demanding the release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, an astrophysics professor at Jerusalem’s Al-Quds University (Al-Quds). Barghouti had been arrested by Israeli security forces for incitement.

Palestinian Astrophysicist Professor Imad Barghouthi of Al Quds University was sentenced in 2016 to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.

Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas's military wing — the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.

An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, [00:00:33] urging students to design precision guided missiles, and sniper rifles as [00:01:11] “weapons ofthe resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.

The letter Stone signed called for Barghouthi’s release in accordance with “Article 26 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Israel is a signatory, [which] grants all people the right to education.”

Supporting Terrorist Rasmea Odeh

On a number of occasions,Stone has tweeted support for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

On November 14, 2014, Stone attended a rally in support of Odeh and, several days later, tweeted: “Rasmea Odeh: guilty for resistance.”

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

Defending Hate Speech

Stone has tweeted support for anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita. In 2014, Stone tweeted that his followers should write to U of I’s chancellor and Board of Trustees in support of Salaita.

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

Pushing Academic BDS

During the annual 2014 conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Stone was one of the signatories of a resolution that defended "the right of scholarly associations to boycott Israel" and called on MESA to “provide platforms for a sustained discussion of the academic boycott and foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for MESA to assume.” MESA is considered the most important association of Middle East Studies.

In 2016, Stone signed a letter calling on the PEN American Center (PEN) to reject sponsorship from the Israeli government and to adopt BDS.

In 2014, Stone signed a letter calling on "scholars and librarians within Middle East studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions." The letter pledged "not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

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.

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”