Miriam Cooke

Overview

Miriam Cooke backs the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.  

In 2014, Cooke signed the Call by Middle East Studies Scholars and Librarians for the Academic Boycott of Israel. The document encourages academics in Middle East Studies "to boycott Israeli academic institutions," and pledges "not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel."

Cooke is a professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Culture at Duke University (Duke).  

Cooke is also a signatory to DukeDivest, an organization that calls on Duke to divest from companies with "military ties” with Israel until DukeDivest’s conditions are met. One such condition is the establishment of a Palestinian state. DukeDivest’s FAQ page featured false claims that Israel practices apartheid as well as claims that “torture is endemic and systemic — part and parcel of the Israeli Occupation and Israel's security culture.”

Supporting Terror-Financier Sami al-Arian

In 2007, Cooke reportedly participated in a rally calling for the exoneration of Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pled guilty to conspiring to aid Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). Al-Arian was indicted on February 20, 2003, for allegedly serving as the North American leader of PIJ. Evidence presented at his trial indicated that he was a member of PIJ’s governing board (p. 9). Al-Arian was deported to Turkey in 2015.

PIJ is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel and the establishment of a sovereign, Islamic Palestinian state with the geographic borders of the pre-1948 mandate Palestine. PIJ has no political wing or social wing — only a military wing, which focuses solely on promoting terrorism and the murder of Israelis.

It is reported that PIJ is backed by Iran and has killed dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and other attacks.A 2007 YouTube video showed senior PIJ member Khader Adnan praising and encouraging suicide bombings: "Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?"

Demonizing Israel

According to a Campus Watch report, Cooke was a signatory to a 2002 open letter suggesting that Israel would use the war in Iraq to engage in "ethnic cleansing" against Palestinians. No retractions were ever issued for the letter after its claims failed to materialize.

Condemning But Validating Arab Terror and Misogyny - Blaming Israel for Both

Cooke has reportedly whitewashed Palestinian female suicide bombing attacks targeting Israelis, saying: "For those of us who really are concerned with women’s role in the Arab public square, in the way in which women have been trying to empower themselves vis-à-vis the U.S., vis-à-vis old colonial powers, vis-à-vis their own men, the situation has become so desperate that now women’s participation in war is a mark of absolute hopelessness.” This line of reasoning runs counter to that of other professors, like Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University (SFSU) who lionize Palestinian women’s involvement in terrorist violence. Abdulhadi and others routinely praise female terrorists such as international hijacker Leila Khaled as an “icon in liberation movements and...an icon for women’s liberation.”

According to a Middle East forum report, Cooke wrote that “complicated relations” between Muslim men and women are solely the result of the “colonial experience.” On the other hand, Cooke has also defended polygamy in the Muslim world, stating “Polygamy can be liberating and empowering...Our norm is the Western, heterosexual, single couple. If we can imagine different forms that would allow us to be something other than a heterosexual couple, we might imagine polygamy working.”

In an article titled “War, its machines and the women who fight them” published on the Duke “Faculty Viewpoints” forum, Cooke posited that addressing the suppression of women by Muslim men, in particular, was the key to terminating the mad drive for Empire and ushering in world peace. Along the way, she blamed the establishment of the state of Israel as a root cause of Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: “9-11 has a long history going back through the Gulf War to the establishment of Israel in 1948.”

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

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/miriam.cooke.56

Website:http://www.miriamcooke.com/