Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Sarah Abrevaya Stein has defended campus anti-Israel activists and expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Abrevaya Stein is a professor of History, the Maurice Amado Endowed Chair in Sephardic Studies, & Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).    

Defending Campus Anti-Israel Activists

Abrevaya Stein signed a 2017 letter, authored by the anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), condemning a decision by Fordham University (Fordham)’s dean to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham. 

In 2016, Fordham reportedly blocked the formation of a Fordham SJP chapter “based on the reported behavior of other [SJP] chapters on other campuses,” indicating that “the establishment of a local branch could be ‘polarizing’ and pose a safety concern to students and faculty.”

Signatories demanded that Fordham “immediately rescind the rejection of SJP as a student group on campus, apologize to the students affected by this harmful decision, and reaffirm Fordham’s commitment to free speech and academic freedom.” 

The petitioners also highlighted SJP’s BDS activity, characterizing SJP’s efforts to promote anti-Israel boycott as part of “a time-honored non-violent mode of political expression.” The petition accused Fordham’s administration of a “fundamental misunderstanding of what boycotts are, the purpose of a university, and the goals of SJP.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in cooperation with Palestine Legal (PL), and civil rights attorney Alan Levine sued Fordham on behalf of four students in April 2017. A New York court annulled Fordham’s decision in August 2019, mandating that the university recognize SJP as an official club. 
 
Fordham appealed the ruling to the NY State Supreme Court Appellate Division in January 2020. On July 24, 2020, Fordham SJP students filed a brief asking the appellate court to deny Fordham’s appeal of the lower court’s decision.
 
As of October 2020, a variety of groups, not directly involved in the case, filed amicus briefs with the Appellate Division for the court's consideration including JVP. 

Supporting BDS

Abrevaya Stein signed a petition of Jewish scholars, published by Mondoweiss on March 12, 2017, condemning the Israeli government’s anti-BDS legislation. 

Signatories of the letter charged that Israel “joins a growing wave of anti-democratic… regimes the world over,” and threatened to abstain from traveling to Israel in protest against the new law.

Abrevaya Stein also signed a petition, published in 2014, condemning a list published by the AMCHA Initiative of professors “who recently called for the academic boycott of Israel.”

The AMCHA Initiative “is a non-profit organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, educating about, and combating antisemitism at institutions of higher education in America.”

The petition Abrevaya Stein signed also criticized an AMCHA report that “tracked antisemitic discourse and anti-Israel bias in public events sponsored by UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies (CNES).”

The petition Abrevaya Stein signed described AMCHA’s “technique of monitoring lectures, symposia and conferences” as “designed to stifle debate.” 

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.