Gary Pak

Overview

Gary Pak is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and as of March 2020, was a professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawai’i (UH).

Supporting BDS

As of March 2020, Pak was a signatory to a list of endorsers of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). ”

In February 2014, Pak signed an open letter condemning the administration of the University of Hawaii (UH), for expressing its opposition to the American Studies Association’s (ASA) recent endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.

Signatories of the letter, signed by Pak, charged that opponents of the academic boycott of Israel “support academic institutions that participate in the denial of human rights, including the right to education, experienced by Palestinians who, like Native Hawaiians, live under conditions of occupation.”

The letter went on to charge: “our administrators nowhere in their statement acknowledge Palestinian existence, let alone ways Palestinians’ academic and human rights are violated by Israel and with the support from the US of over three billion federal tax dollars a year in direct aid alone.”

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://english.hawaii.edu/faculty/gary-pak/