Ivonne del Valle

Overview

Ivonne del Valle is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movementand has defended anti-Zionism on campus, as well as disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita. 

As of January 2020, Del Valle was an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley).

Supporting BDS

In 2016, del Valle signed an open letter calling for the academic boycott of Israel. 

The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”
Del Valle signed an open letter published on April 19, 2015, condemning the decision to feature French intellectual Monique Canto-Sperber as the keynote speaker of a “Night of Philosophy” event, because of her pro-Israel activism.

Signatories of the letter stated that “we find it incumbent upon ourselves to register our profound disappointment and to protest in the strongest terms possible that one of the key people you have selected to promote free speech at your Night of Philosophy has been an open practitioner of denying the same to Palestinians and their supporters.”

Del Valle signed a petition, published by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on January 8, 2015, calling on the UC Student Association to divest from Israel. 

The letter targeted a list of Israeli companies which signatories alleged were participating in the “ongoing system of military occupation that denies Palestinians their basic rights.”

Del Valle signed an open letter to United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, dated July 31, 2014, condemning “the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”

The letter exclusively blamed Israel for the Gazan civilian crisis and called upon the administration “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”

The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which Israel commenced in July of 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

Del Valle also signed her name to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

In May 2013, del Valle signed a petition of UC faculty members in support of a bill “divesting from companies that provide significant support for the Israeli military.”

Defending Anti-Zionism on Campus

As of January 2020, Del Valle was a signatory to a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) organization, opposing the inclusion of anti-Zionism as an “intolerant position” in the University of California (UC)’s proposed “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance.”

Signatories of the letter argued that “The definition of ‘anti-Zionism’ as intolerance and/or bigotry is vague and overbroad” and stated that “We believe that this formulation is now being revived by seeking to include ‘anti-Zionism’ as a form of bigotry and intolerance, and we urge you to reject that view.”

Defending Steven Salaita

del Valle signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement titled: “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

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/delvalleivonne [Deleted]

University Website:https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/ivonne-del-valle

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivonne-del-valle-978b32a2/