Lisa Hajjar

Overview

Lisa Hajjar has accused Israel of torture, war crimes and crimes against humanity. She has also accused Israel of manipulating international law in order to cover up those violations.

Hajjar has compared Israeli military actions to Palestinian terrorism and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Hajjar is a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and a board member of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).

Demonizing Israel

In an article published in the summer of 2001 in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Hajjar accused Israel of distorting international law in order to “rationalize and legitimize its governance of the West Bank and Gaza.”

Hajjar reiterated this claim in an article published on June 10, 2014, in which she stated that Israel creates the illusion of abiding by international law by “[producing]  interpretations that the law does not apply.”

In the same article, Hajjar claimed that Israel was “the first state in the world to ‘legalize’ torture” and that “the government officially and publicly endorsed the necessity and legitimacy” of those methods.

In the winter of 2016, Hajjar published an article titled “Israel as Innovator in the Attempted Mainstreaming of Extreme Violence.”

In the article, Hajjar argued that Israel manipulates international law in order to justify its violations thereof, and ultimately, to legitimize “extreme violence” globally.

Hajjar concluded her article by applauding the BDS movement, which she conceded “does indeed, as its critics claim, seek to ‘delegitimize’ aspects of Israeli ruling practices.”

Hajjar repeated these claims in an article titled “Normalizing Extreme Violence: The Israeli Case” in which she argued that Israel flagrantly violates international law and will ultimately cause other states to do the same.   

In the article, Hajjar also warned that “Israel’s use of extreme violence and its deliberate disregard for foreign civilian immunity is certainly going to tempt other states engaged in asymmetric conflicts to assert similar justifications.”

Comparing Israeli Military Actions to Palestinian Terrorism

On November 21, 2012, Hajjar co-authored an article with fellow anti-Israel professor Mark LeVine.

In their article, the authors argued that Israel's actions in Gaza and the West Bank “constitute not merely the context for war crimes but for crimes against humanity and, because of their clearly aggressive nature, a crime against peace.”  

The authors also suggested that Israel’s military actions in Gaza were legally equivalent to “Hamas and other Palestinian groups' attacks on Israel, from suicide bombings of the 1990s and early 2000s to today's rocket fire.”

Supporting BDS

Hajjar signed a petition, published on January 8, 2014, in support of the American Studies Association’s (ASA) decision to join in the academic boycott of Israel.  

Hajjar also appeared on a panel titled “Incredible Breakthroughs & Major Challenges: A Roundtable on Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS).”

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:http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/lisa-hajjar