Julie Rak
Overview
Julie Rak has expressed support for a terrorist, engaged in anti-Israel activism and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.In 2016-2017, Rak was involved in a BDS campaign at the Modern Language Association (MLA) to pass a boycott resolution against Israeli academic institutions.
As of July 2023, Rak was on the advisory board of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
As of the same date, Rak was listed as a professor and chair of the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta (UAlberta) for a term from 2019 to 2024. She had been the associate chair of graduate studies for the Department of English and Film Studies at UAlberta from 2014 to 2017.
Rak received a PhD from McMaster University (McMaster) in 1998 and graduated from Carleton University (Carleton) with a master’s degree in Canadian studies in 1991.
Support for Terrorists (PFLP)
On October 23, 2020, Rak organized [CV, p. 42] a webinar titled: “We Will Not be Silenced (with Leila Khaled): Canada,” for USACBI’s Day of Action, which was “part of a North American resistance to attempts to censor an online panel featuring Leila Khaled.”In September 2020, anti-Israel professor Rabab Abdulhadi co-organized an online “conversation” with Leila Khaled. Zoom canceled the planned live stream of the event, and Facebook followed Zoom’s lead. YouTube shut down the event after 23 minutes, stating that Khaled’s speech violated its policies with “content praising or justifying violent acts carried out by violent criminal or terrorist organizations.”
Leila Khaled is a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and El Al Flight 219 in 1970. As of 2017, Khaled was a member of PFLP's Political Bureau. Khaled has said that the second intifada failed because it was not violent enough, advocated [00:36:07] for the use of children in terror activities and compared Zionists to Nazis.
Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)
In June 2016, Rak participated in an MLA “fact-finding” mission in Israel alongside anti-Israel activists Rebecca Comay and David Lloyd. According to a Facebook post by Birzeit University, where the delegation held a meeting, the “six-member visit to Palestine was made as part of attempts to advocate for a boycott resolution by the MLA that will be proposed next winter.”Following the trip, Rak co-authored “A Report by MLA Members on Higher Education in Palestine.” The report labeled [p. 10] Israel’s security barrier an “apartheid wall.”
Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.
In December 2016, Rak wrote an article urging Canadian members of the MLA to vote for a resolution that would boycott Israeli academic institutions. Rak was a signatory to the resolution.
On December 16, 2016, Rak tweeted: “#mla17 This video makes the case for the academic boycott of Israel very well.”
In January 2017, MLA’s Delegate Assembly rejected the BDS resolution at its annual meeting and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1 (2017-1), which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.
On January 7, 2017, Rak posted on Facebook: “The Modern Language Association’s Delegate Assembly has just voted not to endorse the academic boycott Palestinians have been asking for. Incredibly retrograde politics, racism and fear-mongering were part of the debate. I am going to resign from the MLA on Monday. I’m very proud to have worked with so many people on the BDS campaign…”
On June 26, 2017, Rak posted a letter on Facebook that she had written to the MLA explaining that she was not renewing her MLA membership, “to protest the recent vote for Resolution 2017-1.”
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
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/rak_dr/ [Private]
University Individual Website:https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/julie-rak/
University Directory Website:https://apps.ualberta.ca/directory/person/jrak
Academia.edu:https://ualberta.academia.edu/JulieRak
