Rebecca Comay

Overview

Rebecca Comay justified Hamas terrorist war crimes in October 2023 and showed support for the pro-Hamas protest encampment at the University of Toronto (UofT) in June and July 2024.

Comay has also spread hatred of Israel, engaged in anti-Israel activism and opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Comay’s activism took place during Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists. Israel launched the war, called called “Swords of Iron,” after a series of Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. The atrocities were executed on October 7, 2023, and left approximately 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded.

Comay has been active in the Modern Language Association (MLA) to get it to adopt a resolution in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of July 2024, Comay was listed on the UofT website as the director of the Literary Studies Program and a professor of philosophy and comparative literature. Comay was also listed as an associate member of UofT’s Centre for Jewish Studies and the Germanic Languages and Literature Department. She was located at the university’ St. George campus (UTSG), which is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Also as of July 2024, Comay served on the steering committee of the “Hearing Palestine” initiative at UofT, which states that its mission is to “Provide an intellectual hub for the study of Palestine.”

Comay also was listed online as a professor of philosophy at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland.

Comay received a PhD in philosophy from UofT in 1986. She received a master’s degree in Egyptology and Assyriology from Yale University (Yale).

Justifying Hamas Terrorist War Crimes

On October 26, 2023, weeks after an unprecedented massacre of Israeli Jews by Hamas terrorists, Comay was listed as a signatory of a statement in “solidarity with the people of Palestine.” The statement said: “We stand with their anticolonial struggle for freedom and for self-determination, and with their right to resist occupation.”

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

The statement also said: “Israel’s war against Gaza is an attempt to conduct genocide against the Palestinian people. This war did not begin on October 7th…Gaza is the world’s largest open-air prison.”
 
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation. 

June 2024 - Participated in an Anti-Israel Ceremony at UofT Encampment

Comay reportedly participated [slide 8] in an anti-Israel ceremony organized by the UofT encampment on June 3, 2024, graduation day at UofT. Protesters held the event to “honor all of those who could not graduate because of the genocide their university is funding.”

The ceremony was organized by UofT Occupy for Palestine, which according to their Instagram is a body of “Students calling for divestment from entities sustaining the attacks on Gaza + the occupation, apartheid, and illegal settlements of Palestine.”

On May 2, 2024, UofT Occupy for Palestine (Occupy UofT) activists “stormed down” fencing around UofT’s Kings College Circle and set up a pro-Hamas and pro-BDS encampment called the “People’s Circle for Palestine.” Protesters chanted [00:02:59] for “intifada” and celebrated “resistance” [00:02:45]. Both terms are calls for terrorism. Activists chanted [00:01:28; 00:02:21] for Israel’s destruction multiple times.

After the October 7, 2023 massacre of nearly 1,200 Israelis, the inverted red triangle -  - became a Hamas symbol. It appeared on large signs at the encampment and was featured in other encampment-related activism. Openly pro-Hamas marches began elsewhere in the city and ended at the encampment. In one incident, pro-Hamas activists punched a Jewish man, stole his Israeli flag and shouted anti-Semitic slurs.

July 2024 - Pro-BDS Encampment Petition

Comay showed support for the pro-Hamas protest encampment at UofT in July 2024.

As of July 2024, Comay showed support for the encampment by signing on to a statement put out by UofT community members. The May 20, 2024 statement was part of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The statement backed all the encampment’s demands, including divesting from the alleged “apartheid policies of the state of Israel and its ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

To show support, Comay submitted a “support selfie,” where text beside her face said: “DISCLOSE. DIVEST. CUT TIES.” Comay’s selfie also featured her holding a handwritten sign that said: “DISCLOSE / DIVEST / CUT TIES.”

Hatred of Israel

Comay signed a November 1, 2023 statement titled: “Philosophy for Palestine.” The statement claimed that Israel was established “as an ethno-supremacist state” and also accused Israel of “apartheid”and an “unfolding genocide” in Gaza.

