Isis Nusair

Demonizing Israel

On April 22, 2002, Nusair was photographed wearing a mock-Israeli armored tank while shouting “slogans” outside the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) convention.

In 2010, Nusair co-authored a book titled “Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender among Palestinians in Israel.”

The book accuses Israel of being a “settler colonial society.” (p.2)

Supporting BDS

During the annual 2014 conference of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Nusair signed a resolution that defended “the right of scholarly associations to boycott Israel” and called on MESA to “provide platforms for a sustained discussion of the academic boycott and foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for MESA to assume.”

MESA is considered the most important academic association of Middle East Studies.

Nusair also signed an August 2014 letter titled “Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia.”

In signing this petition, Nusair committed “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

Nusair signed an August 2013 open letter titled “Call to Boycott the Oral History Conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”

The letter urged scholars and academics to withdraw their participation from an upcoming conference because it was being held at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Signatories of the letter claimed that “Israeli universities are deeply complicit in the occupation, settler-colonialism, and apartheid.”

The letter concluded by stating “We call on our colleagues to treat Israel exactly the same way that most of the world treated racist South Africa – or indeed any other state that legislates and practices apartheid: as a pariah state.”

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isis.nusair

University Website: https://denison.edu/people/isis-nusair