Overview
In June of 2016, Simpson
attended a “fact-finding” mission in Israel and co-authored a
report about the trip. The stated
purpose of the trip was to “advocate for a boycott resolution by the MLA.”
Promoting BDS
He has also signed a
statement arguing that a boycott of Israeli settlements is insufficient because Israel must be boycotted entirely.
In his statement, Simpson admitted that he
attended a MLA “fact-finding” mission in Israel “as a committed supporter of the BDS campaign, so yes, I was predisposed to feel judgmental.”
He then claimed that there is “no significant freedom for Palestinians, either in Israel or in the West Bank.”
Simpson also accused Israel of arresting and detaining students at Palestinian universities “to preempt the emergence of a culture of civic participation among the student population.”
At the 2017 meeting, MLA’s delegate council
rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support
Resolution 2017-1 (2017-1), which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.
In June of 2017, the MLA
adopted 2017-1 by a 2-1 margin following a full membership vote. Simpson then signed a
statement condemning the MLA’s adoption of the anti-BDS resolution, which it characterized as “support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”
Pro-BDS Israel Trip
In June of 2016, Simpson participated in an MLA “fact-finding” mission in Israel alongside anti-Israel activists Rebecca Comay and David Lloyd.
According to a Facebook
post by the
Hamas-dominated
Birzeit University, where the delegation held a meeting, the “six-member visit to Palestine was made as part of attempts to advocate for a boycott resolution by the MLA that will be proposed next winter.”
Following the trip, Simpson
co-authored “A Report by MLA Members on Higher Education in Palestine,” which contextualized data through an ideologically anti-Israel position.
The report
misrepresented a number of facts, alleging that Palestinian citizens of Israel “are citizens but not ‘nationals’,” that “all university entrance exams are taken in Hebrew” and that financial aid is unavailable to Arab Palestinians.
Defending BDS
On January 30, 2014, Simpson
signed a statement titled “Opposing the Opposition to the Boycott,” which was published in the UC Davis school newspaper.
The statement expressed “profound disagreement with the Chancellor’s and Provost’s published opposition” to the American Studies Association (ASA)’s adoption of a
resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel at the 2013 ASA Conference.
Simpson has also
signed a May 9, 2010 letter admonishing Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh for accepting “the Dan David prize, administered by Tel Aviv University and to be awarded by the President of Israel.”
The letter recommended that Ghosh “consider the reasons why South Asians should take a principled stand, along with others, in refusing to legitimize a state guilty of war crimes and illegal occupation and instead joining the growing movement for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel.”
The letter accused Israel of practicing “apartheid” and stated that “[w]e are disturbed by your apparent belief that engaging in an academic boycott is somehow a violation of academic freedom.”
The letter also implied that Ghosh fears “the might of the Israel lobby in the U.S.” and is therefore afraid to adopt BDS.
Supporting Steven Salaita
In 2014, Simpson signed a
petition demanding Professor
Steven Salaita’s reinstatement at the University of Illinois (U of I) and calling for a boycott of U of I until it complied with the petition’s demands.
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.
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
