Elyse Crystall

Overview

Elyse Crystall is an anti-Israel activist who has promoted campus anti-Israel activism, supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and demonized Israel.

Crystall has expressed support for anti-Israel activist Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, who is affiliated with Hamas. She has also defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.

Crystall is an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). In 2017, Crystall created a fundraiser page soliciting donations to help fund her trip to JVP’s biannual National Membership Meeting.

Crystall is a board member of Researching the American-Israeli Alliance (RAIA), an organization “dedicated to exposing the connections between American and Israeli state violence.”

It was reported that Crystall also “served as the Executive Director for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions-USA (ICAHD) from 2005-2012 and participated in ICAHD’s summer program in the West Bank in 2006 and 2011.”

As of November 2018, According to ICAHD-USA’s website said it has “six regional centers that together resist Israeli policies and practices on the ground… and continues to support amplify [sic] resistance in Palestine-Israel.”

Crystall is a teaching associate professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC).

Promoting Campus Anti-Israel Activism

Crystall signed a letter, authored by JVP 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. 

In 2016, 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 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.”

Supporting BDS

In 2016, Crystall signed an open letter expressing support for an academic boycott of Israel.

The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
In 2002, Crystall signed a petition demanding US pressure be put on Israel to concede land.

The letter declared that the “international community” must impose a “workable peace” on Israelis and Palestinians who are “unwilling or unable to negotiate a workable peace.”

Crystall also signed her name to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Demonizing Israel

In July 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Crystall 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.”

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.  

In 2009, during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (OCL), Crystall signed a petition titled “Jews say NO: Not in our Name,” signatories of which called for “an immediate end to the massacre of the Palestinian people” and “immediate steps taken to end the Israeli occupation.”

Israel commenced Operation Cast Lead (OCL)in 2008-09 in order to stop Hamas rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians. In 2010, Hamas admitted that nearly 700 of the Palestinian casualties in OCL were combatants.

Crystall signed a 2006 petition titled “Petition for U.S. Jewish/Muslim solidarity,” which claimed: “...Israel was founded through a process of colonization. It is well documented that Israel's founders knew then that their role in this colonizing process would require an ongoing military strategy to continue to ‘cleanse’ the Palestinian population in the name of a ‘Jewish’ state.”

Crystall also 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.”

Supporting Imad Ahmad Barghouthi

Crystall 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 Imad Ahmad Barghouthi.

The letter called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu “to order the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody.”

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.

Defending Steven Salaita

Crystall 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 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.”

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/elyse.crystall

University Website:https://englishcomplit.unc.edu/faculty-directory/elyse-crystall/