Farid Abdel-Nour

Overview

Farid Abdel-Nour has promoted anti-Israel activity on campus and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

He is a professor of Political Science at San Diego State University (SDSU).

Promoting Anti-Israel Activism on Campus

On November 15, 2017, Abdel-Nour reportedly co-moderateda lecture on the Balfour Declaration which “undermined the contemporary Zionist movement and did not provide a balanced history of the development of a Jewish nation.” 

In March 2017, Abdel-Nour conducted a lecture at SDSU, as part of Palestinian Solidarity Month, organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). 

During his lecture, titled “Introduction to Palestine,” Abdel-Nour reportedly statedthat “Solidarity with the Palestinian people is a plea to dismantle an ideology and a system of domination oppression, a sense of superiority, that’s what solidarity with the Palestinian people is.”

In 2016, Abdel-Nour signed a letter expressing support for anti-Israel activists on campus. 

The letter, addressed to former President of San Diego State University (SDSU) Elliot Hirshman, condemned him for not expressing support for students who had advocated for BDS on campus.

The letter slammed President Hirshman for not expressly supporting “students from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA),” who had faced “charges of ‘Jew-hatred’ and of being linked to ‘terrorists.’”

The letter also expressed support for students who, in response to Hirshman’s lack of support for SJP, had staged a “protest that involved dozens of students surrounding President Elliot Hirshman and preventing him from leaving campus for about two hours.”

According to a report, “he was followed by some students…The university president was escorted by a campus police officer who walked him to a police car to drive him to his own vehicle. Several students surrounded the vehicle once Hirshman stepped inside.”

In January 2009, Abdel-Nour appeared on a panel at a “Teach-In” organized by SDSU to discuss Israel and Gaza, where he reportedly “said that Israel has been waging continuous violence against the people of Gaza, ‘an insidious violence that kills more slowly [than outright military force] and destroys entire generations’.” 

Supporting BDS

Abdel-Nour signed a January 25, 2017 letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of an 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.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in cooperation with Palestine Legal (PL), and civil rights attorney Alan Levine sued Fordham on behalf of four students in April 2017. A New York court annulled Fordham’s decision in August 2019, mandating that the university recognize SJP as an official club. 
 
Fordham appealed the ruling to the NY State Supreme Court Appellate Division in January 2020. On July 24, 2020, Fordham SJP students filed a brief asking the appellate court to deny Fordham’s appeal of the lower court’s decision.
 
As of October 2020, a variety of groups, not directly involved in the case, filed amicus briefs with the Appellate Division for the court's consideration including JVP. 

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.

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.