Elsa Auerbach
Overview
Elsa Auerbach has whitewashed Hamas-led riots as “non-violent protest” and has expressed support Hamas-affiliated anti-Israel activist Imad Ahmad Barghouthi.Auerbach is a member of the Steering Committee of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Boston, where she focuses on “fundraising, We Divest work, and organizational planning.”
She is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and advocated for the inclusion of discredited propaganda in college textbook.
Auerbach has also demonized Israel and has expressed support for convicted terrorist, Rasmea Odeh.
She has also defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita
Auerbach has also demonized Israel and has expressed support for convicted terrorist, Rasmea Odeh.
She has also defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita
Auerbach is a professor emerita of English at the University of Massachusetts, Boston(UMB).
Whitewashing Hamas Violence
In a Facebook post published on March 31, 2018, Auerbach demonized Israel’s defense against Hamas border incursions under the cover of mass protests.She wrote: “Let’s call it what is was: a Passover massacre. The unarmed protestors were marching peacefully to demand rights guaranteed by international law. When this peaceful demonstration was announced, Israeli officials threatened to respond with lethal force.”
Auerbach went on to write: “Is this what Passover has come to mean? Murder of those seeking liberation? As the child of Jewish refugees from Hitler, I mourn the loss of Palestinian lives and I mourn the loss of Jewish values.”
The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel.
Media reports confirmed [00:00:20] the March of Return protesters’ breaches and attempted breaches of Israel’s border fence, some by armed Palestinians. One Hamas leader declared [00:00:30]: “We will take down the border [with Israel] and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.” March Participants declared their intention to harm Jews across the border and march leadership encouraged the violence, under the pretext of “peaceful resistance.”
Supporting Imad Ahmad Barghouthi
Auerbach signed an open letter, co-published by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and USACBI to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on behalf of Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi.The letter called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu “to order the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody.”
Al-Quds University Astrophysics Professor Imad Barghouthi was sentenced to seven months in prison for incitement of violence.
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.
Supporting BDS
In January 2018, Auerbach signed a petition published by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) that condemned efforts opposing the American Studies Association’s (ASA) endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.Signatories of the letter characterized the anti-BDS activity as a “harassment campaign” accused opponents of BDS of conducting a “McCarthyist media blitz.” The petition also and went on to paint opposition tactics as “unscrupulous actions that support practices of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and white supremacy, McCarthyism, Islamophobia, and racism in the US” that “find their counterpart in the actions of Donald Trump and the ‘alt right’.”
On July 21, 2017, Auerbach co-authored an article for the anti-Israel publication, Mondoweiss, slamming a piece of anti-BDS legislation (H1685/S1689) proposed in Massachusetts.
The authors alleged that the bill was “an unconstitutional violation of free speech and a suppression of anti-racist struggles for justice” and contended that “this bill – and all the other stealth bills like it across the country – are part and parcel of a colonial project and Israeli policies, to displace and disappear Palestine and Palestinians.”
In February 2018, it was reported that the Joint State Administration and Regulatory Oversight (SARO) committee sent the anti-boycott bill to study, rather than releasing it for a full vote of the legislature, effectively ending its chances of passage during that legislative session.
In an article chronicling the vote, Auerbach was quoted claiming the bill was defeated “after the legislators understood that the framing of the bill was deceptive and posed a threat to the constitutionally protected right to free speech.”
Auerbach signed the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel’s (PACBI) “Statement in Support of Academic Boycott of Israel” published on March 14, 2014. The statement argued that “The academic boycott movement is rooted in the idea that, as institutions, Israeli universities—almost all of them state institutions—are demonstrably complicit with egregious violations of Palestinian human rights.”
Auerbach signed an open letter, authored by anti-Israel activists Judith Butler and Rashid Khalidi and published on March 5, 2014, “Condemning Censorship of Israel Critics.” Signatories of the letter called upon “cultural and educational institutions to have the courage and the principle to stand for, and safeguard” BDS activism.
