Rush Rehm

Overview

Rush Rehm has defended anti-Israel activism on campus and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Rehm is a professor of Theater & Performing Studies and of Classics at Stanford University (Stanford).

Defending Anti-Israel Activism on Campus

Rehm is a member of the California Scholars for Academic Freedom (cs4af), who signed an open letter, published by the group on June 27, 2014, to the Los Angeles City Council.

The letter supported an allegation that the Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Hasbara Fellowships work to “lobby student leaders and council members through free trips and other in-kind gifts as a means of buying loyalty and influencing student council votes.”

The signatories defended a pledge proposed for candidates in student body elections at UCLA, committing them not to participate in trips to Israel funded by AIPAC, the ADL and Hasbara Fellowships.

The letter also condemned the Blumenfield Resolution, a piece of legislation which outlawed the pledge as an effort to “harass” and “intimidate” pro-Israel candidates for student government and urged the university to develop policies and institute practices at every UC campus to outlaw “intimidation or harassment of any student.”

Rehm also signed a letter, authored by cs4af, to SFSU President Leslie Wong and the California State University (CSU) Board of Trustees, defending anti-Israel activism on campus, which it characterized as an expression of “academic freedom” and “the free exchange of ideas.”

The letter went on to argue that “The conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism has become a standard tactic by... those who seek to censor criticism of Israel” and “That tactic itself is fundamentally anti-Semitic because it associates with Jewishness an unending list of well-documented racist policies and crimes against humanity committed by the state of Israel.”

Supporting BDS

Rehm signed an open letter published on April 19, 2015, condemning the decision to feature French intellectual Monique Canto-Sperber as the keynote speaker of a “Night of Philosophy” event, because of her pro-Israel activism.

Signatories of the letter stated that “we find it incumbent upon ourselves to register our profound disappointment and to protest in the strongest terms possible that one of the key people you have selected to promote free speech at your Night of Philosophy has been an open practitioner of denying the same to Palestinians and their supporters.”

In February 2015, Rehm signed a petition of Stanford Professors authored by Stanford out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP), calling upon Stanford “to stop investing in companies that profit from the occupation of Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.”

In August 2012, cs4af published another open letter, which Rehm signed, to California Assembly Members, opposing a piece of anti-BDS legislation.

That cs4af letter argued that BDS, descriptions of Israel as “an apartheid state” and accusations against Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity” do not constitute anti-Semitism and should be protected on campus.

Rehm signed an open letter to United States President Barack Obama, published on January 12, 2009.

The letter, published by the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI), accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and concluded that “Israel too maintains an apartheid regime.”

After charging Israel with inflicting “one of the most massive, ethnocidal atrocities of modern times,” the signatories called upon President Obama to join in the BDS movement.

Rehm also signed a statement, authored by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and published on August 4, 2006.

The statement appealed “to all artists and filmmakers of good conscience around the world to cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are scheduled to occur 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.

 

Social Media and Weblinks

University Website:https://classics.stanford.edu/people/rush-rehm