Jonathan Graubart
Overview
Jonathan Graubart has promoted anti-Israel activism as well as the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has demonized Israel, expressed support for Hamas-affiliated anti-Israel activist Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi and for anti-Israel professor Rabab Abdulhadi.Graubart is a professor in the Department of Political Science and was the director of International Security and Conflict Resolution (ISCOR) at San Diego State University (SDSU).
As of March 2017, Graubart reportedly served on the Academic Council for Open Hillel.
Promoting Anti-Israel Activism
Graubart signed a January 25, 2017 letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham.In 2016, Fordham reportedly blocked the formation of a Fordham SJP chapter “based on the reported behavior of other [SJP] chapters on other campuses,” indicating that “the establishment of a local branch could be ‘polarizing’ and pose a safety concern to students and faculty.”
Signatories demanded that Fordham “immediately rescind the rejection of SJP as a student group on campus, apologize to the students affected by this harmful decision, and reaffirm Fordham’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom.”
The petitioners also highlighted SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing SJP’s efforts to promote anti-Israel boycott as part of “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression.” The petition accused Fordham’s administration of a “fundamental misunderstanding of what boycotts are, the purpose of a university, and the goals of SJP.”
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in cooperation with Palestine Legal (PL), and civil rights attorney Alan Levine sued Fordham on behalf of four students in April 2017. A New York court annulled Fordham’s decision in August 2019, mandating that the university recognize SJP as an official club.
Fordham appealed the ruling to the NY State Supreme Court Appellate Division in January 2020. On July 24, 2020, Fordham SJP students filed a brief asking the appellate court to deny Fordham’s appeal of the lower court’s decision.
As of October 2020, a variety of groups, not directly involved in the case, filed amicus briefs with the Appellate Division for the court's consideration including JVP.
Speaking about the series and the course, Graubart was quoted stating: “The series will cover the history of dissenting Jewish Zionist positions, or those that opposed having a Jewish nation state.”
In May 2016, Graubart co-authored and signed a letter to former President of San Diego State University (SDSU), Elliot Hirshman, condemning him for failing to come out in support of Muslim students who advocated for BDS on campus after posters appeared on campus, naming the students.
The posters accused seven particular students and faculty of participating in BDS and allying with Palestinian terrorists.
The letter, signed by Graubart, slammed President Hirshman for not expressly supporting “students from Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Muslim Student Association (MSA)” who had faced “charges of ‘Jew-hatred’ and of being linked to ‘terrorists’.”
The letter claimed Hirshman’s alleged failure to defend the students was “not only offensive,“ but left “the targeted students exposed to harassment, discrimination, and other bias-motivated offenses.”
The letter also expressed support for students who responded to Hirshman’s failure to condemn the David Horowitz Center by staging a protest that involved dozens of students, expressing solidarity with the named SJP members, “surrounding President Hirshman and preventing him from leaving campus for about two hours.”
The letter signed by Graubart blamed Hirshman for the “unrest” and said: “Reports of students ‘surrounding’ the university president ‘barricaded’ in a police vehicle fit rather uncomfortably with a vision of ‘One SDSU Community.’ We deplore the negative light cast on students, whereby the targeted students were presented as the unreasonable actors.”
In April 2014, as part of a guest lecture series, Graubart hosted anti-Israel activist and professor Richard Falk at SDSU. The event sparked major controversy, with numerous pro-Israel students and organizations reportedly “calling for SDSU to cancel the lecture or move it off campus because of Falk’s background.”
In 2009, Graubart appeared on a panel to discuss Operation Cast Lead, the then-recent conflict between Israel and Gaza. At the event, Graubart’s comments implied that Israel “attacked “residential areas and schools in the hope of killing a few militants” and fired at civilian targets “willy-nilly.”
Graubart reportedly went on to state: “I condemned Hamas for hiding behind civilians, but there are plenty of atrocities and war crimes being committed by Israel as well, and it would be nice to see prosecutions for war crimes on both sides.”
Israel commenced Operation Cast Lead (OCL)in 2008-09 in order to stop Hamas rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians. In 2010, Hamas admitted that nearly 700 of the Palestinian casualties in OCL were combatants.
In May 2018, violent riots, instigated by Hamas on the Israeli-Gaza border, saw thousands of rioters attempting numerous breaches of Israel’s border fence, with
participants declaring their intention to harm Jews across the border under the pretext of “peaceful resistance.”
In his May 18, 2018 post, Graubart expressed support for the activists endorsing the Gaza protests and condemned what he described as “paranoid tribal nationalism that has long underwritten Zionist rejectionism and indifference to Palestinian suffering.”
