Jessica Backman-Levy

In May 2024, 370 faculty, staff, students, and alumni of The Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis signed an anti-Israel open letter that also endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The “Open Letter from Brown School Students” was published in response to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists. Israel launched the war after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks, in which Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis, took over 250 hostages, and injured thousands.

On multiple occasions, the letter accused [pp. 1-3] Israel of "genocide" during its war against Hamas.

The letter further supported [p. 3] the "demands" of anti-Israel, pro-BDS campus group Resist WashU "for divestment from Boeing [which has technical partnerships with Israel], cutting ties with educational institutions in Israel...and [WashU's] condemnation of the ongoing genocide in Palestine."

Likewise, the letter demanded [p. 2] that The Brown School and its dean, Dorian Traube, "bring an end to their silence on the ongoing genocide of Palestinians."

The Brown School open letter also supported the April 2024 anti-Israel encampment at WashU, which resulted in approximately 100 arrests, including many activists unaffiliated with WashU. Among those reportedly arrested and banned from campus were 23 WashU students, including five Brown School students and at least four employees. All arrestees faced criminal charges for trespassing, with some also facing charges of resisting arrest and assault.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, thousands of heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.

Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

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 has said that 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 [p. 10], 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.