Rosaura Sanchez

Overview

Rosaura Sanchez is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, for which she has advocated in writing and in a promotional video.

In her writing, Sanchez has referred to Israel as a settler colonialist state.

Sanchez is a professor of Literature at University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

Demonizing Israel

In 2014, Sanchez co-authored an article with Beatrice Pita entitled: “Rethinking Settler Colonialism.”

In the article, the authors compared “nineteenth-century settler colonialism in the United States and Israeli twenty-first-century settler colonialism on the West Bank” and called for “an end to US support of Israel.”

On December 3, 2012, Sanchez co-authored an open letter with Charles Thorpe and Luis Martin-Cabrera, again calling for an end of U.S. military aid to Israel. In the letter, the authors accuse Israel of enacting “apartheid policies toward Palestinians.”

Support for BDS

Sanchez penned a personal statement, published on September 27, 2016, calling for the Modern Language Association (MLA) to join the academic boycott of Israel. In it, Sanchez stated that “I would like to urge all MLA members to heed the call to support the academic boycott of Israeli institutions in view of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and apartheid policies in historic Palestine.”

The statement was also used by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), in a Facebook post on December 27, 2016, supporting the broader campaign to boycott Israeli academia.

On January 5, 2017, Sanchez was featured in a video, promoting the MLA boycott of Israel.

In July of 2011, Sanchez signed another petition, authored and published by USACBI, denouncing Israel’s law which forbid BDS activity in Israel. The petition stated, “We… reiterate our support and endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. We stand by our friends who will be legally subject to this draconian bill, which seeks to further deligitimize the non-violent struggle against Israeli apartheid.”

The petition went on to accuse Israel of executing “policies of ethnic cleansing since before 1948.”

On March 31, 2009, Sanchez signed a petition discouraging the University of California from partnering with Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI).

The petition claimed, with no supporting evidence, that HUJI “has a longstanding and documented record of discriminating against Palestinian students, even those who are citizens of Israel” and suggested that “Arab-American (and especially Palestinian-American) and Muslim-American UC students who might want to participate in a UC EAP in Israel would encounter disabling forms of discrimination and a generally hostile anti-Arab and anti-Muslim environment in Israel.”

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.