Stephen Sheehi

Overview

Stephen Sheehi has expressed support for terrorists and spread hatred of Israel and America.

Sheehi is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of February 2023, Sheehi’s LinkedIn page said he had been the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Chair of Middle East Studies at the College of William & Mary (W&M) in Williamsburg, Virginia, since August 2014.

As of the same date, Sheehi’s LinkedIn said he was also a professor of Middle East and Arabic Studies and the director of the Program of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES) and the Asian & Pacific-Islander American Studies Program (APIA) at W&M.

As of February 2023, Sheehi’s LinkedIn said he had been the director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project (DHP) at W&M since September 2017.

As of the same date, Sheehi served on the advisory board of the USA Palestine Mental Health Network.

Sheehi co-authored the 2022 book, “Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine,” with his wife, anti-Israel activist Lara Sheehi.

As of February 2023, Sheehi’s LinkedIn said he was located in Williamsburg, Virginia.

As of February 2023, Sheehi used the handle “@Zghartawi” on Twitter. He used the handle “@decolonizingphotography” on Instagram.

Terror Support (PFLP, Hamas, Lion’s Den)

On November 17, 2022, Sheehi was featured in an interview titled: “Conversations on Being a Guerilla Scholar,” in which he promoted [00:20:39] the PFLP’s official manifesto, Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) is dedicated to the violent destruction of Israel. It is designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the United States. The EU, Canada, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Australia and Israel also list it as a terror group due to its history of carrying out assassinations, suicide bombings, hijackings and multiple murders.

The terrorist organization’s strategy book calls [p.62] for violent “armed struggle” against Israel to achieve the “liberation of Palestine” and the book also lists [p.4] Israel and [p.6] the U.S. among its “enemies.”

Sheehi said [00:10:08] during the interview: “Commander activity is an expression to… the determination of the Palestinian people to take the initiative in blazing the trail for total liberation, which is also the responsibility of the whole Arab people. And as I said, that's the first political statement of the PFLP. “

Sheehi also said [00:14:18]: “As Arabs… we pay deference and honor our ancestors and our martyrs. But also our living elders like Leila Khaled and the imprisoned Georges Abdullah.”

Leila Khaled is a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and El Al Flight 219 in 1970. As of 2017, Khaled was a member of PFLP's Political Bureau. Khaled has said that the second intifada failed because it was not violent enough, advocated [00:36:07] for the use of children in terror activities and compared Zionists to Nazis.

Georges Abdallah is a convicted Lebanese terrorist, reportedly a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and co-founder of the Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions (LARF). He murdered an American military attaché and an Israeli diplomat in 1982.

Sheehi continued [00:14:34]: “In paying this honor, we have no pretense… to the perils that guerillas faced and face, as we witnessed today with the valiant resistance of the Fedayeen in Palestine, especially the Lions in Nablus.”

The “Lions’ Den” [عرين الأسود]is an independent “armed group” with operatives hailing from various other Palestinian terrorist organizations. The group reportedly emerged from Nablus in August 2022. The Lions’ Den has claimed responsibility for the death of Israeli soldiers. They also targeted Israeli civilians in multiple terror attacks in October and November 2022.

In July 2014, Sheehi signed “An International Scholars’ Statement on Gaza” that excused Hamas rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, claiming they were a “direct response” to the Israelis’ “terrifying the entire population of the West Bank.”

The statement accused Israel of “collective punishment” for sweeping the Palestinian-controlled territory for suspects and victims following the June 12, 2014, kidnapping of three Israeli high-schoolers on their way home from school by Hamas. The captors murdered the abducted boys, whose bodies were found buried in Palestinian-controlled territory on June 30, 2014.

The statement asserted that Israel used the event as an excuse to initiate Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in Gaza. The statement called OPE as “the wholesale slaughter of a civilian population.”

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

Hatred of Israel

On February 6, 2022, Sheehi featured in a YouTube podcast where he said [00:40:40]: “The intimacy that Zionists feel to the land of Palestine, is one built on a psychosis.” He earlier called [00:40:06] that same feeling “psychotic.”

One way anti-Israel activists spread anti-Semitism is by denying [00:17:45] Jewish history, with the aim of delegitimizing restored Jewish sovereignty, attacking Israel’s legitimacy and portraying Jews as foreign to the Land of Israel.

On January 24, 2022, Sheehi was featured in a podcast titled: “Against Alienation,” in which he called [00:19:22 ] Israel a “Jim Crow state…an explicitly apartheid state.”

Jim Crow laws were state and local laws that enforced racial segregation in the southern United States. They came into being at the end of the nineteenth century.

Sheehi said [00:20:44]: “People now globally realize that Palestine is the new South Africa. It is an apartheid state... Zionism is racism.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture. Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.

Hatred of America

As of February 2023, Sheehi was the founding faculty director of the Decolonizing Humanities Project (DHP) at W&M.

According to the DHP website, DHP “seeks to dismantle forms of settler-colonialism and racism, with special attention to anti-black and anti-indigenous racism, and how they continue to structure our lives in the university, Virginia, and the settler-colonial state now known as the United States.”

On May 24, 2021, Sheehi was featured in an interview on YouTube titled: “Islamophobia, Zionism and Palestine in the American Imagination.”

During the interview, Sheehi said [00:12:27]: “The U.S. is a settler-colonial society as well, right? It's a society built on racial capitalism. It's a society built on racism and racial hierarchies. And it's a society built on the elimination of the indigenous peoples of Turtle Island, what is now North America.”

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

In 2022, Sheehi signed an open letter titled: “Statement in Support of The Harvard Crimson and Palestinian Liberation.” The letter was written in response to an editorial published by the Harvard Crimson endorsing BDS.

In 2017, Sheehi promoted [00:15:54] a resolution calling on the Modern Language Association (MLA) to boycott Israeli academic institutions.

During the annual MLA meeting in January 2017, MLA’s delegate council rejected the BDS resolution and instead voted to support Resolution 2017-1, which urged the MLA to refrain from adopting BDS. In June 2017, the MLA adopted the anti-BDS resolution by a 2-1 margin following a full membership vote.

In 2014, Sheehi signed a resolution meant to be presented in November 2014, during the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual conference. The resolution defended “the right of scholarly associations to boycott Israel” and called on MESA to “provide platforms for a sustained discussion of the academic boycott and foster careful consideration of an appropriate position for MESA to assume.”

In August 2014, Sheehi signed the “Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia.” The signatories of the petition pledged “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions, not to teach at or to attend conferences and other events at such institutions, and not to publish in academic journals based in Israel.”

On August 7, 2014, Sheehi signed a petition initiated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The petition called on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to honor an initial offer made to hire anti-Israel activist Steven Salaita as a professor.

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Steven 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.”

As of May 2011, Sheehi was listed as one of the “endorsers” of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

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.