The statement said that a ceasefire by Israel “must—be the beginning and not the end of collective action for liberation” and that “If there is to be justice and peace, the siege of Gaza must end, the blockade must end and the occupation must end.”

Comay signed a July 5, 2021 petition titled: “Film Forum: Don't Whitewash Apartheid,” which claimed: “The Israeli government uses cultural funding in order to whitewash and distract from its program of apartheid and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

The petition referenced an Israeli operation against terrorists in Gaza in May 2021, alleging: “To call Israel’s attacks on Gaza a ‘war’ is a grotesque misrepresentation.”

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

The petition Comay signed also said: “Right now, Israel is in the process of evicting over 1500 Palestinians from the Silwan neighborhood in East Jerusalem.”

Jewish ownership claims to lands in Silwan, a Jerusalem neighborhood also known as Shiloach, have been frequently met with Palestinian violence against Israelis who sought to reclaim their property rights.

Comay signed a May 19, 2021 petition written during OGW that accused Israel of “settler colonialism,” and of having “ethnic cleansing and apartheid policies.” The petition also called “for the recognition of a Free Palestine and an immediate end to Israel’s attacks on the Palestinian people in the West Bank, Gaza and Sheik Jarrah.”

In May 2021, Palestinian violence erupted in anticipation of an Israel High Court ruling on eviction proceedings concerning over 70 Palestinian tenants illegally residing in Jewish-owned properties in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. 

On December 10, 2016, Comay co-authored a pro-BDS opinion piece titled: “Responding to the Call (to Endorse the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions).” The piece promoted BDS and accused Israel of “racist and draconian policies, from racial profiling to the notorious apartheid wall.”

Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

Comay was listed as a 2016 signatory to an open letter that promoted BDS, accused Israel of “war crimes” and endorsed the “right of return.”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

Comay signed a February 10, 2023 letter written on behalf of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) in support of Lara Sheehi, a former professor at George Washington University (GWU). Sheehi faced accusations the prior month by students that she promoted anti-Semitism and violence against Israelis in her classes. Sheehi left GWU the following year and accepted a faculty position at a graduate school in Doha, Qatar.

On January 7, 2017, a proposed BDS resolution drafted by Comay and David Lloyd, Resolution 2017-2, was voted on at the 2017 MLA Annual Convention in Philadelphia. The MLA’s Delegate Assembly rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1, which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS.

In June 2017, the MLA adopted 2017-1 by a 2-1 margin following a full membership vote. Comay then signed a statement condemning the MLA’s adoption of the anti-BDS resolution, which it characterized as “support for the Israeli occupation of Palestine.”

Comay signed a July 26, 2016 “Open letter regarding UofT partnerships” that opposed the academic partnership between UofT and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On June 26, 2016, Comay wrote on Facebook that she participated in an “MLA fact-finding delegation” to Israel. The MLA delegation took place [p. 4] from June 15-22, 2016. Comay shared a Birzeit University post which said that the delegation met with members of the “Right to Education” Campaign on June 18, 2016, and that the delegation was “part of attempts to advocate for a boycott resolution by the MLA that will be proposed next winter.”

On March 7, 2016, Comay was quoted in the UofT student newspaper, The Varsity, as saying that there is a “growing consensus among faculty about the urgent need for divestment from companies profiting from the military occupation of Palestine.”

Beginning in 2014, Comay led a four-year effort, with anti-Israel professors Lloyd, David Palumbo-Liu, and Bruce Robbins, to pressure the MLA to adopt a BDS resolution that would “commit the MLA as a body to withholding its consent to any organizational collaboration with Israeli universities or to any formal or official ties with Israeli scholarly associations that act as representatives of the Israeli state.”

Opposing the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

Comay was listed as a signatory on a February 2020 “Open Letter from 650+ Canadian Academics Opposing the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism.” The letter was authored by the anti-Israel group Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV). She signed two other petitions against the IHRA in 2021.


The IHRA lists as another definition of contemporary anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

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.

X: https://x.com/rebeccacomay [Deleted]