Sinclair Thomson

Overview

Sinclair Thomson has expressed support for anti-Israel activists, promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and defended disgraced anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita.

Thomson is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at New York University (NYU).

Supporting Anti-Israel Activists

Thomson signed a petition, published on April 28, 2014, expressing support for NYU’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and specifically for their anti-Israel activism on NYU’s campus. 

The petition stated: “We, the undersigned NYU faculty members, believe that the First Amendment right of NYU students to express, and advocate for, their opinions on issues of public concern must be respected and protected. This includes the mock eviction notices that members of the NYU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a recognized student organization, recently distributed in NYU dormitories.”

On February 25, 2009, Thomson signed a petition, published by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) expressing faculty support for students who participated in the “Kimmel Occupation” and demanding that the administration “reinstate those students who have been summarily suspended.”

In February 2009, a group of activists from the group Take Back NYU (TBNYU) barricaded themselves in the cafeteria at the university’s Kimmel Center and refused to leave until the administration agreed to meet their demands. 

Included in the group’s list of demands was that NYU “provide 13 scholarships a year to students from the Gaza Strip and give surplus supplies to the Islamic University of Gaza.” 

Promoting BDS

Thomson signed a petition stating that “NYU must divest itself of any holdings it may have” in Israeli companies. 

The petition claimed that “Israel has turned the impoverished and densely-populated Gaza strip into the world’s largest open-air prison and launched repeated military assaults against it.”

Thomson signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, demonizing Israel and calling for an end to foreign aid. 

The July 31, 2014 letter, addressed to former U.S. President Barack Obama and the American Congress, called “to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes.”
Thomson also signed a petition of NYU faculty alleging that “the democratic rights of our graduate students are being suppressed” by opponents of BDS. 

The petition charged that supporters of BDS had been targeted and unjustly disqualified from an upcoming election. It went on to call upon local executives to protect BDS activists and “to take a political position on the BDS resolution.”

Defending Steven Salaita

Thomson signed a petition published on August 21, 2014 by the BDS movement titled: “A Call to People of Conscience Not to Speak at the University Of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Until Chancellor Wise Honor [sic] the Contract to Hire Professor Steven Salaita.”  

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage 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.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

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: http://as.nyu.edu/content/nyu-as/as/faculty/sinclair-s-thomson.html