Robert Vitalis
Overview
Robert Vitalis promoted the Hamas terror group’s military wing on Facebook and spoke at a pro-Hamas rally in October 2023. Both incidents happened after a series of Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians that left over 1,400 dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”Vitalis was affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) student group Fossil Free Penn when it signed a statement in support of the Hamas war crimes in October 2023.
Vitalis has also spread hatred of Israel and is a supporter [p. 7] of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of October 2023, Vitalis was a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn).
As of the same date, Vitalis’s LinkedIn profile said he was located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Support for the Hamas Terror Group
On October 23, 2023, during Israel’s Swords of Iron against Hamas, Vitalis showed support for Hamas on Facebook. He posted a photo of a patch with the logo of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas.Vitalis wrote in his post: “A quick and easy way to reduce my friends list (and it will look cool on your jacket too).”
On October 16, 2023, Vitalis spoke at a pro-Hamas event on the Penn campus.
On October 16, 2023, Penn professors and students staged a “walkout” in support of a On October 16, 2023, Penn professors and students staged a “walkout” in support of a Hamas invasion of Israel earlier that month, where Hamas murdered over 1,400 people and executed war crimes against civilians. One professor led [00:00:03] the chant: “When people are occupied, resistance is justified!” Palestinians and anti-Israel activists often use the term “resistance” as a euphemism for nationalistic terror and to glorify anti-Semitic violence.
Another professor claimed [00:00:07] Israel “desecrates the memory of the Nazi Holocaust” and “humiliates every Jewish person.” At least one speaker accused [00:00:48] Israel of “genocide.” Penn Against the Occupation (PAO) organized the protest, titled: “Collective Walkout for Palestine,” where participants walked out of classes to the rally on campus. The protest aimed to “protest the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and stand in solidarity with Palestine.”
Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ social media for families to see.
As of October 29, 2023, over 1,400 Israelis, the vast majority being civilians, had reportedly been murdered during the attacks three weeks earlier. Details are below. Hamas kidnapped an estimated 230 Israelis, including 30 children. Over 3,000 were wounded, many severely. As of the same date, over 8,000 missiles had been fired from Gaza at Israeli communities, with Hamas claiming 5,000 the day it launched the attack.
Hamas began by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and using motorized paragliders “to infiltrate Israeli territory and secure terrain.” Terrorist ground forces destroyed parts of the border fence with Gaza, murdering and kidnapping soldiers.
The terrorists then turned their attention to 22 communities around Gaza, where they went house to house to savagely murder, mutilate and kidnap anyone they found. They executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. They also beheaded children and babies, and massacred entire families, burning some alive who hid in their homes. Hamas terrorists kicked around the heads of beheaded victims like soccer balls. Israelis between the ages of three and 85 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross access to the hostages.
Over 260 unarmed young men and women were surrounded and slaughtered at one music festival alone. Bodies were publicly desecrated, with some dragged through the streets of Gaza, then beheaded. Women were raped next to the bodies of dead friends.
Forensic analysis of dead bodies showed evidence of torture and rape. Hamas terrorists said they were given explicit orders to carry out the atrocities, including chopping off victims’ legs and raping corpses. Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.
The atrocities were acknowledged as the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, including by U.S. President Biden, who also compared Hamas to ISIS. Hamas attacked on the annual holiday of Simchat Torah, which that year was on Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath.
The Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians are crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The mass murder generated great sympathy for Israel from many countries but led to countless celebrations among Palestinians and anti-Israel organizations in America that back the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In addition, Hamas called the the October 7, 2023 terror attacks “Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.
Affiliated With a Group Supporting Hamas War Crimes
Vitalis was also affiliated with Fossil Free Penn when it signed a statement in support of the Hamas war crimes in October 2023. The statement was dated October 11, 2023, and on October 24, 2023, his Facebook profile photo showed him wearing a Fossil Free Penn sweatshirt.The statement began [slide 2]: “We, the undersigned, write this statement in support of Palestinians who are fighting to liberate their lands from the Israeli Occupation.” The statement also said [slide 2] the groups “unequivocally condemn” Israel’s retaliatory strikes against Hamas, asserted [slide 5] that Palestinians had the “right to resist” Israel “by any means necessary” and claimed [slide 4]: “Israel bears sole responsibility for the violence” since Hamas invaded Israel.
Hatred of Israel and Anti-Israel Activism (JVP, BDS)
On October 15, 2023, during Israel’s Swords of Iron against Hamas, Vitalis updated his Facebook cover photo to an image that said: “Nakba since 1948.”The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
In November 2014, Vitalis spoke at a panel at Penn that characterized Israel as a “Liberal Settler State” and accused Israel of “colonization” and of maintaining a “colonial regime” through a “draconian military government.”
On July 31, 2014, Vitalis signed his name to an open letter addressed to then-United States President Barack Obama demanding that Obama withdraw all aid to Israel. The letter was authored and signed by American historians and it accused Israel of “war crimes” and demanded “a permanent end to the blockade” of Gaza.
The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.
The open letter that Vitalis signed was during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas.
Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
In March 2011, Vitalis signed his name to a petition titled: “Divest from Israeli Occupation.” The petition was authored by the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
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/bob.vitalis.7 [Deleted]University Website:https://live-sas-www-polisci.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/standing-faculty/robert-vitalis
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-vitalis-1677b118/
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Pennsylvania
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Ian Lustick,
- Anne Norton,
- Abdulrahman Alwattar,
- Aziz Jalil,
- Ania Loomba,
- Last Modified:
- 09/16/2024
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