Vinay Lal

In May 2018, terror organization Hamas instigated the “March of Return.” Thousands of violent rioters attempted numerous breaches of Israel’s border fence with Gaza, seeking to harm Jews across the border. Media reports confirmed [00:00:20] protesters’ breaches and attempted breaches of the fence, some by armed Palestinians. On May 15, 2018, senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Zahhar said the Gaza protests were only a pretext of “peaceful resistance.”

In the same May 16, 2018 blog post, Lal wrote: “under Netanyahu, the swagger with which Israel acts has intensified, but even now, after repulsing one contingent of Palestinian demonstrators after another determined to breach the fenced border between Gaza and Israel, the claim that Israel remains forever vulnerable to attacks by Hamas or young men who have been initiated into violence not simply persists but has become the linchpin of Israeli self-aggrandizement.”

On May 16, 2018, a Hamas senior official, Salah al-Bardawil, stated that 50 out of 62 protesters killed during the May 14 Gaza border protest were Hamas operatives. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also claimed that three of its members were killed at the same protest.

On March 25, 2018, Lal published a blog in which he wrote that “the charge of anti-Semitism has itself become a totalitarian form of stifling dissent and an attempt to enforce complete submissiveness to the ideology of Zionism.”

Lal went on to write: “even as Israel was mowing down Palestinian youth and young men, most of them unarmed and some evidently shot in the back, the United States was applauding Israel for acting ‘with restraint’.”

Lal then concluded that “Israel appears to have signified its choice, terrifyingly so, not only by the erection of the Separation Wall, but also by imposing a draconian regime of segregationist measures that reek of apartheid.”

On April 28, 2012, Lal published an article trivializing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, arguing that “Israel will have to do more than hide behind those gigantic scarlet letters that spell ‘anti-Semitism’ if it is to confront the reality of its own demons. It is a form of totalitarianism to insist that all criticism of Israel is itself a form of anti-Semitism.”

In an article published on August 30, 2006, Lal condemned the relationship between India and Israel, citing “Israel's long history of oppression of Palestinian people, its apartheid-like policies, and repeated violations of Security Council resolutions.”

Supporting BDS

Lal signed an open letter to former United States President Barack Obama and the American Congress, demonizing Israel and calling for an end to foreign aid. 

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.”
In the fall of 2014, Lal was named on a list of faculty endorsers of BDS, published by UCLA’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on its website.