Laura Briggs

Overview

Laura Briggs [Laura J. Briggs] has demonized Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

She is professor and chair of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (UMass Amherst).

Demonizing Israel

On November 13, 2015, Briggs sent out several tweets quoting anti-Israel activist and professor, Jasbir Puar.

In her first tweet, Briggs wrote “J. Puar: Israel in W Bank is not archaic, only in 20th c could such a concatenation of technology, capital, and maiming take place.”

Briggs then tweeted “Puare: make live/let die is replaced with will not make die/will not let live in the biopolitics of Israel in occupation.”

Briggs third tweet said “Jasbir Puar: Israel in West Bank 2013 ‘shoot to cripple,’ limiting calories, bombing hospitals, targeting youth: maiming as weapon.”

In July of 2014, Briggs signed an open letter to Israeli academics which claimed that “The government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.”

Signatories of the petition went on to posit that “An atmosphere of hysteria is being deliberately provoked in Israel, and whole communities are being subject to collective punishment, a war crime.”

In the same month, Briggs signed another open letter to Israeli academics, charging Israel with “The slaughter of large numbers of wholly innocent people.”

Supporting BDS

On November 24, 2015, Briggs tweeted “BDS is a feminist issue.” Along with the statement, Briggs provided a link to an article, authored by anti-Israel professor Dana Olwan, linking the BDS movement to feminism.

The article led with the claim that the shooting of a female terrorist at a checkpoint “demanded [a] feminist outcry against such forms of violence, rooted as they are in colonial, sexualised and gendered registers of worth and worthlessness.”

Briggs signed an open letter to United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, dated July 31, 2014, condemning “the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”

The letter exclusively blamed Israel for the Gazan civilian crisis  and called upon the administration “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”

The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE), which Israel commenced in July of 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

Briggs signed an open letter, published on April 27, 2014, affirming the passage of a BDS resolution which called “on the graduate students’ employer and their union to divest from and boycott companies that fuel and profit from the military occupation and repression of Palestinians.”

Signatories of the letter praised the decision, writing that “The methods by which this pro-BDS resolution was adopted represent the best practices of union democracy.”

Briggs signed an open letter to President Obama, published on January 12, 2009.

The letter, published by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and concluded that “Israel too maintains an apartheid regime.”

After charging Israel with inflicting “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times,” the signatories called upon Obama to join in the BDS movement.

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/ljbriggslaura?lang=en

University Website:https://www.umass.edu/hfa/member/laura-j-briggs