Jim Holstun
Overview
Jim Holstun has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and of fabricating Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza in order to justify military operations.Holstun is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, for which he has signed numerous petitions.
Holstun is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Buffalo (UB).
Demonizing Israel
On November 25, 2009, Holstun co-authored an article in which the authors stated: “Since Israel was founded, the JNF has organized the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews on their expropriated land.”
On January 6, 2009, Holstun co-authored an article entitled “Israel’s Fabricated Rocket Crisis.” In the article, the authors claimed that “clearly, the Israelis violated the truce [with Hamas] in order to increase the number of Qassam attacks, not to end them. Qassams provide Israel with its best shot at its favorite media role of plucky little David fighting the Palestinian Goliath.”
In the same article, the authors conclude that “it’s vital to remember that what we are witnessing in Gaza is not Israeli retaliation, but an act of unprovoked Zionist genocide using American-made weapons, based on a bloody lie about Qassam barrages obligingly circulated by American media.”
Supporting BDS
On January 8, 2017, Holstun commented on an article discussing the recent failure of the BDS bill proposed by the Modern Language Association (MLA). In his comment, Holstun stated that “The US Campaign and the other BDS groups have done excellent work. Because of them, I think I'll re-up my MLA membership later this month.”Holstun signed his name to a list of endorsers of the “US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” (USACBI).
On April 27, 2012, Holstun signed a petition denouncing David Horowitz’s anti-BDS activism and defending the campaign.
Holstun signed another petition, published on June 7, 2011, calling for a withdrawal of all investments in Israeli bonds and companies. The petition also accused Israel of “racism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and colonialism.”
Holstun also signed an open letter to former president Barak Obama, published on January 12, 2009 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
The letter called for Obama to divest from Israel, and accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and enacting an apartheid system, ultimately describing the situation as “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times.”
Defending Steven Salaita
Holstun signed a petition, published on August 21, 2014, entitled “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”Holstun again expressed his support for Salaita in a comment posted on August 23, 2014. In his comment, Holstun stated that, “If there's any justice, Professor Salaita will be employed by the end of the year, and Good Chancellor Wise will be seeking gainful employment elsewhere.”
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
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- Professor
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- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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