Jonathan Beller
Overview
Jonathan Beller has demonized Israel, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.Beller is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Pratt Institute (Pratt).
Demonizing Israel
On July 22, 2014, Beller signed a petition titled “Jews Say: End the War on Gaza — No Aid to Apartheid Israel!”The petition charged Israel with “more than a century of Zionist colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleaning, racism, and genocide” and claimed that “Israel uses resistance to such policies as an excuse to terrorize and collectively punish the indigenous population for its very existence.”
On November 21, 2012, Beller signed a petition titled “The World Cannot Stand by as Palestine is Battered to Death” which alleged the “ruthless and criminal Israeli assault on the defenceless people of the Gaza Strip.”
The petition went on to accuse Israel of “perpetrating yet another massacre against the Palestinian people.”
Supporting BDS
On February 14, 2014, Beller signed a petition to “salute the American Studies Association’s courageous endorsement of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli academic institutions…”The petition alleged Israeli academic institutions “are leading accomplices in more than six decades of ethnic cleansing, colonization, war crimes, and apartheid.”
Signatories of the petition wrote “As Jews, we refuse to remain silent as a so-called ‘Jewish state,’ armed by the U.S. and its allies, commits these injustices with impunity in our name.”
Defending Steven Salaita
Beller 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
University Website:https://www.pratt.edu/academics/liberal-arts-and-sciences/graduate-media-studies/core-faculty/
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Pratt
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Amin Husain,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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