May Seikaly

Overview

May Seikaly [May A. Seikaly] is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has spoken at Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) events. She was also listed as a policy advisor and donor to Al-Shabaka, an anti-Israel website, as of March 2019.

As of March 2019, Seikaly was listed as a professor at Wayne State University (WSU) College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.

Supporting BDS

Seikaly signed an open letter published on August 6, 2014, that called for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

On August 12, 2013, she signed a letter addressed to oral historians and scholars planning to participate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s International Conference on Oral History, calling on them to boycott the conference.

On March 10, 2010, she signed a letter calling for the International Society for Iranian Studies to reconsider its choice to host a faculty member from Israel’s Ariel University, calling it “a decision which disregards international law and lends legitimacy to a prolonged and brutal military occupation of the Palestinian homeland.”

On January 12, 2009, during Operation Cast Lead (OCL), she signed a letter addressed to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama that called for “constructive disengagement from Israel, financial, diplomatic, military.”

The letter referred to Palestinian rocket attacks as “mere pinpricks” and accused Israel of apartheid, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. It also claimed that Israel’s “disproportionate and bloody use of excessive force, is no act of self-defense, but the dramatic extension of an insidious policy of extermination.”

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.

SJP Speaker

On December 1, 2016, Seikaly spoke on a panel at an SJP WSU screening of the anti-Israel documentary “The Occupation of the American Mind.” The film claims that Israel manipulatively controls the American public’s view on the Arab-Israeli conflict via the media.

On October 14, 2015, Seikaly spoke at another SJP WSU event, titled “Palestine 101 Panel.”

According to a report of the event by the Wayne State students’ publication The South End, Seikaly claimed that “700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes” by Israel in 1948, and that Israeli “settlement building began as a way of annexing Palestinian lands and ‘creating a “grid of control.’”

Al-Shabaka Affiliation

Seikaly is listed as a policy advisor for the pro-BDS site Al-Shabaka. Al-Shabaka’s 2016 annual report listed Seikaly as a sustaining donor and an analyst.

Al-Shabaka, the “Palestinian policy network” describes its mission as “to educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self determination within the framework of international law.”

Articles on the site include anti-Israel accusations of ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide. In January and April 2017, Al-Shabaka promoted infographics it had produced that accused Israel of apartheid policies in Jerusalem.

In its 2016 annual report, Al-Shabaka’s executive director Nadia Hijab described efforts in support of BDS, despite pressure against the movement, as a “bright spot on the Palestinian landscape.”