Mark Lance

Overview

Mark Lance has demonized Israel in his writing, is an activist with the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and is affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Lance is a professor of “Justice and Peace” in the Department of Philosophy at Georgetown University (Georgetown).

Demonizing Israel

On October 31, 2008, Lance published an article titled “Address Apartheid in Israel-Palestine.”

In the article, Lance wrote that “it is a simple fact that Israel has instituted an apartheid regime. It is also a simple fact that the United States supports this regime with massive economic, military and diplomatic aid.”

Lance went on to conclude that “The reality is that our military and our political leadership – both funded with our tax dollars – prop up this apartheid regime, which does incalculable damage to our international reputation.”

Supporting BDS

On March 2, 2017, Lance was the featured speaker at an event titled “The Case for An Academic Boycott: A Discussion with Mark Lance.” The event was organized by Georgetown’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

In April of 2014, Lance spoke at the inaugural event of the student organization, “Georgetown Divest!” In his speech, he reportedly “compared the situation [in Israel] to apartheid-era South Africa” and urged attendees to support the organization’s effort to push the university to divest its funds from Israeli corporations.

Lance is a board member of the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), which, in 2011, pushed the association’s adoption of BDS. Following the association’s vote to endorse BDS, Lance made a public statement proclaiming “I am proud — as an academic and a board member of PJSA — to stand with the BDS movement.”

Lance is reportedly the co-founder of the organization Stop US Taxpayer Aid to Israel Now (SUSTAIN). In a 2010 article describing his activism, Lance discussed how he worked to spread BDS into the mainstream of America.

Lance signed a petition, published in March 2011, calling on the financial consultant company, TIAA-CREF, to “divest from Israeli occupation.” The petition provided a list of Israeli companies from which signatories demanded TIAA-CREF divest its funds.

In November of 2007, Lance attended the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli Occupation 6th Annual Conference. According to an article chronicling the event, “The central theme of the conference was the growing focus on boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) aimed at ending Israeli apartheid.”

Lance and his fellow co-chair of the U.S. Campaign’s Steering Committee opened the conference with a presentation on the organization’s work from the previous year.

Lance signed a petition, published on the  BDS movement website on May 21, 2007, titled: “Boycott Israel – Don’t Play another ‘Sun City’!”

The petition claimed that “performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era.”

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.