Dina Al-Kassim

Overview

Dina Al-Kassim is a professor who spread anti-Semitism and denied the Hamas terrorist war crimes of October 7, 2023, during Israel’s war against Hamas in late 2023.

Al-Kassim wrote her statements after Hamas terror atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023. The attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Al-Kassim has also expressed support for terrorists, spread hatred of Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism. Al-Kassim is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of July 2023, Al-Kassim was listed as an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She was also listed as a Wall Associate at the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at UBC.

Al-Kassim received a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 1997.

In 2015, Al-Kassim was affiliated [p. 1] with anti-Israel organizations Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and Palestine Legal.

As of July 2023, Al-Kassim’s Academia.edu profile said she was located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. However, as of the same date, her UBC faculty profile page said she “divides her time between Vancouver and Los Angeles.”

As of July 2023, Al-Kassim used the handle “@din26” on Twitter.

Spreading Anti-Semitism and Denying Hamas War Crimes

On November 27, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “That's my point ‘Israel says’. After the relentless lies from beheaded babies to mass rapes -- refuted by the US state dept and questioned by Israeli feminist groups -- why so credulous about these numbers? You simply don't know.”

Denial of the Hamas war crimes of October 7, 2023, among anti-Israel activists has been likened to Holocaust denial among neo-Nazis.

Hamas terrorists murdered at least 40 Israeli Jewish babies during its October 7, 2023, terror attacks. Some of the babies were beheaded and some were murdered in front of their parents.

On November 20, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “No one is safe with a Zionist dr.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

Also on November 20, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “No evidence of rape. Israel has admitted it fired on its own. Most of the dead are soldiers. Facts.”

On November 18, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Harvesting more organs?” Her tweet included a Quds News Network article about the evacuation of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Accusations against Israel stealing or harvesting organs have been revived over the years, echoing old anti-Semitic blood libels against Jews.

On October 11, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Rape is a tool of occupation not resistance”.

In the tweet, Al-Kassim linked an article titled: “Tear feminism out of the hands of the colonizer: Our statement debunking the claims of mass rape used to siphon off support from the Palestinian resistance.”

Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence.

Hamas War Crimes of October 7, 2023

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation. Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

As of November 10, 2023, over 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.

As of December 25, 2023, Hamas had fired over 10,600 missiles from Gaza at Israeli communities, with Hamas claiming 5,000 the day it launched the attack. While Hamas was the main group involved, members of other terror groups also joined in the atrocities.

Many Palestinian civilians, including women and children, also participated in the attack. In several instances, Gazans who worked in the targeted Israeli communities gave intelligence to Hamas on where to strike.

In a December 2023 poll, 57% of Gazans and 82% of Palestinians in the West Bank supported the terror attacks. 42% of Gazans were supportive of Hamas rule, up from 38% before the attacks, and 44% in the West Bank supported Hamas, up from 12%.

Hamas began by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and using motorized paragliders “to infiltrate Israeli territory and secure terrain.” Terrorist ground forces destroyed parts of the border fence with Gaza, murdering and kidnapping soldiers.

Terrorists then turned their attention to 22 communities around Gaza, where they went house to house to savagely murder, mutilate and kidnap anyone they found. They executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.

Terrorists beheaded children and babies, and massacred entire families, burning some alive who hid in their homes. Hamas terrorists kicked around the heads of beheaded victims like soccer balls. Israelis between the ages of three and 85 were kidnapped and taken forcibly to Gaza. Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross access to the hostages.

Over 360 unarmed young men and women were surrounded and slaughtered at one music festival alone. Bodies were publicly desecrated, with some dragged through the streets of Gaza, then beheaded.

Women were raped next to the bodies of dead friends. Some were raped and then shot in the head. Others, including young girls, were raped and murdered or mutilated in other ways. Israeli officials opened an unprecedented investigation into the widespread sexual assault. Forensic analysis of corpses showed evidence of torture and rape.

