J. Kehaulani Kauanui

Overview

J. Kehaulani Kauanui [Joset Kauanui] is a national leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and an advisory board member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). Kauanui tours North American campuses to promote BDS and the "anti-normalization" of Israel, often at events organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Kauanui is a professor of American Studies and Anthropology and the current Chair of the American Studies Department at Wesleyan University (Wesleyan). In 2014, Kauanui was a featured speaker at the National SJP Conference.

On numerous occasions, Kauanui has claimed that BDS was initiated by “Palestinian civil society” — rather than by a small number of radical anti-Israel extremists, as BDS leader Ilan Pappe admitted in August 2016.

Kauanui has frequently alleged that Israel is practicing “apartheid” and insists that the founding of the state of Israel, and the return of Jews to their ancestral homeland, should be viewed primarily as a “colonial project” — “the policy and process of conquering a distant land to send settlers so as to reshape it to resemble the land of the colonizer.”

Kualani has also suggested that Palestinians have the unfettered right to take up arms against Israelis.

Denying Jews Are Indigenous to Israel

Kauanui is currently co-editing a book on Israeli "redwashing," with anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita. The topic of the book is the claim that Israel promotes “Indigenous Peoples of the Americas as a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of the Palestinian people.”

In January 2014, Kauanui organized and chaired a conference in Beirut, Lebanon, “to discuss how Israel is now claiming to be an indigenous people…[t]rying to exploit the native Americans as cover for their ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” The conference included a panel titled “Redwashing: Israeli Claims to Indigeneity and the Political Role of Native Americans.”

Kauanui implied that Israelis disingenuously “appeal to Indigenous Peoples by drawing parallels between their respective claims to indigeneity, legacies of genocide (evoking the Jewish holocaust), and ongoing adversity regarding threats to ‘cultural extinction.’”

In an April 11, 2014 interview, Kauanui referred to the Jews’ return to resettle the Jewish ancestral home as the “lure of Jews being drawn into a colonial project that’s undergirded by Zionist ideology” (16:10).

Glorifying Violent "Gaza Flotilla"

In a June 25, 2011 article, Kauanui glorified the Gaza “Freedom Flotilla” in May 2010 — whose stated goal was to illegally sail to Gaza to end Israel’s maritime blockade, designed to keep Hamas from receiving weapons. Kauanui urged readers to “act right away by serving as a ‘boat watch’ volunteer” and to call U.S. politicians to express support for the illegal act.

Activists aboard the flotilla’s lead ship — the Mavi Marmara — agitated for violent confrontation with Israeli security forces and chanted "Khaibar, khaibar ya yahud," a slogan about the killing of Jews. The protesters refused all instructions to change course and attacked Israeli security forces with iron bars, metal chairs, knives, stun grenades and firearms, rocks and bottles, as soon as they boarded the Marmara. No humanitarian aid was found aboard the ship.

Kauanui characterized the militants’ actions as "nonviolent resistance."

Defending A Terrorist

In October 2014, Kauanui signed a petition defending convicted murderer Rasmea Odeh, who concealed her terrorist past when she emigrated to the United States. The petition was titled "Feminist scholars to Obama: End prosecution of Palestinian survivor of sexual torture."

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate. 

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind. 

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

Endorsing Conspiracy Theories

In 2016, Kauanui signed a letter to Vassar College President Catherine Bond Hill defending Jasbir Puar, an anti-Israel Rutgers professor who gave a lecture at Vassar College in February 2016 titled "Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters." Puar began her speech by calling for armed struggle against Israel. She went on to demonize Israel, suggesting that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians. Puar also claimed that Israel was maiming and “stunting” Palestinians via food restrictions — despite Gaza having one of the highest obesity rates in the world.

Puar also opined that the reason Israeli Jews have not killed Palestinians is “[t]hey need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”

The letter addressed to President Hill slammed objections to Puar’s libelous incitement against Israel, as attacks on freedom of speech and the integrity of “an invited guest.”

The letter also cited an October 2015 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal that conjured anti-Semitic conspiracies of a powerful Israel lobby controlling the U.S. government and silencing legitimate criticism of Israel. The letter claimed the report revealed “the ways in which ‘a network of lobbying groups... funded by, working in coordination with, and/or staunchly supportive of the policies and practices of the Israeli government primarily drives efforts to silence speech on behalf of Palestinian rights’.” The letter also claimed “these groups… are supported or even initiated through many millions of dollars in donations from right-wing, hawkish Israel advocates…”

On March 4, 2015, Kauanui and Puar gave a presentation promoting BDS and "Anti-Normalization" at Rutgers University.

Defending Hate Speech

In November of 2015 Kauanui advocated for the University of Illinois (U of I) to reinstate 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.

In a September 7, 2014 article Kaunui stated that she "has no problem with Salaita’s tweets." She also described Salaita as “a standup person, he's an ethical person…[h]e is somebody I wish I could work with at a university."

Kauanui has also encouraged her Facebook followers to call and write to U of I faculty members and show support for Salaita.

Pushing BDS

Kauanui is a member of the American Studies Association (ASA) National Council and Activism and Community Caucus (ASA Caucus). In 2012, the ASA Caucus proposed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, which was later adopted at the ASA Conference in 2013.

Kauanui is involved with a years-long BDS campaign in the the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and has encouraged the AAA to adopt a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. In June 2016, the AAA announced that a resolution to boycott Israeli universities was defeated, but that here are “other actions planned.”

In 2014, Kauanui signed an open letter calling on Israeli academics to “act to end the illegal occupation in Palestine” and Israeli “atrocities” to sign a petition. The petition was closed to overseas signers when only 83 Israeli professors signed on.

In 2011, Kauanui wrote a letter to the International Gay and Lesbian Youth Organization Board of Directors (IGLYO), demanding IGLYO cancel its General Assembly in Tel Aviv, Israel. In the letter, Kauanui claimed that Israelis are committing an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinian people, and accused IGLYO of “pinkwashing” Israel.

Pressuring Artists to Boycott Israel

In December 2012, Kauanui told Electronic Intifada that she "urgently wrote Joy Harjo at midnight" when Kauanui learned Harjo was already on her way to perform at Tel Aviv University.” Kauanui asked Harjo to “not cross the picket line called by Palestinian civil society” and “outlined the nature of the campaign and its clear guidelines.”

Kauanui told Harjo "Even though you’re already on the plane to Tel Aviv, it’s not too late to cancel Monday’s event at Tel Aviv University…"

On December 10, 2012, Harjo posted on her Facebook page from Tel Aviv, saying: "Now my social media pages and message boxes are filled with a campaign to force a boycott, with messages of polarization, as if there is one way to poetry, resistance or empowerment." Harjo went on to mention “an atmosphere of censure now in the ultimatum that I am being given to boycott.”

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

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:

Website:http://jkauanui.faculty.wesleyan.edu/