Rachel Rubin
Overview
Rachel Rubin [Rachel Lee Rubin] has defended campus anti-Israel activists, endorsed anti-Israel agitators and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.Rubin has also expressed support for anti-Israel activist Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, who is affiliated with Hamas as well as for convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
Rubin is Department Chair and Professor of American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB).
Defending Campus Anti-Israel Activists
Rubin signed a 2017 letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization, condemning a decision by Fordham University (Fordham)’s dean 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.
In April 2016, Rubin signed an open letter to McGraw-Hill Education calling upon the publisher to reverse its decision to withdraw and destroy textbooks that contained a series of anti-Israel propaganda maps.
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.
Signatories of the letter accused the publishers of committing a “blatant act of censorship” and claimed: “The maps in question are historically accurate and vividly illustrate Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land, which is why the Israeli government and its supporters wish to suppress them.”
The letter went on to state: “it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.”
Endorsing Anti-Israel Agitators
In March 2019, Rubin signed a petition expressing support for U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar.The petition went on to state that “As long as the Israeli state continues to militarily besiege, economically choke, and incessantly dispossess the Palestinian people, and as long as it does so with the full backing of the United States government, we need to speak out against these crimes. We thank Ilhan Omar for having the bravery to shake up the congressional taboo against criticizing Israel.”
Rubin signed a petition, expressing support for anti-Israel activist, Lara Alqasem, demanding that the Israeli government permit her into the country.
In October 2018, Alqasem was detained at Ben Gurion airport after trying to enter Israel, because of her anti-Israel activism and, specifically, her support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Alqasem was granted entry into Israel after appealing to the Israeli Supreme Court.
Supporting BDS
Rubin signed a petition, published on March 27, 2014, “in support of the academic boycott of Israel.”Signatories of the 2014 petition claimed that “Israeli universities—almost all of them state institutions—are demonstrably complicit with egregious violations of Palestinian human rights.” Signatories of the petition also committed to “ceasing to collaborate with and support state institutions that perpetuate human rights violations.”
Supporting Imad Ahmad Barghouthi
Rubin signed an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in support of professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, that was co-published in May 2016 by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).The letter called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu “to order the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody.”
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.
Supporting Rasmea Odeh
Rubin signed a petition, authored by the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada 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.
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/rachel.l.rubin
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Massachusetts-Boston
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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