John Womack

Overview

John Womack has defended anti-Israel activism on campus, supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and demonized Israel.

He is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Emeritus in the Department of History at Harvard University (Harvard).

Defending Anti-Israel Activism on Campus

In March 2012, Harvard hosted an anti-Israel conference, titled “The One-State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution,” whose subject was the dissolution of Israel as a Jewish state.

Womack signed a petition, published on February 27, 2012, demanding that Harvard support the conference. Signatories of the petition wrote: “We believe that the university must unequivocally support the students and speakers.”

Despite the university’s insistence that it was an entirely student-run initiative and not officially supported by the institution, several professors took leading roles in the planning and execution of the event. The controversy that arose in response to the conference stemmed from what many viewed as an ongoing pattern of anti-Israel bias in Harvard classrooms.

The petition went on to say: “The charge that the conference is “one-sided” is completely and entirely baseless. Some speakers in the conference are not supporters of one-state while others have not expressed an opinion about the matter.”

On March 5, 2012, the White Supremacist website, Stormfront, relayed that "Anti-Israel activists who have gathered this weekend at Harvard University's "One State Conference" were told yesterday that the Jewish people do not exist.

Prof. Susan M. Akram of Boston University's School of Law told the gathering that there is no legal basis for Jewish self-determination--at all:”

Supporting BDS

Womack signed a petition, published in March 2011, calling on the financial consultant company, TIAA-CREF, to “divest from Israeli occupation.” The petition provided a list of Israeli companies from which signatories demanded TIAA-CREF divest its funds.

Womack 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.

Demonizing Israel

As of September 2018, Womack was listed as serving on the Board of Directors and the advisory board for the Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FFIPP). According to the group’s 2017 Guiding Principles, “it recognizes the injustices committed since 1948. It condemns settlements and their expansions. It stands for the complete withdrawal of Israel from all occupied territories.”

In 2004, FFIPP published a statement, co-authored by Womack and five other members of the organization condemning disruptions at Palestinian universities.

Regarding the statement, it was reported that “Womack said that Birzeit University in the West Bank had been closed repeatedly for indeterminate amounts of time and some of its buildings have been destroyed.”

In the same article, Womack was quoted stating that “[Students and faculty] are doing heroic work every day to try and carry on an education, much less anything else.”

Birzeit University’s student body has celebrated terrorists since at least 2003. That year, student government elections featured models of exploding Israeli buses — as parties competed on the basis of which Palestinian faction had killed the most Israelis.