Mary Baine Campbell
Overview
Mary Baine Campbell has promoted anti-Israel activism on campus and demonized Israel. She is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.Campbell has endorsed the discredited Goldstone Report, shown support for anti-Israel activist Dareen Tatour and defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.
Campbell is a professor in the Department of English at the Brandeis University (Brandeis).
Promoted Anti-Israel Activism on Campuses
Campbell signed a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and published on January 25, 2017, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham. In 2016, Fordham reportedly blocked the formation of a Fordham SJP chapter “based on the reported behavior of other [SJP] chapters on other campuses,” indicating that “the establishment of a local branch could be ‘polarizing’ and pose a safety concern to students and faculty.”Signatories demanded that Fordham “immediately rescind the rejection of SJP as a student group on campus, apologize to the students affected by this harmful decision, and reaffirm Fordham’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom.”
The petitioners also highlighted SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing SJP’s efforts to promote anti-Israel boycott as part of “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression.” The petition accused Fordham’s administration of a “fundamental misunderstanding of what boycotts are, the purpose of a university, and the goals of SJP.”
On March 11, 2015, British Colonel Richard Kemp was hosted by the University of Sydney to deliver a lecture. During his presentation, Kemp was interrupted by a group of students and faculty in a protest “that began with heckling and descended into students being dragged out of the hall by security guards.”
Among the faculty members protesting the event was professor Jake Lynch, who had been previously investigated for accusations of anti-Semitism.
Following the event, a petition circulated calling for Lynch’s dismissal, claiming that, at the protest, Lynch “shouted in the face of students, obstructed campus security, filmed students without their consent and waved money in the faces of Jewish students and guests.”
The letter, authored by the group Sydney Staff for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, expressed support for Lynch and his fellow protesters, claiming that “demands for the dismissal of staff members or the disciplining of students are entirely unwarranted and unjustifiable.”
The letter went on: “we call on you to firmly reject the suggestion that any action should be taken against anyone present at the lecture. Associate Professor Lynch is one of Australia’s most prominent human-rights campaigners and anti-racists. His unshaking commitment to the cause of Palestine justice has earned him formidable enemies.”
Campbell was also part of a secret faculty anti-Israel listserv.
The listserve, uncovered in 2014 at Brandeis, reportedly contained extreme anti-Israel content, anti-Semitic libels as well as support for BDS.
In one report chronicling the discovery of the listserv, Campbell was quoted slamming pro-Israel women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whom she described as “an ignorant, ultra-right-wing extremist, abusively, shockingly vocal in her hatred for Muslim culture and Muslims.”
Supporting BDS
Campbell signed her name to a BDS resolution proposed to and passed by the Student Senate at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana.The resolution, proposed by the student organization BDS Earlham in April 2015, stated that “Earlham College students are inspired by the intention of the global Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign and have designed a divestment campaign that is tailored to our campus.”
Campbell signed another petition, calling on the boycott of specific Israeli companies.
The petition, authored by Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) and published in March 2011, called on the investment 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, claiming that the companies listed “were “profiting from Israelʼs violations of international law and international human rights standards.”
Demonizing Israel
In July 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Campbell signed petition demonizing Israel and blaming it for provoking the violence.Signatories of the letter went on to claim: “An atmosphere of hysteria is being deliberately provoked in Israel, and whole communities are being subject to collective punishment, a war crime.”
The letter was created 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.
Endorsing Goldstone Report
Campbell signed a petition, expressing support for the anti-Israel and widely criticized Goldstone Report.In October 2009 the US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) published a petition addressed to the United Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, demanded that the U.N. adopt and implement the Goldstone Report.
Signatories of the letter endorsed the report, claiming that it “irrefutably documents the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli military in Gaza with a massive amount of undisputed evidence.”
The letter went on to “demand that the UN Secretary General pursues and oversees the full implementation of the report’s recommendations.”
The letter also defended violent acts of terrorism committed against Israel, declaring: “We reject any attempt to criminalize or equate the resistance of an occupied people to the institutional, state-directed, massive violence of the occupier.”
The Goldstone Report was the controversial product of a 2009 United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, sent to investigate Operation Cast Lead.
Israel commenced Operation Cast Lead (OCL)in 2008-09 in order to stop Hamas rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians. In 2010, Hamas admitted that nearly 700 of the Palestinian casualties in OCL were combatants.
Following widespread criticism and rejection of the report for its “methodological failings, legal and factual errors, and falsehoods,” Judge Richard Goldstone, who authored the report, expressed “regrets about his report” and retracted its central thesis.
The Goldstone Report was the controversial product of a 2009 United Nations Fact-Finding Mission, sent to investigate Operation Cast Lead.
Israel commenced Operation Cast Lead (OCL)in 2008-09 in order to stop Hamas rocket fire from Gaza targeting Israeli civilians. In 2010, Hamas admitted that nearly 700 of the Palestinian casualties in OCL were combatants.
Following widespread criticism and rejection of the report for its “methodological failings, legal and factual errors, and falsehoods,” Judge Richard Goldstone, who authored the report, expressed “regrets about his report” and retracted its central thesis.
Supporting Dareen Tatour
Campbell signed a petition, authored and published by JVP on August 10, 2016, demanding “Dareen Tatour’s release from house arrest.”The petition claimed that “The Israeli government’s actions reveal a desire to silence Tatour, part of a larger pattern of Israeli repression against all Palestinians.”
In October 2015, Tatour was placed under house arrest for incitement to violence and for support of a terrorist organization on social media. Tatour had supported the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and posted to Facebook: “I am the next shahid [martyr].”
Defending Steven Salaita
Campbell signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement titled:“A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic.] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”On November 10, 2015, Burt tweeted a link to another petition supporting Salaita and wrote: “Reinstate Professor Steven Salaita - Sign the Petition!”
In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
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.
