Lisa Rofel

Overview

Lisa Rofel has defended Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami Al-Arian and demonized pro-Israel Jews — especially American Zionists — in various forums. Rofel has also demonized Israel in academic forums and supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement’s attacks on Israel.

Rofel is a member of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and was part of a group which unsuccessfully lobbied in 2016 for an AAA boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Rofel is a member of the eight-person organizing collective of Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (Anthro Boycott), which was the primary body advocating for the boycott.

Rofel is a professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz), where she is the director of The Center for Emerging Worlds. Rofel’s focus of study is China. Rofel received her Ph.D. and master’s degree from Stanford University. She received her bachelor’s degree from Brown University.

Rofel has claimed to despise all "ethno-nationalisms" and described all “nationalisms” as sources of racism and violence in different parts of the world. Rofel has singled out Israel and Jewish nationalism for particular condemnation and claimed that Israel is a “regime of racial hierarchy that spawns racial violence.”

Defending an Islamic Jihad Militant

In October 2015, at a University of California, Riverside (UCR) conference, titled "Palestine, Israel and the Assault on Academic Freedom," Rofel defended a PIJ leader, Sami Al-Arian.

Rofel described Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida (USF) professor — deported from the United States following a trial for his terror-supporting activities — as merely "a Palestinian-American and a long-time tenured computer engineering professor … who was active in bringing attention to the situation of Palestinians." Rofel claimed that the prosecution of Al-Arian was “a particularly egregious case” of an effort to “suppress academic freedom.”

However, at trial, Al-Arian was revealed to be a leader of the PIJ, a specially designated terrorist organization, from the mid-1990’s through about 2003. As part of a plea agreement in 2006, Al-Arian admitted that he performed services for the PIJ, while he was a professor at USF and after he knew that the PIJ had been designated as a terrorist organization. Al-Arian also acknowledged in the plea agreement that he knew the PIJ used acts of violence as a means to achieve its objectives. The money Al-Arian helped raise for PIJ was reportedly used to finance terrorist attacks targeting Israeli civilians. Al-Arian was called a "master manipulator" by the sentencing judge and was eventually deported to Turkey in 2015.

Rofel also claimed that a "right-wing radio pundit" had “smeared” Al-Arian in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks — for “supposedly calling for the death of Israel and for giving charity funding to Palestinian organizations.” A transcript of the show recorded Al-Arian admitting to having said in 1988 in Cleveland: "Jihad is our path. Victory to Islam. Death to Israel. Revolution. Revolution until victory. Rolling to Jerusalem." On the show, Al-Arian claimed that the phrase “Death to Israel” did not mean calling for the death of any Israelis and that the context of his statement was: “The Muslim world thought” then - U.S. President George H.W. Bush was “going to carry a cross and go invade the Muslim world and turn them into Christians.”

The UCR conference, which featured Rofel as its keynote speaker, was co-hosted by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and the UCR chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Another cosponsor was the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) which officially states: "Our liberation… will be gained with the path that was written with the blood of our martyrs."

Attributing Anti-Semitism to "Christian Europe"

In October 2015, at the same UCR conference mentioned above, Rofel denounced the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Attacking the State Department’s recognition that "blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions" could be anti-Semitic, Rofel claimed: “Rather than acknowledging the humanitarian disaster that the Israeli state has created in Palestine, rather than acknowledging that Israel is a settler-colonial state, rather than acknowledging that the Israeli government has applied some of the same tactics to Palestinians that they experienced in Christian Europe, the State Department pretends there is an equivalence between Jews and Palestinians and thus states that we should not blame Israel for all the political tensions.”

Rofel espoused, instead, a personal definition of anti-Semitism — limited to what she called an "expression of revulsion for the inherent and universal nature of an ethnic group centered on a creed" (22:10).

Rofel emphasized that she believed "anti-Semitism exists in the world — especially in Christian Europe." Throughout her hour-long presentation, Rofel made no mention of Arab or Islamic anti-Semitism, whether related to Israel or not. Rofel mentioned acts of “violence” she acknowledged as “anti-Semitic,” in what Rofel called “Christian Europe,” — listing the “targeting of Jewish synagogues and cemeteries and shops.” However, Rofel omitted that many such incidents she located in “Christian Europe” were committed by Arab or Islamic militants. Such incidents included the murder of four Jewish hostages in a Paris supermarket by ISIS in January, 2015 and the 2012 al-Qaeda killing of four people — including three children — at a Jewish school in Toulouse. Pro-Palestine radicals were also responsible for attacks on synagogues in France and Germany, in 2014.

While Rofel allowed that anti-Semitism exists "not only in Christian Europe" the example she found particularly worthy of mention was a discovery she made when browsing through a bookstore in Beijing, China. Rofel highlighted as “anti-Semitism” a book she found “extolling Israel,” which urged “Chinese to imitate Israel’s success and claimed that the root of that success was Jews’ special ability to make money.”

Demonizing American Jews

In October 2015, in her UCR conference keynote address titled: "A So-Called Self-Hating Anti-Semitic Jew Speaks Out," Rofel said she was “appalled” when she perceived that a fellow UCSC professor seemed to associate all Jews with his own negative perception of Israel and told Rofel “the issue of the Israeli occupation is a matter for you Jews to figure out among yourselves.” Yet, Rofel painted all of American Jewry as racist, claiming that Jews in the U.S. had become “white” and that “part of becoming white...is embracing the racism towards others in the American racial hierarchy.”

