Victor Mendoza

As of January 2020, Mendoza was a signatory to a list of individuals endorsing the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).

Mendoza also signed a petition, published by USACBI in October of 2017, in support of BDS activist and member of the USACBI Organizing Committee, Professor Bill Mullen. 

In 2016, Mendoza signed an open letter calling for the academic boycott of Israel. 

The open letter was addressed to the Modern Language Association (MLA), “calling on the association to pass a resolution endorsing the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

Demonizing Israel

Mendoza signed a petition, published on Facebook on September 11, 2014, titled: “Filipino and Filipino American Academics Stand in Solidarity with Palestinian People.”

Signatories of the petition wrote that “We denounce the state of Israel for its massacre of over 2100 Palestinians in its most recent military offensive into Gaza. This is only the most recent of over half a century of attacks by the Israeli state on the Palestinian people, dating back from the 1948 genocide and forced dispersal of Palestinians to the last decade of Israeli attacks on Gaza.”

The petition went on to “demand the destruction of the Israeli apartheid wall, the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and equal rights for all Palestinians, whether in '48 Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza, or throughout the Palestinian diaspora.”

The petition concluded by stating that the organization “supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli institutions.”

Defending Steven Salaita

Mendoza 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: https://lsa.umich.edu/apia/people/faculty/vmendoza.html