Henry Lesnick

Overview

Henry Lesnick has equated Israel to Nazi Germany, supported anti-Zionist activism on campus, demonized Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

Lesnick has also expressed support for Hamas-affiliated anti-Israel activist, Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi. 

As of November 2019, Lesnick was a professor in the Department of Language & Cognition at the City University of New York, Hostos Community College (Hostos). 

Equating Israel to Nazi Germany

Lesnick wrote a comment on a January 20, 2018 article by City News Service published on the NBC Los Angeles website, which discussed actress Scarlett Johansson's refusal to join the BDS movement. 

Lesnick commented: “ … Would she similarly argue that respecting boycotts against apartheid south african corporations should have been avoided because the boycotts would have denied the forced laborers employment? Or that boycotting nazi corporations that utilized forced labor should have been avoided because the boycotts would have denied the forced laborers employment?”


Lesnick went on to accuse Johansson of failing “ to acknowledge that the palestinian workers are forced labor, forced to work for their occupiers by the conditions imposed by the occupiers.” 

Supporting Anti-Zionist Activism on Campus

Lesnick 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

Lesnick signed a letter by JVP, that promoted a 2019 bill introduced to the U.S. Congress by U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum to “promote human rights for Palestinian children living under Israeli military occupation.”

Section seven of the bill proposed authorizing “$19,000,000 each fiscal year” for “monitoring human rights abuses associated with Israel’s detention of Palestinian children.” Eligibility was extended to “any Palestinian age 21 or younger providing documentation of military detention since January 1, 2009.” 

According to the bill, the funds were to be referred to as the “Human Rights Monitoring and Treatment for Palestinian Child Victims of Israeli Military Detention Fund”.

McCollum was a keynote speaker at the 2018 National Conference of US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), where she suggested that then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wished to advance apartheid inside of Israel and to force a massacre of unarmed protesters in Gaza.

Formerly known as the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation, USCPR is a coalition of American-based anti-Israel organizations that lobbies the United States Congress to adopt anti-Israel policies and end government support for Israel.

On October 5, 2015, during [00:00:13] the “Knife Intifada” in Israel, Lesnick commented on an article, published by Electronic Intifada (EI), about Israelis defended [00:00:20] themselves, stating: “where has there been such public display and boasting of racist barbarity? these monsterous zionist mobs rival the gleeful white supremacist celebrants of the weekend lynchings in American town squares.”

In October 2015, there was an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” was characterized by young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians.

The article Lesnick commented on referenced one of the stabbers, Fadi Aloon, and claimed: “Amid increasing violence in occupied Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, Israeli forces executed a Palestinian youth in cold blood early on Sunday morning.”

Fadi Aloon was shot by Israeli security forces after he stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy. Several hours before the attack, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page. 

Lesnick also published an article titled: “How to Understand the Zionist State,” where he wrote: “The practical implementation of this ideological system results in the denial of rights of the 3.5 million indigenous, Palestian people, the seizure of their land and natural resources, their subjection to extreme abuse, and their periodic slaughter.”

In the same article, Lesnick also alleged a “Zionist effort to subvert First Amendment rights on U.S. campuses in an effort to silence criticism of its 50 year policy of Occupation, racist subjugation, and violations of international law,” and claimed that “The Zionist expressions of racist hatred and vile contempt for Palestinian life are grotesque beyond imagination.”     

Lesnick wrote, as well, that the “practical implementation” of Zionism “results in the denial of the rights of the 3.5 million indigenous, Palestinian people, the seizure of their land and natural resources, their subjection to extreme abuse, and their periodic slaughter.”

Supporting BDS

On September 16, 2018, Lesnick tweeted: “For artists, playing the ‘escapist’ Meteor festival in an Israeli kibbutz is like playing Sun City. Israel’s Apartheid is not only worse than South Africa’s, it is intrinsic in its founding ideology and is existent throughout all of its facets.”

On August 25, 2018, Lesnick published a tweet encouraging singer Lana Del Ray to cancel her upcoming trip to Israel and join BDS. Lesnick wrote “Don’t let your music cover up injustice. Cancel your performance at the Meteor Festival in Israel. Stand with us on the right side of history to create a better world for all. #LanaDontGo.”

New Zealand singer Lorde canceled a scheduled concert in Israel due to pressure from BDS activists. JVP tweeted: “#BDS WIN! New Zealand singer Lorde cancels Israel show after BDS pressure…”

Supporting Imad Ahmad Barghouthi

Lesnick signed an open letter, co-published by JVP and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cutural Boycott of Israel to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on behalf of Al-Quds University Astrophysics Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi.

Barghouti 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 of the resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.

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

Barghouthi was sentenced to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.

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

Twitter:https://twitter.com/lesnick_henry?lang=en

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-lesnick-6533b61b/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/henry-lesnick-76473a63/

University Website:http://www.hostos.cuny.edu/Administrative-Offices/Office-of-Academic-Affairs/Departments/Language-Cognition/Faculty-Staff