Sherna Berger Gluck

Overview

Sherna Berger Gluck is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and one of the founders of the US Academic and Cultural Boycott Campaign of Israel (USACBI). She has also accused Israel of "settler colonialism" and “apartheid practices.”

Berger Gluck is a professor of History at Shimer College. 

Supporting BDS

In 2013, Berger Gluck was part of a group that initiated the academic boycott of a conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

In an article co-authored with Haim Beresheeth publishedon September 20, 2013 regarding the boycott, the authors stated that Israeli universities "have themselves been directly complicit in Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights and international laws, and all have collaborated in some way with the military occupation…" Later, the authors rhetorically asked, “is it moral to collaborate with a militarized, racist, colonial state, in order to cleanse its crimes?”

In the same article, the authors referred to "Israel’s illegal occupation, its settler-colonial policies and its apartheid practices."

An article published on September 18, 2012 by the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada site featured an interview with Berger Gluck, in which she advocated for BDS. In the interview, Berger Gluck is cited as "an activist with the Dump Veolia Coalition and a coordinator with the Israel Divestment Campaign in Los Angeles."

Berger Gluck again endorsed the BDS movement in an August 5 2014 interview. She described BDS as an "international solidarity movement [that] helps to keep the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians in the public eye."

On January 28, 2010, Berger Gluck hosted and produced a program on SWANA Region Radio entitled: "Nonviolent Resistance to Israeli Apartheid: The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) Campaign in the US." The program description stated it would be focusing on “the economic and cultural boycott campaigns and divestment campaigns on college campuses.” Featured speaker on the program was retired professor Nada Elia who has shown support for terrorism and declared in a 2015 article that “Intifadas are good.”

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.

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