BDS Activism
In January 2018, Graubart signed a petition published by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) that condemned efforts opposing the American Studies Association’s (ASA) endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.Signatories of the letter characterized the anti-BDS activity as a “harassment campaign” and accused opponents of BDS of conducting a “McCarthyist media blitz.” The petition also painted opposition tactics as “unscrupulous actions that support practices of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and white supremacy, McCarthyism, Islamophobia, and racism in the US” that “find their counterpart in the actions of Donald Trump and the ‘alt right’.”
On March 20, 2017, Graubart was featured as a speaker for SDSU Students for Justice in Palestine’s (SJP)’s "Understanding the BDS Movement" event.
At the event, Graubart reportedly stated that if one considers “Zionism, which gives advantages to one national subset of its population, it’s hard not to see anti-Zionism as a morally defensible position.”
In April 2010, Graubart signed a petition of University of California (UC) faculty members affirming their support of BDS. Signatories of the petition wrote that they “stand united in our strong belief that divesting from companies that provide significant support for the Israeli military is both a moral and strategic way to take responsibility for how tuition and taxpayer-funded research dollars are used in our educational institutions.”
Graubart signed a petition, published on January 30, 2003, which stated: “With an average of more than $10 million dollars per day of American tax dollars going to Israel, we believe Americans cannot remain silent while crimes as abhorrent as ethnic cleansing are being openly advocated.”
In 2002, Graubart signed a petition demanding “Israeli evacuation of all settlements in the occupied territories except those within the agreed swapped areas.”
The petition went on to state that “Our country has an extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy, if only our government would dare to use it. As American Jews... we call on our government to make continued aid conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement.”
Demonizing Israel
On March 5, 2015, Graubart co-authored an article for the anti-Israel propaganda website Mondoweiss slamming Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The article’s authors said they condemned “Israel’s longstanding abuses of Palestinians, occupation and accompanying settlements, which the United Nations has condemned as illegal and the primary obstacle to a peaceful resolution.”
The authors went on to posit that “both Israel and the US are afflicted by a self-destructive political culture whereby global challenges are met by militarism, aggressive interventionism, and disregard of fundamental norms of international law…
The article continued: “In the case of Israel, this stance has not only caused suffering to generations of Palestinians but produced a perpetually insecure state of Israel, dependent on overwhelming military superiority and the support of a distant great power.”
In the same month, Graubart co-authored an article titled “David in Goliath’s citadel: Mobilizing the Security Council’s normative power for Palestine” in which the authors applauded “the remarkable success of the Palestine Liberation Organization in alliance with the Non-Aligned Movement...despite concerted Israeli–US efforts to undermine it.”
On July 18, 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Graubart co-authored an article for the San Diego Free Press on behalf of JVP, writing that “While most mainstream American Jewish organizations have long abandoned moral responsibility when it comes to Palestinians, we insist upon holding Israel accountable for its crimes, which include a nearly fifty-year occupation, a denial of Palestinian self-determination, repeated war crimes, and systematic human rights abuses.”
The statement went on to conclude: “our unshakeable belief in justice – as Jews and as human beings – compels us to acknowledge that the root of the violence lies in the Israeli government’s commitment to the occupation of Arab lands in the West Bank and Gaza for over 47 years.”
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Support for Imad Ahmad Barghouthi
Graubart signed an open letter, co-published by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and USACBI to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on behalf of Imad Ahmad Barghouthi.The letter called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu “to order the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody.”
Palestinian Astrophysicist Professor Imad Barghouthi of Al Quds University was sentenced in 2016 to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.
Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas's military wing — the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.
An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, [00:00:33] urging students to design precision guided missiles, and sniper rifles as [00:01:11] “weapons ofthe resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.
Support for Rabab Abdulhadi
Graubart signed a letter published on July 1, 2014, by “members of Jewish communities” to San Francisco State University (SFSU) President Leslie Wong, condemning actions taken against professor Rabab Abdulhadi and her anti-Israel activism on campus.The letter specifically defended actions by Abdulhadi, such as leading a controversial “delegation to Palestine that highlighted the plain reality of Israeli occupation and settler-colonialism” and went on to claim that “political intervention to support Israel and Zionism feeds into anti-Jewish racism.”
During a March 2014, SFSU faculty event, Abdulhadi praised international hijacker Leila Khaled as an “icon in liberations movements and… an icon for women’s liberation.”
The letter signed by Graubart also condemned pro-Israel organizations and activists, alleging that they had weaponized the term “anti-Semitism” in order to “ to target Palestinian students and professors and their supporters” and “contribute to a domestic climate that is extremely hostile to Arabs and Muslims.”
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.
JVP
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish value.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