Hamas terrorists said they were given explicit orders to carry out the atrocities, including chopping off legs and raping the corpses of murdered victims.

Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.

The atrocities were acknowledged as the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, including by U.S. President Joe Biden, who also compared Hamas to ISIS. Hamas attacked on the annual holiday of Simchat Torah, which that year was on Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath.

The Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians are crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

The mass murder generated great sympathy for Israel from many countries but led to countless celebrations among Palestinians and anti-Israel organizations in America that back the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Hamas called the October 7, 2023 terror attacks “Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.

Support for Terrorists

On November 6, 2022, Al-Kassim tweeted: “RIP Fatima Barnawi, founder of Palestinian Women’s Police and veteran prisoner, dies at 83.”

Fatima Bernawi [Fatima Mohammed Bernawi] was a terrorist with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). She was responsible for a 1967 attempted bombing of a crowded Jerusalem movie theater. Bernawi was sentenced to life in prison but was released after 10 years.

On October 24, 2014, Al-Kassim signed a petition written and signed by “feminist scholars” in support of convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

Odeh was a key military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a PFLP supermarket bombing that killed two college students. She also attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem. Odeh later moved to the United States but was deported to Jordan in 2017 for immigration fraud.

Hatred of Israel

On May 23, 2023, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Every 3 days Israelis kill a Palestinian child.”

On June 17, 2022, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Oxford students condemn israel ethnic cleansing…”

On March 15, 2022, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Ongoing. IDF [Israel Defense Forces] kill for sport.” She was referring to Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist operative Nader Haitham Fathi Rayan, who was killed during an arrest raid.

On October 26, 2021, Al-Kassim tweeted: “Quebec’s CISO [Centre International de Solidarité Ouvrière], a 60+ coalition of unions and civil society groups, unanimously endorsed BDS and calls on the Canadian government to designate Israel an apartheid state.”

CISO describes itself as “an inter-union organization for international solidarity.” Its “Union and partner organizations in Palestine” include the BDS National Committee (BNC) and Al-Haq, which Israel declared a terror organization.

On June 14, 2020, Al-Kassim tweeted that playing the Israeli national anthem was an expression of “appreciation for a violent colonial settler state where members of the Minneapolis police had been trained.”

The accusation that Israeli law enforcement teaches American police brutal tactics during police exchange programs is used to demonize Israel. Participants in these programs have stated [00:02:14] that the training in Israel focuses [00:13:36] on public policy, counter-terrorism and leadership training in the form of lectures and discussions.

On September 8, 2019, Al-Kassim wrote a tweet accusing American actress Scarlett Johansson of “pinkwashing for Israel.”

“Pinkwashing” is a claim that Israel advocates manipulate the LGBTQ community in order to garner support for Israel.

On October 22-23, 2015, Al-Kassim participated in a conference titled: “Palestine, Israel and the Assault on Academic Freedom.” The conference was co-sponsored [p. 1] by the SJP chapter at the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), as well as JVP, AMP, PYM and Palestine Legal.

At the conference, Al-Kassim featured on a panel titled [p. 3]: “‘Taboo Words’: Israel, Apartheid and Settler Colonialism.”

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

Al-Kassim signed an August 19, 2014 petition authored by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), titled: “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven 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.

Al-Kassim signed an August 6, 2014 petition calling for the academic boycott of Israel.

Al-Kassim signed a December 23, 2012 petition titled: “Palestinians in Solidarity with Idle No More and Indigenous Rights,” which accused Israel of “settler colonialism, occupation…apartheid…[and] genocide.”

Al-Kassim signed a February 2, 2009 petition calling for an academic boycott of and divestment from Israel. The petition claimed Israel implemented a “longtime racist jurisprudence against its indigenous Palestinian population, during which the Israeli state has systematically dispossessed, starved, tortured, and economically exploited the Palestinian people.”

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.