Dennis Kortheuer

Overview

Dennis Kortheuer is an avid supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and a member of the organizing collective of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Kortheuer is a lecturer in the Department of History at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB).

Supporting BDS

Kortheuer is a member of the California Scholars for Academic Freedom (cs4af).

On May 2, 2017, the organization published an open letter, which Kortheuer signed, to the president of California State University, Jane Conoley, condemning her “interference into debates among students on your campus about a resolution to support the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign.”

On March 1, 2016, Kortheuer starred in a short video promoting BDS. The purpose of the video was to oppose two pieces of upcoming anti-BDS legislation proposed in California.

On September 4, 2014, Kortheuer signed an open letter to California Senator Barbara Boxer condemning her support for Israel.

Signatories of the letter called upon the senator to end military aid to Israel and “stop justifying Israel’s use of disproportionate force and killing of innocent civilians because of ‘its right to defend itself,’ which leads only to an escalation of violence.”

On July 22, 2014, Kortheuer signed a petition titled “Jews Say: End the War on Gaza — No Aid to Apartheid Israel!”

The petition charged Israel with “more than a century of Zionist colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleaning, racism, and genocide” and claimed that “Israel uses resistance to such policies as an excuse to terrorize and collectively punish the indigenous population for its very existence.”

On April 29, 2014, Kortheuer signed a petition to “Boycott Israeli Cinema and TV Studies Conference at Tel Aviv University.”

The petition called upon scholars to boycott an upcoming conference at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and provided a link to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

On January 8, 2013, Kortheuer was of the initial signatories of a petition of Jewish activists endorsing BDS and calling for a Palestinian right of return. The petition claimed that “Since 1967, Israel has... occupied and colonized the remainder of historic Palestine” and that “Today, this relentless ethnic cleansing continues.”

In August of 2012, cs4af published an open letter, which Kortheuer signed, to California Assembly Members opposing a piece of anti-BDS legislation.

In the letter, the group argued that BDS, descriptions of Israel as “an apartheid state” and accusations against Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity” do not constitute anti-Semitism and should be protected on campus.

Kortheuer also signed an open letter to California State University (CSU) Chancellor Charles Reed, opposing the reinstatement of a CSU-Israel study abroad program.  

Signatories of the letter argued that “CSU participation with the government of Israel in the proposed study abroad program could be interpreted as an endorsement of the international crime of apartheid.”

On July 3, 2012, Kortheuer signed an open letter, published by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), to the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media Studies (CAAM) Stephen Gong, calling upon him to end the department’s partnership with Israel.

The letter endorsed PACBI and BDS, which it characterized as opposing “cultural programs that are sponsored by the Israeli state and are increasingly used to whitewash Israel’s violations of international human rights and war crimes and to legitimize its illegal occupation and apartheid practices.”

On May 10, 2010, Kortheuer signed a petition urging the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) to disinvite a professor to their 2010 conference because he teaches at Israel’s Ariel University.

On February 15, 2009, Kortheuer signed a petition calling upon science museums to cancel events designed to showcase Israeli scientific achievements.

The petition argued that “In the immediate aftermath of the indiscriminate slaughter and attempted annihilation of all the infrastructure of organised society in Gaza... The museums should cancel these unseemly events.”

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.