Raymond Baker
Overview
Raymond Baker [Raymond William Baker] has demonized Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.Baker is a professor of International Politics at Trinity College (Trinity) and an adjunct professor at American University in Cairo. He also heads the Middle East Studies program at Trinity.
Demonizing Israel
On October 11, 2016, Baker published a Facebook post, writing: “Tormenting and humiliating Palestinian civilians has become official policy in Israel.”Baker went on to paraphrase controversial journalist Gideon Levy: “Stop living in denial, Israel is an evil state Israel may not be Nazi, nor even a fascist state. Yet it is a member of the same terrible family, the family of evil states. Just consider these acts of evil perpetrated by the state...”
On September 29. 2016, Baker wrote a Facebook post slamming then-recently deceased: former Israeli Prime Minister and leader, Shimon Peres. In his post, Baker wrote, “Israel boasts an astonishing array of war criminals as national leaders…”
In a Facebook post published on September 24, 2016, Baker wrote: “The movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel's brutal colonial, settler regime on occupied Palestinian lands is registering success after success. Non-violence in certain circumstances does work.”
In July of 2014, Baker signed an open letter to Israeli academics, which claimed that “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.”
The letter Baker signed 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.
Supporting BDS
Baker signed a letter, authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voices 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.Signatories specifically defended SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing their efforts to boycott Israel as “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression” and went on to demand 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.”
Baker also signed his name to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
On September 8, 2016, Baker shared a link on his Facebook page to an article reporting on the spread of BDS in Spain. Baker commented: “The BDS movement may well be the turning point. After decades of mindless support for Israeli settlement building on Palestinian land (aka colonization) mass publics finally have an effective non-violent way to respond effectively.”
In January 2014, Baker signed an open letter to slamming Trinity College’s (Trinity) President and Dean for their condemnation of the passage of a piece of BDS legislation by the American Studies Association (ASA).
Signatories of the letter charged that “the Israeli system has disenfranchised the totality of occupied Palestinians and has reduced the democratic rights of Palestinian Arabs who live in Israel.”
The letter went on to state that “Your silence on this deep attack on the rights of Palestinians to an education indicates that the principle that motivates your letter is not academic freedom. If it were, you would certainly have expressed your concern about the violation of the academic freedom of an entire population since at least 1967.”
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/raymond.baker.969
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Trinity
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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