Neil Hertz

Therefore, the Assembly “resolved that the MLA refrain from endorsing the boycott.”

Hertz also signed a March 5, 2014 open letter, authored by anti-Israel activists Judith Butler and Rashid Khalidi, “Condemning Censorship of Israel Critics.” Signatories of the letter called upon “cultural and educational institutions to have the courage and the principle to stand for, and safeguard” BDS activism.

Defending a Pro-Hamas Professor

Hertz signed a November 2023 letter defending a professor at Cornell who expressed support for the Hamas terror group the previous month.

The November 21, 2023 letter was authored by “Members of Cornell University’s Faculty” and it called on Cornell to take action following “attacks on a faculty member over comments about Israel’s war on Gaza.”

The letter referred to Professor Russell Rickford, who gave a speech on October 15, 2023, praising [00:00:04] Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. Hamas executed the terror attacks on October 7, 2023, and left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
  
Rickford said [00:01:39]: “It was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing!” He then said [00:01:47] that if Palestinians “weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!”

Rickford made his statements at a rally hosted by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization.

Endorsing Anti-Israel Campus Activity

Hertz 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.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in cooperation with Palestine Legal (PL), and civil rights attorney Alan Levine sued Fordham on behalf of four students in April 2017. A New York court annulled Fordham’s decision in August 2019, mandating that the university recognize SJP as an official club. 
 
Fordham appealed the ruling to the NY State Supreme Court Appellate Division in January 2020. On July 24, 2020, Fordham SJP students filed a brief asking the appellate court to deny Fordham’s appeal of the lower court’s decision.
 
As of October 2020, a variety of groups, not directly involved in the case, filed amicus briefs with the Appellate Division for the court's consideration including JVP. 

Defending Violent Protests

Hertz signed a letter to the editor, published in The Cornell Daily Sun on May 6, 2018, expressing support for the 2018 “March of Return.” 

Signatories of the letter wrote that “This massacre is the latest injustice in a 50-year occupation, and 70-year ethnic cleansing, endured by the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeligovernment”

The letter went on to claim that “generations of Palestinians have grown up as stateless refugees under conditions of apartheid. In their struggle to affirm their right to return to their homeland, they have been met with deadly fire from Israel and with silence from America.”

Demonizing Israel

In 2015, Hertz helped organize a film series “to educate the Ithaca community about the history of Palestine.” In discussing the series, Hertz was quoted stating that “We are trying to get people to be more aware of what life is like for Palestinians — both the ones who live in Israel and are citizens but are really kind of second-class citizens and the ones who live on the West Bank and are living in an occupation.”

In July 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Hertz signed an open letter to Israeli academics, which claimed “The government of Israel, having provoked the firing of rockets by its rampage through the West Bank, is now using that response as the pretext for an aerial assault on Gaza which has already cost scores of lives.” 

Signatories of the petition 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.”