Osamah Khalil

He is also an Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor, as well as a co-founder and former co-director of Al-Shabaka.

Khalil was the interim director of Syracuse’s Middle East Studies department for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Demonizing Israel

In a panel discussion published to Youtube on May 18. 2018, Khalil accused Israel of being an apartheid state.

On March 21, 2013, Khalil published an article in which he referred to the “Nakba — the ethnic cleansing ahead of Israel’s foundation.”

In an article published on December 10, 2010, Khalil wrote “sustaining Israel's occupation and settlement policy is paramount to its politicians and military leaders. Since Israel's occupation began in June 1967, successive Israeli governments have placed a priority on colonizing the Palestinian territories.”

In an article published on October 7, 2009, Khalil condemned Palestinian leaders for their failure to “truly challenge the occupation and Israel’s system of apartheid.”

In the same article, Khalil went on to accuse Israel of “The use of white phosphorous and flechette bombs, indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas, use of human shields, and the list goes on.”

On January 23, 2008, Khalil wrote an article in which he claimed that “Israel pounded Gaza killing over 40 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians” and charged Israel with the “death and destruction unleashed on impoverished Gaza.”

Khalil went on to trivialize terrorism emanating from Gaza, characterizing rocket fire as “a convenient excuse to pursue punishing attacks and tighten its siege of the territory.”

Blaming Israel for the Conflict

On July 30, 2014, Khalil appeared in an interview alongside anti-Israel activist and former PLO advisor Diana Buttu. During the interview, Khalil charged that “For more than a decade, Netanyahu has consistently worked to scuttle the peace process and has not been shy about his role in derailing negotiations.”

In the same interview, Khalil stated that “Netanyahu also hopes to finally kill the peace process and the two-state solution. By undermining Palestinian unity and maintaining a geographical and political divide between the West Bank and Gaza, Netanyahu believes that he can end Palestinian aspirations for statehood and with it the Palestinian national movement.”

Khalil’s charges recycled claims he made in an article published on December 21, 2010, in which he analyzed the failure of the Peace Process between Israelis and Palestinians.

Khalil wrote there that “Guaranteeing that this policy retread will fail is Netanyahu himself… Netanyahu relied on allies in the US Congress to shield him while he worked to derail the fledgling Oslo peace process — a strategy he will adopt again.”

Khalil also blamed Israel for the failure to reach a peace agreement in another article, in which he argued that “Israel’s settlement policy perpetuates its occupation of the Palestinian territories and undermines American attempts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”

In yet another article, Khalil blamed “Israeli settlers” for the failure to reach a peace agreement, charging that “settler attacks against Palestinians are not only routine, but escalating... These acts often go unpunished by the Israeli authorities, which serves to further embolden the settlers and encourage further acts of violence.”

Supporting BDS

Khalil 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.  

Khalil also signed a controversial petition submitted to the American Historical Association (AHA) in 2014, which alleged that “Israel arbitrarily limits the entry of foreign nationals who seek to lecture, teach and attend conferences at Palestinian universities” and that “Israel restricts the right to lecture or teach at Palestinian universities.”

The petition went on to demand that “that the U.S. Department of State honor the academic freedom of U.S. citizens by contesting Israel’s denials of entry of U.S. academics who have been invited to teach, confer, or do research at Palestinian universities.”

Khalil appeared on a roundtable discussion, published on April 11, 2011, in which participants agreed that “All forms of resistance can be used intelligently and with purpose.” Specifically, participants discussed the effectiveness of BDS and of “armed resistance.”

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:https://www.maxwell.syr.edu/hist/Khalil,_Osamah/