Demonizing Pro-Israel Jews

On April 22, 2016, Rofel co-wrote an essay in which she accused pro-Israel Jews of practicing "ethnic chauvinism." In that essay, Rofel also accused opponents of AAA’s anti-Israel boycott of “playing ‘the Nazi card,” stating: “Such comparisons of the boycott to Nazism are frauds against history. The Nazis at no point used non-violent forms of resistance.” Rofel ignored, that Nazi repression of Jews began with boycotts of Jewish businesses.

In 2014, Rofel seemed to play "the Nazi card,’" herself, when she signed a statement comparing Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas to the Nazi massacre of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto massacre and accusing Israel of “genocide,” as mentioned below.

Rofel’s 2016 essay also employed the post-Holocaust phrase "Never Again," to demonize pro-Israel Jews. Rofel posited a false dichotomy, between the embrace of universal values and pro-Jewish loyalties — which she condemned as “ethnic chauvinism” — to slur liberal Zionists.

On April 9, 2015, — in an interview promoting the Anthro Boycott campaign — Rofel said of older anthropologists who opposed the AAA Anti-Israel boycott: "Most of them are retired. It seemed to me that a lot of them were well into their eighties. I see them as a generation that I am sympathetic with, they grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, I am assuming most of them are Jewish although I have no idea, and I completely appreciate their need to have a fantasy that there is a safe place for Jews."

Misrepresenting BDS to AAA

On March 3, 2016, Rofel participated in a webinar along with fellow Anthro Boycott organizing collective members — Nadia Abu El-Haj, Ilana Feldman and Jessica Winegar. Rofel was asked why the AAA should boycott Israel when other issues like Arab honor killings, Muslim female genital mutilation, Russian war crimes, Syrian war crimes and "the Republican Party and its bigotry."

Rofel said "working on one issue does not preclude working on the other" and went on to say: “This is a response to a call from over 170 Palestinian civil society groups …”

The first listed member among the "civil society groups" on the BDS website is the “Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (Coordinating body for the major political parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory).” Also among the listed groups is Addameer, whose vice-chairperson is Khalida Jarrar — a senior Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) official.

By 2012, anti-Israel Professor Norman Finkelstein had already called into question the composition of the so-called Palestinian civil society organizations calling for anti-Israel boycott. In August of 2016, BDS leader Ilan Pappé finally admitted that BDS was not initiated by a "call" from Palestinian civil society; rather, it was initiated by a small number of radical anti-Israel extremists — like Pappé.

Promoting Propaganda as Scholarship

On September 16, 2016, Rofel signed a letter initiated by "The California Scholars for Academic Freedom, a group of over 200 academics from different California institutions of higher education focused on protecting academic freedom and freedom of expression." The letter, which listed Rofel as a contact person, condemned the suspension of a course sponsored by University of California, Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian, founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

The course, titled "Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis," offered a one-sided perspective of Israeli history, based on highly contested research, and required attendees to formulate and present plans for dismantling Israel as a Jewish state. The syllabus highlighted strict measures to maintain secrecy and students were cautioned: “ Absolutely no electronic devices may be used during class. No photographs, videos, or voice recordings are permitted. Violating this rule may result in your removal from the course.”

The letter that Rofel signed claimed the school’s suspension of the course was "a political decision in response to pressures from outside interest groups which support the perspectives of a foreign government, in this case Israel. This is the latest episode in the relentless attacks on U.S. scholars who teach on or research the topic of Palestine and Israel, orchestrated by a well-financed network of special interest groups such as the AMCHA Initiative, Stand with Us, the Canary Website [sic.], and Campus Watch."

The letter urged "the university administration not to cave in to outside political pressures when they try to undermine academic freedom." The letter also placed professors as the ultimate arbiters of what should be taught: “Academic freedom means the freedom to conduct and disseminate scholarly research and the freedom to design courses and teach students in the areas of their expertise. Academic freedom means that what is acceptable or unacceptable for professors as such is determined by the faculty, not by administrators, alumni, or donors.”

Vilifying Israel

On July 24, 2014, Rofel co-signed a letter, titled "Statement of Jews for Palestinian Right of Return," that condemned Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas as “the latest chapter in more than a century of Zionist colonialism, dispossession, ethnic cleaning, racism, and genocide.” Israel commenced OPE to stop rocket attacks from Gaza that targeted Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas’ attack tunnels.

The letter Rofel signed insinuated that "Israel’s very establishment" was based upon “the uprooting and displacement of over 750,000 Palestinians” and claimed that Israel “uses resistance to such policies as an excuse to terrorize and collectively punish the indigenous population for its very existence.”

The letter went on to characterize thousands of rockets fired at Israeli civilian population centers — including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem — as "scattered rockets, fired from Gaza into land stolen from Palestinians in the first place, are merely a response to this systemic injustice."

Blaming Israel as the "root cause of this violence," the statement Rofel signed demanded “a ban on all military and other aid to Israel” and called for the “dismantling of Israel’s apartheid regime, throughout historic Palestine — from the River to the Sea,” a euphemism for demanding Israel’s destruction. The letter also likened Israel’s defensive operation against Hamas in Gaza to massacres like the Nazi attack on the Warsaw Ghetto and the massacre at Wounded Knee.

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.