Leila Farsakh
Overview
Leila Farsakh [Leila H. Farsakh] expressed support for terrorism, spread hatred of Israel and engaged in anti-Israel activism.Farsakh is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of June 2024, Farsakh was listed on the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) website as a professor in the Department of Political Science. As of the same date, Farsakh’s LinkedIn profile said she has been an associate professor of political science at UMass Boston since 2005.
As of June 2024, Farsakh was listed on the Birzeit University (Birzeit) website as a senior researcher in the Center for Development Studies.
As of the same date, Farsakh was listed as a “policy member” for Al-Shabaka — The Palestinian Policy Network. Al-Shabaka’s other policy members included key leaders of the anti-Israel movement in the U.S. including Hatem Bazian, Omar Barghouti and Rabab Abdulhadi.
As of September 2023, Farsakh was a member of the One Democratic State Campaign (ODSC), “...a Palestinian-led initiative that calls for the end of the colonial Zionist regime and strives for the establishment of a single democratic state in historic Palestine…”
Farsakh has been affiliated with the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in Boston, Massachusetts (JVP Boston) since 2016.
As of August 2024, Farsakh’s LinkedIn said she received a PhD in political economy from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (SOAS) in 2002.
As of August 2024, Farsakh’s LinkedIn said she was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Support for Terrorists (Hamas, PFLP)
On October 19, 2023, one week after Hamas killed over 1,200 Israelis, The New Arab published an opinion piece Farsakh wrote titled: “Israel’s propaganda efforts are a reflection of Palestinians’ growing impact in US.”Farsakh wrote: “It has been over a week since Hamas fighters broke through the siege that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip for over 17 years.
Israel and Egypt implemented a United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint blockade of the Gaza Strip in 2011 to stop Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
Farsakh continued: “The facts unfolding on the ground have made it clear who the perpetrator is and who the victim is…Israel is a settler colonial state that enforces an apartheid system of oppression.”
Farsakh said: “The courage of those who broke through the barbed wire…or flew with their hang-gliders over the wall of the largest open-air prison has shown that Palestinians will continue to defy the gravity of settler colonialism to be free, whatever the cost.”
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.
On April 5, 2022, Farsakh posted on Facebook a poster produced by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization that included the words translated from Arabic: "Advancing the revolution / Through weapons and thought / In pursuit of liberation and socialism."
Founded in 1967, the PFLP is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel and Zionism. The group is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU, Canada, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Australia and Israel.
Hatred of Israel
On May 4, 2022, Farsakh was featured in an interview published on Al-Shabaka titled: “Palestine Beyond Partition and the Nation-State.”In the interview, Farsakh said: “Palestinians must also articulate the economic, political, and legal steps that need to be taken to dismantle the apartheid colonial structure Israel created in order to build a new political order.”
On February 14, 2022, Farsakh participated in a webinar posted to YouTube titled: “Strategies for a Just Peace.”
In the webinar, Farsakh claimed [00:14:40]: “...we are living in an apartheid reality…” Farsakh also claimed [00:15:24]: “...Palestinian refugees have aright to return….”
The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel.
Farsakh also said [00:16:54]: “...the big challenge for the Palestinians would be how to define a new strategy that is not limited within the two-state solution and actually reclaims the one-state solution…”
The “one-state solution” has been denounced from the Right and the Left as a scheme to dissolve Israel as the Jewish State.
Farsakh also said [00:17:46]: “...the strategy with the international community…is to continue the BDS campaign…this is something very important because that is the campaign that keeps the Palestinian question alive.”
On March 26, 2021, Farsakh participated in an interview with ICAHD UK in which she said:“The problem is Israel” and said: “...Israel is a racist state.”
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) highlights as one possible contemporary example of anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” The U.S. State Department adopted the IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism in 2016. Over 40 other countries have adopted the definition as well.
Farsakh also said: “...the checkpoints and the permits that are needed for travel which Israel argued were for ‘security reasons’...are justmore forms of oppression upon the Palestinian people in what we recognize as a policy of Apartheid.”
Israeli checkpoints were built to prevent terror attacks, such as suicide bombings, against Israel's civilian population.
Anti-Israel Activism
On March 21, 2024, Farsakh was a featured presenter at a webinar hosted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA)’s Anti-Racism Task Force titled: “Context and Connection: The Struggle Against Anti-Palestinian Racism.” The webinar was co-organized with JVP Boston.Farsakh reportedly said: "The aim of this webinar was to explain the settler colonial structure of Zionism, of Israel.”
Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.
In September 2023, Farsakh participated in the Palestine Writes Literature Festival at The University of Pennsylvania (Penn), an event that reportedly “featured several activists who promoted conspiracies about Jewish power and called for violence against Israel.”
In May 2021, Farsakh signed an “Open Letter and Call to Action – Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom” which said: “As scholars, we affirm the Palestinian struggle as an indigenous liberation movement confronting a settler colonial state. The pitched battle in Sheikh Jarrah is the most recent flashpoint in the ongoing Nakba…”
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by drawing a comparison to the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, meaning “catastrophe.”
On January 8, 2014, Farsakh signed a petition, published by the anti-Israel websiteElectronic Intifada, in support of the American Studies Association (ASA) decision to boycott Israel. The petition accused Israel of “settler-colonialism, occupation, and apartheid.”
As of March 14, 2014, Farsakh was a signatory to a UMass Boston faculty petition titled: “Statement in Support of Academic Boycott of Israel.” The petition specifically endorsed the ASA resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions.
In 2013, the ASA adopted a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, during its annual conference.
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.umb.edu/directory/leilafarsakh/University Website 2:http://www.muwatin.birzeit.edu/en/profile/Leila-Farsakh
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/leila.farsakh
Twitter:https://twitter.com/farsakh_leila23
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/farsakhleila/ [Private]
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/leila-farsakh-aa79581b/
Muck Rack:https://muckrack.com/leila-farsakh
