Nada Elia

Overview

Nada Elia has called for “intifada,” defended terrorists and called for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel. Elia also promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, spread hatred ofIsrael and endorsed hate speech.

Elia is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott (USACBI) Organizing Collective. She has toured North American campuses to promote BDS, often at events organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Elia has published dozens of articles for anti-Israel propaganda news sites, such as Mondoweiss, the Electronic Intifada (EI) and the Middle East Eye (M.E.E.).

As of April 2018, Elia’s LinkedIn listed her as a Professor at Western Washington University (WWU), since September 2017.

As of April 2018, M.E.E.’s website described Elia as a retired professor of Global and Gender Studies. She has taught at Antioch University-Seattle (Antioch), Purdue University (Purdue), Tufts University (Tufts), the University of Massachusetts (UMass), Brown University (Brown) and Washington State University (WSU).

Calling for Intifada

On October 6, 2015 — during an upsurge in violence known as the “Knife Intifada” — Elia published an article on M.E.E. titled “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?”

Since the early 2000’s, the term “Intifada” has carried the connotation of violence.

In the article, Elia wrote that “Intifadas are good” and called for an intifada “against both Israel and all involved in the farce that is the ‘peace talks.’” She concluded: “It is time for action.”

October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings — known as the “Knife Intifada” — saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians.

Defending Terrorists

In a May 13, 2016 article, Elia claimed that terrorist Dima Al-Wawi was “arrested strictly because” she is “Palestinian.”

12-year-old Al-Wawi was imprisoned for attempting to stab a security guard at the Israeli community Karmei Tzur. Al-Wawi later claimed she intended to kill the guard and hoped she would be killed in the process. “I was dreaming that I was going to be martyred,” she said.

On October 6, 2015, Elia implied in her article “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?” that terrorist Fadi Aloon was wrongfully shot by Israeli security forces, and whitewashed Aloon’s terror acts as “angry Palestinian resistance” to an “escalation in Israeli violence.”

Fadi Aloon was shot by Israeli security forces after he stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy. Several hours before the attack, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page.

On February 18, 2013, Elia tweeted — multiple times — support for Palestinian terrorist, Samer Issawi.

Elia tweeted: “At the weekly sit-in in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners … #ReleaseIssawi”.

On the same day, Elia tweeted: “Is the world going to notice before it's too late #ReleaseIssawi.”

She also tweeted: “Emergency Hearing for Samer Issawi? #ReleaseIssawi.”

Samer Issawi is a member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) who received a 26-year prison sentence in 2002. During the second intifada, Issawi manufactured and distributed pipe bombs and fired indiscriminately on Israeli civilian vehicles. In December 2013, Issawi called for the kidnapping of Israelis, saying: “The [Palestinian] prisoners' release will be brought about by kidnapping and [prisoner] exchanges. Nothing will happen without that.”

Calling for The Ethnic Cleansing of Jews

In August 2013, it was reported that Elia promoted a failed petition to ban pro-Israel groups from speaking at Antioch Israel Diversity Week. She then disrupted a talk by pro-Israel speaker Hen Mazzig, calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel.

When Mazzig asked Elia, “Where do you want them [Jews in Israel] to go?” Elia reportedly answered, “I don’t care. I don’t care if they don’t have any place else to go. They should not be there.”

On April 4, 2016, Elia published an article with Mondoweiss advocating for the one-state solution, writing, “If Palestine is to be free, it can only be from the river to the sea.”

The “one-state solution” has been denounced from the Right and the Left as a scheme to dissolve Israel as the Jewish State.

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is a chant calling to dismantle the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.

Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories

On May 20, 2016, Elia published an article in M.E.E. titled “Israel's global reach threatens freedom of speech everywhere.”

In her article, Elia claimed “Zionism functions as a global apparatus that seeks to shut down the will of the people everywhere, and erode our freedoms, in order to increase the power of politicians, multinational corporations, and the global arms and security trade.”

