Joseph Levine

Overview

Joseph Levine has argued against Israel’s right to exist, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and is a member of the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) organization.

Levine is a professor in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst).

Challenging Israel’s Right to Exist

In an article published on March 9, 2013, Levine argued against the legitimacy of a Jewish state, stating that “one really ought to question Israel’s right to exist.”

In the same article, Levine went on to argue that “the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic.”

Supporting BDS

In an article published on July 20, 2017, Levine was quoted condemning a piece of anti-BDS legislation. In the article, Levine stated that “I think the bill is horrible. It is a clear violation of people’s right to express their opinion.”

On May 29, 2017, Levine was quoted on the JVP Western Mass Facebook page, supporting BDS activist Professor N. Bruce Duthu.

In the quote, Levine was cited as a member of JVP and argued that “taking action to express solidarity with Palestinian victims of Israeli state oppression has nothing to do with anti-semitism.”

In an article published on March 2, 2017, Levine condemned anti-BDS legislation, arguing that “honoring BDS and refusing to do business with Israeli companies is legitimate political activity meriting first-amendment protection and non-interference from the state.”

On April 27, 2016, Levine signed an open letter in support of a recent BDS resolution that passed at UMass, endorsing the movement as a fight for “human rights.”

On July 22, 2014, Levine 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 April 29, 2014, Levine signed a petition to “Boycott Israeli Cinema and TV Studies Conference at Tel Aviv University.”

The petition called upon scholars to boycott an upcoming conference at Tel Aviv University (TAU) and provided a link to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

On December 4, 2009, Levine signed an open letter condemning recent anti-BDS legislation.

In addition to endorsing BDS, the letter called for “an end to Israeli military occupation, the right of refugees to return to the land from which they have been ethnically cleansed since the Nakba of 1947-1948, and equal rights for all throughout historic Palestine.”

The letter went on to condemn the United States, which it accused of collaborating “with the Histadrut, the Zionist labor federation that not only supported Israel's war on Gaza, but which has spearheaded - and whitewashed - racism, apartheid, dispossession and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians since the 1920s.”

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.”