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Rebecca Alpert
Rebecca Alpert [Rebecca T. Alpert] has demonized Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of November 2019, Alpert was the Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at Temple University (Temple) and a professor of Gender, Sexuality & Women’s Studies and of Religion at Temple.
Alpert is also a member of the “Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Rabbinical Council” and served as an advisor for the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in 2008-2009.
On January 18, 2017, Alpert published a blog in which she described Israel as “a theocracy in which anyone who is not Jewish is a second class citizen at best, and, at worst, a prisoner.”
Alpert went on to write that “Today I believe that to uphold Reconstructionist values I must stand, as a Jew, in solidarity with Palestinians and work with Jewish Voice for Peace to support non-violent Palestinian tactics of Boycott, Divestment and Sanction that, we hope, will persuade Israel to end the occupation. In the current climate in the Jewish world that makes me an anti-Zionist.”
On May 18, 2016, Alpert was quoted on a Facebook page called Religious Scholars for BDS, as “someone who care [sic] more about finding a just solution to the conflict than safeguarding the future of the state of Israel and therefore a dangerous person.”
On August 9, 2014, Alpert published an article on the anti-Israel website, Mondoweiss, praising members of the anti-Israel group JVP, who staged a protest against Israel’s actions during 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.
The JVP protest was outside the Jewish Federation building in Philadelphia, and protesters were arrested after refusing to leave.
Alpert expressed support for the protesters whom she wrote needed: “to tell the world that not all Jews agree with what Israel is doing now, or has been doing for the last 47 years of illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”
Alpert also wrote: “For me it’s hard to be a Jew because Israel has lost its moral compass. It’s hard to be a Jew because American Jews believe that Israel’s survival matters more than justice for the Palestinians.”
Hamas fired over 4,564 missiles and rockets, including Grad rockets, at Israeli population centers during OPE.
In May 2012, Alpert was reportedly scheduled to speak on a panel about religion at the annual Equity Forum, a week-long program exploring LGBT rights internationally, but withdrew her participation when it was announced that Israel would be the nation highlighted for its LGBT rights.
On May 8, 2012, Alpert co-authored an article with fellow anti-Israel professor Katherine Franke, who also withdrew from the conference, in which they explained their decision to boycott the conference.
The authors wrote that “we decided to boycott an event that peeled off and celebrated Israel’s good gay-rights record rather than locating it within the larger problems that plague Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. The one cannot be separated from the other in our view.”
On August 8, 2017, Alpert signed a “Rabbinic Letter Against Israel’s Travel Ban,” which specifically sought to defend those “denied entry to Israel because of…support for the Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel.”
Alpert signed a letter, authored by JVP 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.
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 2012, Alpert signed an open letter to the Presbyterian and United Methodist Churches “as members of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council to encourage your efforts to initiate phased selective divestment from corporations which profit from or support Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.”
Signatories of the letter wrote that “There is in fact a growing desire within the North American Jewish community to end our silence over Israel’s oppressive occupation of Palestine. Every day Jewish leaders – we among them – are stepping forward to express outrage over the... the choking of the Palestinian economy and daily harassment and violence against Palestinian people.”
Alpert also endorsed a BDS campaign titled: “Stolen Beauty Campaign,” conducted by Code Pink, “against the Israeli cosmetics manufacturer Ahava Dead Sea Laboratories.”
Alpert and other signatories of the campaign wrote that “we join with hundreds of Palestinian civil society groups and many international organizations committed to pressuring Israel into adherence with international and human rights law.”
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.
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 infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. 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 and pro-terror activism on campus.
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP."
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
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