Salah Hassan

Overview

Salah Hassan [Salah D. Hassan] is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and a member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)’s "Organizing Collective." Hassan has discouraged colleagues from attending academic conferences in Israel and has attempted to whitewash the nature of BDS movement, calling it a “progressive tendency” in academia.

Hassan is also a member of the American Studies Association (ASA) and its Activism and Community Caucus (ASA Caucus). In 2012, the ASA Caucus proposed a resolution calling for an academic boycott of Israel, which was later adopted at the ASA Conference in 2013.

Hassan is an associate professor of English at Michigan State University (MSU).

Vowing to Defy French Anti-Discrimination Laws

In January 2016, Hassan signed a USACBI petition "in support of the right to call for a boycott of Israeli goods in France." Signatories of the petition vowed to defy France’s highest appeal court’s decision to prohibit the boycott of Israeli goods.

The petition was launched in response to a French court ruling that found a number of BDS promoters guilty of inciting hate or discrimination in October 2015. The twelve defendants had, on two occasions, handed out leaflets at a French supermarket stating, “buying Israeli products means legitimizing crimes in Gaza.” The defendants had worn t-shirts on which were the words, “Long live Palestine, boycott Israel.”

Spreading Lies to Demonize Israel

On July 24, 2012, Hassan urged his Facebook followers to read NYU professor Nikhil Pal Singh’s account of his USACBI trip to Israel and the West Bank. In seven instances in the same account, Nikhil lied that Israel practices “apartheid.” He also lied that Palestinians are not allowed to live in Area C of the West Bank, and propagated the historically and currently false claim that Israelis are committing an “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.” Nikhil misleadingly presented the demolition of terrorists’ homes and eviction of Palestinian squatters in East Jerusalem — who often illegally inhabit the ruins of decimated Jewish communities — as an example of Israeli “brutality.”

Nikhil — demonizing Israel in a display of modern anti-Semitism — went on to suggest that contemporary Israeli social and political policies are inhuman, “totalitarian” — and akin to that of the Nazis.

Nikhil also cynically disparaged Israeli security measures, adopted to combat an onslaught of daily Palestinian terror attacks, as a pretext to oppress Palestinians.

Advocating for Anti-Semitic Professor Steven Salaita

In November of 2015 Hassan advocated for the University of Illinois (U of I) to reinstate Steven Salaita, who is now the Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Salaita went to AUB after U of I withdrew an offer of employment to him, upon becoming aware of Salaita’s anti-Semitic tweets from the Summer of 2014.

One tweet Salaita posted, shortly after a Hamas cell kidnappedand murdered three Israeli high-school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” A month later, Salaita tweeted, "Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”

Encouraging BDS on U.S. Campuses and Academic Journals 

On January 17, 2015, Hassan tweeted that his followers, if they were members of the Modern Language Association (MLA), should join MLA Members for Justice in Palestine and boycott Israeli academic institutions.

In October of 2013, Hassan was also one of eleven professors to chastise the Journal of Academic Freedom for publishing a series of essays opposing the academic boycott of Israeli institutions in an attempt to counter-balance pro-boycott essays.

In February 2015, Hassan signed a USACBI “Statement of Academics and Activists in Support of Divestment at UC Davis.” The statement praised Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of California, Davis (SJP UC Davis) for passing a BDS resolution, and slammed UC Davis Chancellor, Linda P.B. Katehi, for refusing to enforce the divestment resolution.

The letter also misleadingly described SJP UC Davis as a "grassroots, anti-racist student movement made up of a diverse coalition of students calling for global justice."

Supporting Terror-Inciter Khader Adnan

Hassan is a supporter of [Khader Adnan].(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khader_Adnan)

Khader Adnan was a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. A 2007 YouTube video showed Adnan praising and encouraging suicide bombings: "Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?” In May 2023, Adnan died in prison after refusing medical treatment during a hunger strike.

On February 20, 2012, Hassan shared a petition on Facebook called “Scholars in Solidarity with Khader Adnan.” The petition, which Hassan signed, demanded — deceptively — the “immediate release of Palestinian baker and political prisoner Khader Adnan.”

At the time Hassan shared the petition, Adnan had already ceased his hunger strike and Israeli authorities agreed to release him in mid-April, if no major new evidence were to be brought against him.

On February 19, 2012, Hassan shared on Facebook a video of a “Belfast vigil for Khader Adnan,” which was featured on the anti-Israel propaganda site Electronic Intifada (EI). The video featured Irish activists calling for Adnan’s release and compared him to Irish hunger-strikers. One day earlier, Hassan shared an article on Facebook that compared Adnan to deceased hunger-striker Bobby Sandsof the Irish Republican Army.

Misrepresenting Judaism to Invoke Anti-Israel Sentiment

On December 10, 2012, Hassan posted a picture on Facebook that showed a synagogue with a sign that claimed — fraudulently — "Judaism Doesn’t Support Zionism." The caption to the picture stated “Don't confuse Judaism with Zionism.”

Zionism — the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination and the right to develop their national culture in their ancestral homeland — is a central tenet of Jewish identity for many of the religion’s followers.

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/SalahDHassan

Twitter:https://twitter.com/salahdhassan

Vimeo:https://vimeo.com/user5243540

University Website: https://people.cal.msu.edu/hassans3/