In 2014, Students for A Free Palestine Oberlin College (Oberlin) circulated a petition calling upon the university act on a resolution endorsed by the Oberlin’s Student Senate demanding divestment from six companies that allegedly profited from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
Auerbach wrote a comment on the petition page’s website, stating: “As an Oberlin alum and the daughter of Jewish refugees from Hitler, I call on the Oberlin administration to divest from the assets of any and all companies that profit from the occupation. Oberlin's long-standing social justice commitment demands nothing less.”
On December 13, 2013, Auerbach signed a letter, published by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, congratulating the American Studies Association (ASA) on its endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.
Signatories of the petition wrote that “Israeli academia has never been a catalyst for change; it is at the core of Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies... We must refuse support for all institutions that downplay, whitewash, or contribute to Israel’s criminal actions against Palestinians.”
Auerbach signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama, published on January 12, 2009.
The letter, published by the USACBI, accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and concluded that “Israel too maintains an apartheid regime.”
After charging Israel with inflicting “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times,” the signatories called upon Obama to join in the BDS movement.
Enabling anti-Zionism on Campus
Auerbach signed a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and published on January 25, 2017, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham.Fordham reportedly blocked the formation of a Fordham SJP chapter “based on the reported behavior of other [SJP] chapters on other campuses,” indicating that “the establishment of a local branch could be ‘polarizing’ and pose a safety concern to students and faculty.”
Signatories demanded that Fordham “immediately rescind the rejection of SJP as a student group on campus, apologize to the students affected by this harmful decision, and reaffirm Fordham’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom.”
The petitioners also specifically highlighted SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing SJP’s efforts to promote anti-Israel boycott as part of “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression.” The petition accused Fordham’s administration of a “fundamental misunderstanding of what boycotts are, the purpose of a university, and the goals of SJP.”
In April 2016, Auerbach signed an open letter to McGraw-Hill Education calling upon the publisher to reverse its decision to withdraw and destroy textbooks that had because of a series of maps featured in the book.
The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.
The letter went on to state that “it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.”
Demonizing Israel
In a Mondoweiss article published on May 18, 2018, Auerbach reported about a May 15 event in Boston, titled “Remembering and Resisting: 70 Years of Ongoing Ethnic Cleansing in Palestine.” Auerbach said participants gathered “to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophic Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and to protest Israel’s massacre of Gazans participating in the Great March of Return.”On December 26, 2016, Auerbach published an article in which she claimed “No, Israel didn’t make endless efforts to secure peace. It used the illusion of a peace process to cover for its endless construction of new settlements and seizure of Palestinian homes and land.”
Auerbach went on to conclude that “What we need is not a phony ‘peace’ process but rather a justice process — one that holds Israel accountable for its aggression.”
In August 2014, Auerbach also signed a petition of “Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide” published by the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN).
The petitioners condemned Elie Wiesel for an ad he wrote comparing Hamas to the Nazis and condemning the group’s use of as children as human shields.
Throughout the summer of 2014 — during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — Hamas's deployment of human shields was extensively documented and publicized. Hamas encouraged Gazans to act as human shields to frustrate Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Auerbach signed a petition, published on January 30, 2003, which stated that “With an average of more than $10 million dollars per day of American tax dollars going to Israel, we believe Americans cannot remain silent while crimes as abhorrent as ethnic cleansing are being openly advocated.”
In July 2014, Auerbach signed a petition alleging that “Gaza was an open air prison” and that the Israeli air force had been “bombing both military and civilians targets almost indiscriminately.”
The petition went on to charge that “the deprivation of the rights of the Palestinian people has been an organic aspect of the Zionist project, which has been supported by the Western imperial powers since 1917,” and to endorse the BDS movement as a “potent tool to hold Israel accountable.”
The petition was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which Israel commenced in July of 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Supporting Rasmea Odeh
Auerbach signed a petition, authored by the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website and published on October 24, 2014, expressing support for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.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.
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.
On February 26, 2016, Odeh’s immigration fraud case was sent back to the district court, to examine whether trauma-related repressed memories contributed to Odeh’s failure to disclose her prior conviction.
On March 23, 2017, Odeh accepted a plea deal where she would be initially deported to Jordan and lose her U.S. citizenship in exchange for avoiding jail time.
Defending Steven Salaita
Auerbach signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement 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.
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.
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 value.”
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.”
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.
