Sofya Aptekar

Overview

Sofya Aptekar is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and has defended anti-Zionism on campus.

Aptekar is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies.

Supporting BDS

In January 2018, Aptekar signed a petition published by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) that condemned efforts opposing the American Studies Association’s (ASA) endorsement of the academic boycott of Israel.

Signatories of the letter characterized the anti-BDS activity as a “harassment campaign” and accused opponents of BDS of conducting a “McCarthyist media blitz.” The petition also painted opposition tactics as “unscrupulous actions that support practices of settler colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, and white supremacy, McCarthyism, Islamophobia, and racism in the US.”

Aptekar signed a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, published in June 2016, titled “Urgent appeal of 23,000 citizens from across the world to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for protection of human rights defenders active in the BDS movement.”

The letter, signed first by the “Palestinian BDS National Committee,” urged the commissioner, among other things, to:  “Activate relevant special UN mechanisms, including the UN special rapporteurs on the right to freedom of expression and opinion, and on human rights defenders, to investigate, intervene privately…”

The letter also urged the commissioner to: “Encourage the office of the OHCHR and the EU to extend protection under human rights defender mechanisms in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel to the human rights defenders of the BDS movement.”

Signatories went on to demand that the High Commissioner “Issue a public statement strongly condemning all intimidation and unlawful restrictions on BDS campaigners and affirming that the right of citizens to advocate for and carry out BDS campaigns.”

Defending Anti-Israel Campus Activity

Aptekar signed a letter, authored by the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and published on January 25, 2017, condemning Fordham University’s decision to block the establishment of a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Fordham.

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 specifically 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.”

In April 2016, Aptekar signed an open letter to McGraw-Hill Education calling upon the publisher to reverse its decision to withdraw and destroy textbooks that had because of a series of maps featured in the book.

The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

Signatories of the letter accused the publishers of committing a “blatant act of censorship” and claimed “The maps in question are historically accurate and vividly illustrate Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people and appropriation of their land, which is why the Israeli government and its supporters wish to suppress them.”

The letter went on to state that “it is essential that faculty and students have access to educational materials that speak to the dispossession Palestinians have experienced, and continue to experience today. We cannot have a truly comprehensive understanding of Palestine or Israel without this information.”

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

Personal Website:http://sofyaaptekar.com/