Ervand Abrahamian

Overview

Ervand Abrahamian is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and is a distinguished professor emeritus of Iranian and Middle Eastern History and Politics at Baruch College, City University of New York (CUNY). 

Supporting BDS

Abrahamian signed an open letter to United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, dated July 31, 2014, condemning “the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”

The letter exclusively blamed Israel for the Gazan civilian crisis  and called upon the administration “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”

The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE). 

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

Abrahamian also signed an open letter — published on July 12, 2013 — to Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. The letter condemned Makhmalbaf for participating in the Jerusalem International Film Festival and called on him  to join the BDS movement.

Signatories of the letter charged Israel with “the ethnic cleansing of 1948, the occupation of Palestinian lands since 1967, and the current implementation of an apartheid system.”

Abrahamian also signed a petition authored by the Lebanese Campaign for the Boycott of Zionism and published on March 10, 2010.

The petition called upon the International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS) to commit to the academic boycott of Israel and to withdraw its invitation to host a professor from Ariel University.

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

University Website:http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/wsas/academics/history/eabrahamian.htm