Shari Stone-Mediatore

Overview

Shari Stone-Mediatore has defended anti-Israel activists, expressed support for anti-Israel activist Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, who is affiliated with Hamas and has promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Stone-Mediatore is a Professor of Philosophy at Ohio Wesleyan University (OWU).    

Defending Anti-Israel Activists

In January 2019, Stone-Mediatore signed a petition expressing support for anti-Israel activist, Angela Davis, claiming that “the deliberate conflation of criticisms of the government of Israel with anti-Semitism serves, not to defend, but only to undermine respect for human dignity” because “criticism of the Israeli government is not anti-Semitic.”

Stone-Mediatore also signed a 2017 letter condemning a decision by Fordham University’s dean to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter on campus. The letter was authored by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization.

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 Imad Ahmad Barghouthi

Stone-Mediatore signed an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in support of Professor Imad Ahmad Barghouthi, that was co-published in May 2016 by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). 

The letter called upon Prime Minister Netanyahu “to order the immediate release of Dr. Imad Ahmad Barghouthi from Israeli military custody.”

Palestinian Astrophysicist Professor Imad Barghouthi of Al Quds University was sentenced in 2016 to seven months in prison for incitement to violence.

Barghouthi is a vocal supporter of Hamas's military wing — the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — and has called for killing and being killed in the name of Islam.

An October 22, 2014 video showed Barghouthi at an Al-Quds university Hamas rally, draped in a Hamas banner, [00:00:33] urging students to design precision guided missiles, and sniper rifles as [00:01:11] “weapons ofthe resistance” to [00:02:35] kill “zionist soldiers” in their bedrooms.

Promoting BDS

In May 2018, Stone-Mediatore signed a petition, authored by CodePink, condemning a piece of Israeli legislation that barred BDS activists from entering Israel. 

Signatories of the petition claimed that “Since the founding of Israel, Palestinian refugees have been the denied the right to return to their homes and lands” and that “Every day, Palestinian Americans and people of Muslim faith are denied entry on the basis of their ethnicity/religion.” 

The petition concluded, stating: “It is unacceptable for the US government to use US taxpayer funds to support Israel’s violence towards Palestinians.”

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://www.owu.edu/academics/departments-programs/department-of-philosophy/faculty-staff/shari-r-stone-mediatore/

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shari-stone-mediatore-4a01801a/