Michael Cooperson
Overview
Michael Cooperson has demonized Israel, is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and is a professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).Demonizing Israel
Cooperson is a member of the California Scholars for Academic Freedom (cs4af). In August of 2012, the group published an open letter, which Cooperson signed, to California Assembly Members opposing a piece of anti-BDS legislation.In the letter, the group argued that BDS, descriptions of Israel as “an apartheid state” and accusations against Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity” do not constitute anti-Semitism and should be protected on campus.
Cooperson signed another open letter, published on March 31, 2009, opposing the reinstitution of the University of California Education Abroad Program (EAP) in Israel.
Signatories of the petition claimed that "Israel has deprived hundreds of thousands of Palestinians of their right to education” and that “The designated site of UC’s EAP, Hebrew University (HU), has a longstanding and documented record of discriminating against Palestinian students.”
On March 16, 2004, Cooperson was sent an invitation to “a reception in honor of Ambassador Alan Baker, Legal Adviser and Deputy Director General of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
In response to the invitation, Cooperson wrote an email stating “is it necessary for UCLA to ‘honor’ the man? I would feel the same way if we had been invited to honor a representative of the former South African government.”
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.
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- California-Los-Angeles
- Organizations:
- BDS
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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