Georgette Ioup

Overview

Georgette Ioup is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement who has defended anti-Israel campus activism and demonized Israel.

Ioup is a professor emeritus in the Department of English at the University of New Orleans (UNO). 

Supporting BDS

Ioup signed a petition, published on March 2, 2018, calling upon the Board of the International Association for Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy to revoke their decision to hold their 2019 international conference in Israel. 

In July 2011, Ioup signed a petition, published by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), condemning a piece of anti-BDS legislation that the Israeli government had recently passed.

The petition said that “We, Palestine solidarity and social justice groups based in the United States, reiterate our support and endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. We stand by our friends who will be legally subject to this draconian bill, which seeks to further deligitimize [sic] the non-violent struggle against Israeli apartheid.”

On December 19, 2019, Ioup contributed a comment to a list titled “ALL I WANT OR CHRISTMAS IS AN END TO APARTHEID,” which provided supporters of the BDS movement with a list of Israeli brands to boycott. In her comment, Ioup wrote “Naot shoes needs to be put on the list. They are very popular in the U.S. and few know that they are an Israeli brand.”

Defending Anti-Israel Campus Activism 

Ioup 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. 

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. 

Demonizing Israel

In October 2018, Ioup signed a petition calling for solidarity amongst anti-Israel organizations and activists. The petition said: “As Palestinians are killed, nonviolent activists are jailed and shot, prisoners are tortured, colonial settlements swallow ancestral lands, and American money enables Israeli crimes against humanity, we the undersigned have come together to cry ‘stop.’”

Ioup signed a similar petition calling for anti-Israel solidarity, which alleged that the fractures amongst such organizations were attributable to “well funded opponents who spare no effort to undermine and divide this movement for justice and human rights in Palestine.”

Ioup signed a January 30, 2003 petition which said 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.” 

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.

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