Omid Safi

Overview

Omid Safi is a proponent and member of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and a fan of Jewish history-denying professor Cornel West. Safi is also a supporter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Safi is a professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University (Duke) and serves as Director of Duke’s Islamic Studies Center.  

In July 27, 2014 Facebook post, Safi asserted that "America has a “perverted ‘special relationship’ with Israel." Safi also accused pro-Israel critics of placing themselves in the same moral camp as Bashar al-Assad and ISIS for questioning Safi’s equal prioritization of fighting against Israel’s “settler colonialism” with battling Assad’s war crimes, possible genocide and the brutality of ISIS.

Misappropriating Holocaust Imagery to Demonize Israel

On April 15, 2013, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law reported that Safi "falsified a blog posting on Israel’s 1948 treatment of Palestinians at Deir Yassin by illustrating it with a photograph that was in fact taken of Jewish victims of the Nazi Holocaust." The blog was posted in the Religious News Services and titled “Zionist atrocities at Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, 65 years ago…and today.” It was reported that Safi wrote “their [Israeli] tactics have not changed.”

In addition to misappropriating a photograph of Holocaust victims for his blog post, Safi replaced the photo of Holocaust victims with scenes of other massacres, unrelated to Israel, and perpetuated a series of lies. The post was later removed for failing to meet editorial standards.

Whitewashing Terrorists to Blame Their Victims

During a 2015 wave of attacks on Israeli’s by Palestinian radicals — known variously as the “Knife Intifada” or the “Stabbing Intifada” — Safi tweeted a number of articles that blamed Israel entirely for the violence.

On October 28, 2015, Safi tweeted an article titled "5 Things to explain the intifada of the knives," which Safi claimed gave the “context” to Palestinian terrorist attacks on civilians by blaming Israel. On October 20, 2015, he tweeted “[t]wo articles to read about knife attacks in #Palestine #Israel.” Neither the first article, titled “There will be no peace until Israel’s occupation of Palestine ends, nor the second article, titled “Israeli colonisation is at the root of the violence,” mentioned the sustained Palestinian social media campaigns that incited terrorism against Jews.

Misleading to Demonize Israel

In a July 13, 2014 Facebook post, Safi referred misleadingly to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — implemented to destroy Hamas’ attack tunnels and stop Hamas’ rocket attacks from Gaza — as "[s]tate sponsored terrorism. State sponsored murder."

Safi accused Israel of "Bombing homes, mosques, hospitals, clinics for serving the disabled," — omitting that Hamas launched its rockets from from Gaza houses and repeatedly from hospitals and churches and mosques.

In an August 3, 2014 Facebook post, Safi cursed U.S. Senators who voted unanimously to fund the Israeli Iron Dome defense system against what Safi discounted as "the pathetic Hamas rockets." Safi also claimed “the Israeli army...is pounding a defenseless civilian population day in and day out.”

Spreading Anti-Israel Lies

In the May/June 2008 issue of Tikkun Magazine, in an article "A spiritual Muslim Progressive perspective on Palestine/Israel," Safi propagated the false claim that Israelis committed a “violent ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians. Safi doubled down on this libel in a July 12, 2014, article where he wrote “Palestine is Al-Nakba, ethnic cleansing since 1948.”

In a July 18, 2014 Facebook post, Safi presented a series of lies and half-truths, including the claim that Gazans are "starved" — despite Gaza having very high obesity rates. Safi also mischaracterized Gaza — under a weapons blockade, which the U.N.’s Palmer Commission found to be legal and appropriate — as under a “siege.”

Rejecting American Muslim-Jewish Dialogue as "Betrayal"

In 2015, Safi co-authored a petition calling for an immediate halt to the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute, as “a betrayal of the Palestinian People.”

MLI was founded by Imam Abdullah Antepli, the first Muslim chaplain at Duke. It is an educational program for Muslim Americans to “understand why Jews believe what they believe, how Jews see their history, why Jews are so attached to this contested strip of land (Israel) — and thus to better engage with American Jews.” According to Antepli, “MLI aims to put mainstream North American Jewry in conversation with their Muslim counterparts.”

The petition rejected the program, claiming: “MLI is now a part of the Hasbara Israeli propaganda operation,” and slammed the program as “a deliberate attempt to make Muslims more sympathetic to Zionism, and to present an anti-BDS perspective…”

The petition shunned the engagement of Muslim Americans with Israel or other institutions, unless they “promote Palestinian liberation and comply with Palestinian demands.”

The petition further pledged “to not give a platform to any MLI participant to speak about their experiences at our community centers, places of worship, and campuses and call on a complete boycott of MLI.”

On October 29, 2015, Safi wrote a column complaining that his annual invitation to an interfaith panel had been retracted following the publication of the MLI boycott petition. Safi blamed “the politics of Israel.”

Shutting Down Progressive Muslims

On April 13, 2015, Muslim-American feminist Asra Nomani reported that Safi instigated a Muslim Student Association (MSA) protest against Nomani, who was set to speak at Duke about a “progressive, feminist interpretation of Islam in the world.” The event was cancelled at first, but later reinstated, with only nine participants in attendance.

Whitewashing Professor Steven Salaita’s Hate Speech

On August 23, 2014, Safi tweeted a “[s]trong letter written in support” of anti-Semitic professor Steven Salaita. The letter, called “Antisemitism and Salaita,” whitewashed Salaita’s incitement.

On March 5, 2015, Safi also posted on Facebook a quote that referred to Salaita’s de facto firing as “a moral scandal of great proportion.”

Salaita is the Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He went there after the University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew its offer of employment for the position of professor of American Indian Studies to Salaita in 2014.

The University of Illinois (U of I) decided not to hire Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets from the Summer of 2014. One tweet Salaita posted shortly after a Hamas cell kidnapped and murdered three teenage Israeli students read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.”

A month later, Salaita tweeted, “Zionists: transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.” On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: “There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion.”

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”

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/ostadjaan/

Twitter:https://twitter.com/ostadjaan

Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omid_Safi

Huffington Post Columns:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/omid-safi

On Being Columns:http://www.onbeing.org/column/omid-safi?page=1

Youtube:https://www.youtube.com/user/hamiltonian1