Kamran Rastegar

Overview

Kamran Rastegar has expressed support for terrorists, promoted violent protesters and defended anti-Israel activism. 

Rastegar is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and was affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), in 2015.

As of March 2021, Rastegar was a professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Tufts. 

Support for Terrorists

Rastegar retweeted a June 23, 2020 tweet whitewashing terrorist Ahmad Erakat.

Ahmad Erakat [Ahmad Moustafa Erekat] was killed by Israeli security forces after he accelerated and rammed his car into soldiers at a checkpoint. One female soldier was injured.

On May 18, 2017, Rastegar tweeted: “One month… For dignity:” and embedded a tweet that said: “As #Palestinian #DignityStrike Passes One-Month Mark, New York Artists Illuminate the Struggle…”

Terrorist Marwan Barghouti was sentenced to five consecutive life terms for some of his crimes, including his role in the Sbarro Cafe bombing. In 2017, he initiated the hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners known as the “Dignity Strike.” He headed the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorist Tanzim force and founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which carried out many terror attacks against Israeli civilians.

On April 24, 2017, Rastegar shared on Twitter an Al Jazeera article about the hunger strike’s leader, Marwan Barghouti, and wrote: “Palestinian prisoners’ hunger strike enters critical and dangerous phase:”

On March 24, 2017, Rastegar tweeted: “So glad to see @Jezebel publishing @4noura on Rasmea Odeh” and included the link to an article by anti-Israel activist Noura Erakat, that glorified Odeh.

Odeh was a military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an internationally designated terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a bombing that killed two university students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
 
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind. 


In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States. In 2017, Odeh was deported to Jordan and stripped of U.S. citizenship, after admitting to immigration fraud.

Promoting Violent Protesters

Rastegar retweeted an October 31, 2018 tweet featuringa photo from the March of Return riots that showed a protestor slinging a rock while holding a Palestinian flag.
 
On March 30, 2018, some 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza approached Israel’s border to take part in “Land Day Protests” or the “March of Return.” The violent demonstrations were instigated by Hamas on the Israeli-Gaza border. Participants declared their intention to harm Jews across the border under the pretext of “peaceful resistance.”

March participants sent scores of kites bearing explosive devices across Israel’s border to burn Israeli crops and homes. Rioters also made numerous attempts to breach Israel’s border fence, which caused the Israeli Defense Forces to respond with live fire.

Agitators also threw Molotov cocktails, firebombs, shot firearms and threw rocks under the cover of smoke from burning tires. 

The violent riots continued until the end of 2018, accompanied by military-style attacks carried out by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and other terror organizations. The attacks included gunfire, armed rioters penetrating Israeli territory, throwing IEDs and hand grenades and launching incendiary kites into Israel.

Rastegar retweeted a February 28, 2019 tweet that said: “Yes, I can't believe the UN absolved Hamas for shooting thousands of unarmed protesters who posed no threat to anyone from hundreds of meters away, even killing over 180 of them!...oh wait, that was ISRAEL, & the dangerous joke is your sick denialism. Delete your account AJC [American Jewish Committee].”

The violent riots during the “March of Return” continued into 2019 and included armed protesters using gunfire, penetrating Israeli territory, launching incendiary kites into Israel and throwing IEDs, hand grenades and Molotov cocktails. Some of the attacks were carried out by Hamas operatives.

Defending Anti-Israel Activism

On June 2, 2020, Rastegar tweeted in support of Tufts SJP receiving an award for its promotion of the “Deadly Exchange” campaign on campus. The national anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) originally started the campaign.

In 2017, JVP launched the “Deadly Exchange (DX)” campaign, which accused American Jewish organizations of promoting human rights abuses. JVP also released a video that blamed [00:04:04] U.S.-based Jewish organizations for violence that occurs against Black and Brown communities, immigrants and activists in the U.S.

On August 21, 2018, Rastegar tweeted: “A principled statement by my colleagues @AmahlBishara and @kmanjapra in response to ridiculous and abhorrent attacks on Tom Abowd for simply teaching a course at Tufts titled ‘Colonizing Palestine.’”

Rastegar’s tweet was about a controversial anti-Israel course offered by fellow Tufts Professor, Thomas Abowd, in the Fall Semester of 2018. 

The course description advertised: “students will address crucial questions relating to this embattled nation, the Israeli state which illegally occupies Palestine.”

One student published an op-ed in the campus newspaper, observing that “the university’s blind endorsement of “Colonizing Palestine” poses real threats to the academic freedom of students and quite literally denies Jewish indigeneity to Israel.”

Abowd responded to the student op-ed and other criticisms of the course, with his own op-ed, saying: “Let’s remember that we at Tufts are not living under Israeli military rule, where Palestinian freedom of expression has not only been brutally suppressed... the vast majority of us do not (yet) live under conditions where students and professors can be tortured, beaten and killed for expressing political views, as Palestinians as young as 10 and 11 have been.”

Rastegar’s tweet included an image of a Tufts Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora statement in support of Abowd and his course. The statement said:“We will not let these spurious attacks derail inquiry at our university... Please join us in offering support to Prof. Abowd.”
 

Supporting BDS

Rastegar retweeted a January 28, 2019 tweet from the Boston Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapter, that said: “You should support the BDS movement tho.” DSA was responding to then U.S.-Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who tweeted that he did not support BDS.

On April 5, 2017, Rastegar tweeted: “Clear evidence of the potency of BDS: Israel uses secret ‘commando unit’ to combat activists.”

In 2016, Rastegar signed an open letter from the Modern Language Association Members for Justice in Palestine calling for the academic boycott of Israel. 

The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

In January 2017, the MLA Delegate Assembly approved a resolution (2017-1) acknowledging “the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel contradicts the MLA’s purpose” and conflicted with another resolution (2002-1), that condemned boycotts against scholars. Therefore, the Assembly “resolved that the MLA refrain from endorsing the boycott.”  

On March 3, 2015, Rastegar was scheduled to appear on a panel titled: “History, Tactics and Future of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).” The panel was part of Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) and hosted by Tufts SJP.  

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is presented as “an international series of events that seek to raise awareness of…Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people” and build support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

On July 20, 2013, Rastegar signed an open letter, published by The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The letter opposed an Iranian filmmaker’s acceptance of an invitation to participate in the Jerusalem Film Festival in Israel. 

On January 16, 2009, Rastegar signed a petition authored and published by the BDS movement, titled: “Academics in the UK Call for BDS to Stop Gaza Massacres.” The petition accused Israel of “waging [war] against the people of Palestine for more than 60 years… [through the use of] overwhelming military power to eradicate the Palestinians.” 

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.


The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.


SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.


SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.


SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.


Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.


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

Twitter: https://twitter.com/kdrastegar

University Website: https://as.tufts.edu/ilcs/people/faculty/kamran-rastegar

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/127097

Personal Website: http://kamranrastegar.com/

MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/kamranrastegar

WT.Social: https://wt.social/u/kamran-rastegar 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/1PO36QU39fKeESxt7VVtVT?si=Oz1J_M8VSGibJtAOM__Wwg

Academia Profile: http://tufts.academia.edu/KamranRastegar