Elia also alleged that Israel was “a destabilising factor throughout the Arab world and Middle East,” and implied Israel was to blame for reductions in U.S. social services.

She also wrote: ”Another impact of Zionism is how it is depriving the average person everywhere of cherished ‘Western’ rights, namely freedom of speech, freedom of expression.”

Elia cited the arrest of Imad Ahmad Barghouthi as evidence that Israel is “cracking down hard on our freedom of expression.”

Palestinian Astrophysicist Professor Imad Barghouthi of Al Quds University was sentenced in 2016 to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.

Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas's military wing — the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.

An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, [00:00:33] urging students to design precision guided missiles, and sniper rifles as [00:01:11] “weapons ofthe resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.

Elia also cited as another example the arrest of a “young clown,” Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakha, who Elia claimed was arrested “with no charges against him, or maybe for the crime of making Palestinian children laugh.”

Abu Sakha was arrested in December 2015 for his ”renewed activity” and membership in the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP).

Elia also wrote that “The harshness of Zionist censorship in the US is reminiscent of the muzzling that takes place in some of the most dictatorial countries.” She then urged: “Fighting Zionism ... is a global responsibility, if we cherish our human rights wherever we may be.”

Spreading Hatred of Israel

In August 2014, during Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Elia organized a failed attempt to block an Israeli cargo ship from unloading in Seattle.

At the event, Elia reportedly justified Hamas’ rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, telling a reporter that “[t]here is a legal right to resistance.”

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

Elia has repeatedly labeled Israel an “apartheid” state in articles and on social media, as well as accusing Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.

On December 11, 2017, Elia published an article to Mondoweiss labeling Zionism a “racist supremacist ideology.”

On July 26, 2016, Elia published an article with Mondoweiss where she insisted that “[i]n the Palestine/Israel equation, there is, very strictly, an oppressor and an oppressed, an occupier and an occupied, one nation, Israel, violating the human rights of the other, with no reciprocation.”

On June 20, 2016, Elias wrote an article telling how she showed middle schoolers in her hometown a map with the headline “Palestinian loss of land.”

The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

On March 14, 2016, Elia wrote an article smearing the publishing company’s decision to recall the textbooks, calling it a “manifestation” of “Israel’s war on the Palestinian people.”

Endorsing Hate Speech

In 2016, Elia signed a letter to Vassar College President Catherine Bond Hill, defending Jasbir Puar, who had been called out earlier that year for her hateful rhetoric.

Puar, an anti-Israel Rutgers professor, gave a lecture at Vassar College in February 2016 titled “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters.”

Puar began her speech by calling for armed struggle against Israel. She went on to demonize Israel, suggesting that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians. Puar also claimed that Israel was maiming and “stunting” Palestinians via food restrictions.

Puar also opined that the reason Israeli Jews have not killed Palestinians is “[t]hey need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”

The letter Elia signed also cited an October 2015 report, by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal, that spread anti-Semitic conspiracies of a powerful Israel lobby controlling the U.S. government and silencing criticism of Israel.

BDS Activism

In January 2016, Elia signed a USACBI petition “in support of the right to call for a boycott of Israeli goods in France.” Signatories of the petition vowed not to comply with France’s highest appeal court’s legal ruling to prohibit the boycott of Israeli goods.

In October of 2013, Elia was also one of eleven professors to chastise the Journal of Academic Freedom for publishing a series of essays opposing the academic boycott of Israeli institutions.

On December 8, 2012, Elia tweeted “We [USACBI] sent @JoyHarjo the petition with over 1K signatures, and we're still collecting more. Joy, cancel your show.”The referenced petition condemned Native American poet Joy Harjo for performing in Israel.

On November 28, 2012, Elia called on Stevie Wonder to cancel a performance in Israel, tweeting: “Stevie, I just called 2 say Apartheid is Wrong in Israel too #StevieWonder.”

In March 2010, Elia signed a petition published by “The Lebanese Campaign for The Boycott of Zionism,” to have an Israeli scholar ejected from an academic conference held in Los Angeles.

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.