Tithi Bhattacharya

Overview

Tithi Bhattacharya is a professor of South Asian History and the Director of Global Studies at Purdue University (Purdue). She received her Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 2000. Bhattacharya is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review, which is “dedicated to advancing socialist theory and practice in the U.S. and internationally.”

Bhattacharya is involved with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Purdue (SJP Purdue) and is a vocal supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
On November 16, 2012, Bhattacharya co-organized an SJP Purdue anti-Israel demonstration and teach-in with SJP members Michael Mrozinski, Shahd Khawaja and Lamise Shawahin. SJP Purdue’s event announcement on Facebook insinuated that the United States signed a “blank check to Israel to murder Palestinians.”

Lying to Demonize Israel and Israelis

In a video uploaded to Youtube on January 7, 2016, Bhattacharya was filmed at a July 2014 anti-Israel rally, mocking Israel’s responses to numerous Arab assaults “[w]hy does Israel need so many different names for what is essentially one operation? Because the various acts of the Israeli state all really have the same name: Operation Genocide.”

On July 10, 2014, Bhattacharya wrote a blog post claiming Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — launched to stop the dramatic increase of Hamas’ rocket attacks from Gaza, targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels — was “based on a series of lies.” Bhattacharya falsely claimed that the “real reason” for the war was Israel's inability to accept the Palestinian Unity government” or “the new US alliance with Iran over ISIS in Iraq” or “the growing global awareness amongst ordinary people...that [Israel] is not the ‘real democracy in the middle east.’”

Bhattacharya further opined that “Netanyahu...was not going to let a tragedy go to waste” and that “Israel wanted to use Hamas’ earlier kidnap and murder of three Israeli high-schoolers as an excuse “to deliver collective punishment on Gaza and Palestine.”
Bhattacharya has also published various articles for sites that spread lies and Israel-hating propaganda, such as Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada (EI).

On November 10, 2012, she wrote a blog post recycling a libel by Chris Hedges about seeing Israeli soldiers “bait and kill” Palestinian children for sport on June 17, 2001. Hedge’s claim was contradicted by a New York Times account of the event on the same date..

Conjuring Lies of Ethnic Discrimination to Slander Israel

On July 31, 2014, Bhattacharya co-wrote a Mondoweiss article with Bill Mullen fraudulently claiming that Israel “has never been a democratic society for anyone of non-Jewish descent.” Bhattacharya pointed to Israel’s suspension of Haneen Zoabi —a member of Israel’s parliament (the Knesset) — who was investigated for inciting violence on numerous occasions. In July 2014, Zoabi was suspended from the Knesset after she defended the Hamas terrorists who kidnapped three Israeli teenagers, declaring that the abductors were "not terrorists." The boys were later found to have been executed by their Hamas kidnappers.

Bhattachary also falsely claimed that SJP Purdue President Sireen Zayed was wrongfully denied entry to a talk at an Indiana Jewish Community Center (JCC), invoking racially charged sentiments. In truth, Zayed attempted to disrupt the July 27, 2014 JCC event in Indianapolis and shared on Facebook a video of herself trying to gain access to the event. In the video Zayed made the provocative and unsubstantiated claim she was told her “kind was not welcome (3:03).” Zayed subsequently clarified that the reference to her “kind” designated only people intent on disturbing the event and was neither a racial nor ethnic reference.

In a July 22, 2014 Mondoweiss article, Bhattacharya fraudulently claimed that Israel was “born in 1948 through the organized ethnic cleansing of 531 Palestinian villages” — when, in fact, Arabs were encouraged to lay down arms and stay. In the same article, she claimed falsely that Israel practices “apartheid.

Insinuating Israel Is The Linchpin of “Global Imperialism”

A central theme of Bhattacharya’s articles is that “victory for Palestine” will lead to the defeat of “global imperialism” and encourage workers to “start demanding their rightful wages and pension.”

In her July 31, 2014, Mondoweiss article, co-authored with Bill Mullen, Bhattacharya claimed that: “Israel’s crisis of legitimacy is not a crisis for Israel alone, but for the entire edifice of Empire, whose architects live in places like Washington, London and Paris.” She wrote that “Israel and its allies” were attempting to suppress any dissent against the current world order — and pointed to French authorities’ refusal to permit several pro-Palestinian protests after protesters repeatedly attacked synagogues, Jewish shops, and police forces following riots earlier that month.

Advocating for anti-Semitic Professor Steven Salaita

In November of 2015, Bhattacharya advocated for the University of Illinois (U of I) to reinstate 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.

Bhattacharya opined that members of U of I’s Board of Trustees who supported Israel, or associated with others having ties to Israel, were inherently biased against Salaita. Bhattacharya wrote: “[t]he solution is to de-Zionize our campuses...” She also advocated for “a militant and unionized faculty.”

In the article, Bhattacharya highlighted Board of Trustees’ President Christopher Kennedy’s professional association with a mutual fund company that invested in companies with Israeli ties. Bhattacharya also mentioned that Kennedy chairs Joseph Kennedy Enterprises — and singled out one of that company’s Jewish directors, Roy Zuckerberg.

Bhattacharya slammed Kennedy’s association with Zuckerberg, noting: “In 2009 Zuckerberg received an honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University for his contributions as a “generous philanthropist, an enthusiastic Zionist, a concerned and influential member of the US Jewish community.”

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015, saying in a press release: “These statements [Salaita’s tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

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.