Steve Tamari

The proposal went on to state that the group intended on “installing a recreation of the ‘Separation Barrier’, which winds through the West Bank, on the Quad. Our construction will be staffed by university volunteers... We will also operate mock ‘flying checkpoints’ to dramatize other aspects of restrictions on movement.”

Tamari also maintains a blog, on which he offers links to the websites of The US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) and the St. Louis-Palestine Solidarity Committee (SL-PSC).

On July 14, 2011, Tamari published a blog post in which he alleged that Israel “has continued the process of ethnically cleansing... Palestine, a process that began in earnest in late 1947. ”

Supporting BDS

Tamari’s name appears in an instructional packet titled “Anthropology Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions: Everything You Need to Run a Teach-In,” published in September 2015.

In the section titled “Possible Speakers by Region,” Tamari’s name is offered as an expert who “has advocated for BDS in a number of venues and can speak about the importance of academics taking a stand on this issue.”

In April 2015, Tamari signed his name to a BDS resolution passed by the Earlham Student Senate. 

The resolution, proposed by the BDS Earlham student organization, stated that “Earlham College students are inspired by the intention of the global Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign and have designed a divestment campaign that is tailored to our campus.”

On December 1, 2014, Tamari published an article titled “Ferguson to Palestine,” in which he Tamari explained that Palestinian activism against racial injustice in the U.S. “is very much part of our work to organize support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and challenge pro-Israel forces in our community.”

Tamari signed an open letter condemning “the disproportionate harm that the Israeli military, which the United States has armed and supported for decades, is inflicting on the population of Gaza.”

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.”

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

Tamari also signed the “Middle East Scholars and Librarians Call for Boycott of Israeli Academia,” published on August 6, 2014.

In signing this petition, Tamari and others committed “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 May 10, 2013, Tamari submitted a shareholder proposal to the Senior Managing Director and Corporate Secretary of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding that “the Board end investments in companies that, in the trustees' judgment, substantially contribute to or enable egregious violations of human rights, including companies whose business supports Israel's occupation.” 

On January 14, 2013, Tamari wrote a letter to the Senior Vice President and Corporate Secretary of TIAA-CREF Financial Services, claiming that “Investments in companies providing support for the Israeli occupation and segregated settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, represent a significant policy issue,” and called upon the group to withdraw those investments. 

According to a report published on May 30, 2013, “Tamari submitted the proposal on behalf of a group called WeDivest that is primarily composed of academics.”

In July 2013, it was reported that TIAA-CREF withdrew its investments from the Israeli company, SodaStream. 

Following the announcement, Tamari was quoted stating “I welcome the news that as a TIAA-CREF investor, I am no longer profiting from SodaStream, whose main production facility operates in an illegal settlement on Palestinian land in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. I urge TIAA-CREF to drop the remaining companies in their portfolio profiting from confiscating Palestinian land and contributing to illegal settlement expansion.” 

In a blog post published on December 24, 2012, Tamari praised the anti-Israel documentary, 5 Broken Cameras.

Tamari wrote that “For those of us watching from afar, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is a means for engagement in the same vein albeit from the comfort of worlds where our cameras are safe from bullets and batons.”

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.