Simona Sharoni

Overview

Simona Sharoni has been described as a "vanguard supporter" of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In an April 13, 2016 interview, Sharoni stated that it “makes sense” strategically to link rape on college campuses with the state of Israel — in order to promote BDS.

Sharoni then compared Israel to a rapist, and complained that “Palestinians are not believed, which is the same with survivors [of sexual assault]. ‘They’re exaggerating, it’s not that bad, because Israel is a democracy.’ It's very similar to saying, 'No, he's actually a nice guy,' about a man accused of rape.”

On May 14, 2016 Sharoni posted on Facebook “[a]n inspiring example of someone who walks the talk!” referring to a Hebrew University professor who donated $20,000 to Ta’ayush, an organization that supports BDS. In 2015, Ta’ayush’s leader, Ezra Nawi, was filmed bragging about his entrapping and handing over Palestinians who sold real estate to Jews — to be tortured and executed by the Palestinian Authority. Nawi is also a convicted rapist.

Sharoni is a professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at Merrimack College. Sharoni was also taught at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh (SUNY Plattsburgh) and at Evergreen State College (TESC).

Sharoni is a co-founder of Faculty Against Rape (FAR), a "national organization dedicated to supporting survivors of sexual assault on college campuses and to urge faculty to take a stand on the issue."

Hijacking Human Rights Struggles to Demonize Israel

On March 3, 2016, Sharoni promoted BDS at Columbia University during an Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) event titled “Analyzing Violence, Demanding Accountability: Feminist perspectives on Israeli Apartheid and the Campus Sexual Assault Crisis.”

The event was hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Columbia (CSJP), Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP) at Columbia University and Barnard College (JVP Columbia), and No Red Tape, an anti-sexual assault activist group at Columbia that adopted anti-Zionism as a primary tenet of its platform since aligning with CSJP.

In a November 29, 2015 article appearing in the Israel-hating website Electronic Intifada, Sharoni was quoted attempting to strait-jacket all other feminists into adopting an anti-Israel stance. Sharoni stated: "BDS is a feminist issue...it is an expression of transnational feminist solidarity...one cannot call themselves a feminist and address inequalities and injustices without taking a stand on what is happening in Palestine."

Sharoni’s statement referred to a BDS resolution adopted by the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA). The resolution disingenuously blamed Israel for gender-based violence in the Palestinian territories — which has markedly increased, particularly in Gaza, under Hamas’ rule, since 2007.

Sharoni’s March 3, 2016 lecture title misleadingly connecting Israel to U.S. campus rape showcases the exploitation of intersectionality — used by BDS as a coat-tailing tactic — to artificially conjoin unrelated struggles against disparate forms of oppression in order to attack Israel.

In addition to proposing spurious connections between Israel support and campus rape, BDS has also used intersectionality to tar Israel and Zionism with rising college tuition costs in New York state, police riots in Ferguson, Missouri, race-based violence in the U.S. and the negative environmental impacts of the fossil-fuel industry.

On March 2, 2015, Sharoni delivered a presentation at Swarthmore College titled “Feminist Perspectives on Resistance and Solidarity in Palestine and Israel.” Sharoni lectured alongside terrorist-glorifying professor Rabab Abdulhadi on topics billed as including “[p]rospects for a just and lasting peace in the region in the aftermath of the Israeli war on Gaza and the earlier repressive campaign in the West Bank.”

The "earlier repressive campaign" mentioned in the event publicity referred to the search and rescue operation launched by Israel to sweep Palestinian-controlled territory for suspects and victims — and Israel’s crackdown on Hamas in Judea and Samaria — following Hamas’ June 12, 2014 kidnapping of three Israeli high-schoolers, snatched from a bus stop on their way home from school.

Most Palestinians supported the kidnap-murder of the boys — and searching IDF soldiers met with violent interference from the local population. Social media campaigns throughout the Palestinian territories cheered the kidnapping and many Palestinian Arabs openly celebrated the crime.

Promoting Lies that Propagate Anti-Semitism

Sharoni is very active on social media and frequently uses her Twitterand Facebook accounts to slander Israel and promote BDS. She often shares articles from Israel-hating propaganda websites, such as Mondoweiss and the Electronic Intifada (EI), as well as the Muslim Brotherhood-funded propaganda website Middle East Eye, which is also promoted by the terrorist organization Hamas.

In a December 14, 2014 article titled "The Israel of your dreams has turned into a nightmare: A letter to Jewish students," Sharoni — demonizing Israel in a display of modern anti-Semitism — suggested that contemporary Israeli policy is akin to that of the Nazis by fraudulently comparing a Palestinian refugee camp to a Nazi concentration camp.

She also claimed — falsely — that Israel is an “apartheid” state, a lie that Sharoni has repeated in numerous forums for the past 20 years.

In April 2016, Sharoni signed a letter demanding a major publishing company reverse recall of textbooks that contained a deliberately misleading and widely debunked map — dubbed “The Map That Lies.” That map fraudulently presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt, and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian” land, purportedly stolen by Israel.

In October 2015, the U.S. cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

Encouraging Civilians to Become Human Shields

In an August 29, 2012 podcast, Sharoni said that during her tenure as a professor at TESC, she“worked closely” with International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member Rachel Corrie. Sharoni was mentioned several times in Corrie’s diaries as an important influence on her decision to join ISM and travel to the Palestinian territories — where she was accidentally killed, while interfering with an Israeli military operation.

The ISM, founded in 2001, is a movement ostensibly “committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” However, the group has been accused of supporting terrorism and it encourages its foreign volunteers to act “as human shields in cities, towns and refugee camps.” ISM is reportedly affiliated with another anti-Israel organization that Sharoni co-founded — called Women in Black.

ISM has encouraged activists to break curfew and disregard Israeli directives prohibiting access to closed military zones. That policy resulted in the death of Corrie, who was accidentally killed while interfering with an Israeli military operation in 2003. A wrongful death suit brought by Corrie’s family was dismissed, because the judge ruled that Corrie unreasonably chose to put her own life in danger.

It has been reported that Sharoni may have awarded Corrie college credit to join ISM’s activities in Gaza.

Promoting Posts that Exploit Disturbed Children to Demonize Israel

On April 24, 2016, Sharoni shared a Facebook post about Dima Al-Wawi

12-year-old Al-Wawi was imprisoned for attempting to stab a security guard at the Israeli community Karmei Tzur. Al-Wawi later claimed she intended to kill the guard and hoped she would be killed in the process. “I was dreaming that I was going to be martyred,” she said.  

Whitewashing Online Incitement Against Israelis

In a May 11, 2016 Facebook post, Sharoni commented "Solidarity with Majd Atwan!" Atwan was arrested, fined, and imprisoned for social media incitement to violence after she praised a Hamas-sponsored bus bombing in Jerusalem that injured 21 people, at least two critically. “The news of 20 settlers injured is nice,” wrote Atwan. A month prior to the bombing, a music video glorifying previous suicide bus bombings and encouraging future ones was circulated on Palestinian social media. Social media-based incitement has proven to be a substantial causal factor behind the Palestinian murder of Israelis.

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/simona.sharoni

Twitter:https://twitter.com/simonasharoni

Website:http://www.simonasharoni.com/

Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simona_Sharoni