Omnia El-Shakry
Overview
Omnia El-Shakry has defended anti-Zionism on campus and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.She has expressed support for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh and has defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.
El-Shakry is a professor in the Department of History at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis).
Defending Anti-Zionism on Campus
El-Shakry signed a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP) organization, opposing the inclusion of anti-Zionism as an “intolerant position” in the University of California (UC)’s proposed “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance.”Signatories of the letter argued that “The definition of ‘anti-Zionism’ as intolerance and/or bigotry is vague and overbroad” and stated that “We believe that this formulation is now being revived by seeking to include ‘anti-Zionism’ as a form of bigotry and intolerance, and we urge you to reject that view.”
Supporting BDS
El-Shakry signed a statement of University of California faculty, published on March 9, 2015, calling on the university “to refrain from investing in certain companies that openly assist the Israeli government and army in the occupation of Palestine.”On November 14, 2014, El-Shakry signed a declaration titled: “Faculty Support Student-Workers of UAW 2865 in Standing in Solidarity with Palestinian Students and Workers and Voting YES on BDS December 4th!”
In signing the petition, El-Shakry and others called upon the university and UAW International “to divest their investments, including pension from Israeli state institutions and international companies complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations, and on the US government to end military aid to Israel.”
El-Shakry signed her name to British Committee for Universities of Palestine online document titled “A Statement of Determination to Boycott Israel.”
On August 6, 2014, El-Shakry signed the “Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia.”
In signing this petition, El-Shakry and others committed “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.”
El-Shakry also signed her name to a list of endorsers of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
El-Shakry signed an open letter to United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, dated July 31, 2014, condemning “the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”
The letter exclusively blamed Israel for the Gazan civilian crisis and called upon the administration “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”
The letter was in response to Operation Protective Edge (OPE).
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
On January 30, 2014, El-Shakry signed an open letter ”to express our profound disagreement with the Chancellor’s and Provost’s published opposition to the American Studies Association’s endorsement of the boycotting of Israeli universities as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.”
In April 2010, El-Shakry signed a petition calling on the University of California (UC) to pass a piece of BDS legislation. Signatories of the petition stated “We stand united in support of the right of the Palestinian people to be free of the repression and violence that the Israeli military policy is inflicting upon them.”
El-Shakry signed another open letter, titled “Resisting American Zionism,” published on March 31, 2009. The letter opposed the reinstitution of UC’s 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.”
El-Shakry signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama, published on January 12, 2009.
The letter, published by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and concluded that “Israel too maintains an apartheid regime.”
After charging Israel with inflicting “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times,” the signatories called upon Obama to join in the BDS movement.
Supporting Rasmea Odeh
El-Shakry signed a petition, authored by the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada website and published on October 24, 2014, expressing support for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.
In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.
On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.
Defending Steven Salaita
El-Shakry signed a petition published on August 21, 2014, by the BDS movement titled:“A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic.] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school 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.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.
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
University Website:http://history.ucdavis.edu/people/omniae
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- California-Davis
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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