Zachary Lockman

Overview

Zachary Lockman is a tenured professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History at New York University (NYU) and an active supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In 2015, Lockman endorsed NYU Out of Occupied Palestine (NOOP), a campus coalition of faculty, students and student organizations that agitates for the university to divest from companies that "contribute to and profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestine."

Lockman is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which is considered the most important association of Middle East Studies.

Lockman is also a former director of the Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU. While director, Lockman endorsed a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel, though he later claimed that he did not support such a boycott.

In 2011, Lockman signed a letter campaign, launched by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at NYU, calling on the TIAA-CREF (Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association, College Retirement Equities Fund) to divest from its holdings in Israel.

In September 2007, Lockman referred to critics of anti-Israel professors as “attack dogs.” He also reportedly routinely refers to Israel as the “Zionist entity” and the “Zionist project.”

While speaking at a 2009 UCLA conference titled “Invasion is a Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism Past and Present,” Lockman reportedly stated that “colonialism is Zionism.”

Comparing Israel’s First Prime Minister to Hitler

During a 2010 talk at NYU about a novel that documented alleged Israeli abuses of Palestinians, Lockman juxtaposed the actions of Ben Gurion during Israel's War of Independence with those of Adolf Hitler during the Holocaust, stating “There's no document that says Ben Gurion said ‘Expel all the Palestinians,’ but I'm not sure you need one. 

There's also no paper from Hitler saying ‘kill all the Jews’ ... The point is, you don't always need documentary evidence to draw conclusions.”

At the talk, Lockman also stated that he would cite the novel, titled Footnotes in Gaza, as a source in a history book, even though its author admitted that the book is biased against Israel and Israelis.

Protesting the Definition of Anti-Semitism

In May 2015, Lockman signed an open letter published by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization calling on the American State Department to revise its definition of anti-Semitism “to prevent the charge of anti-Semitism from being misused to silence critics of Israel.”

The letter specifically took issue with provisions in the definition that refer to “demonizing,” “delegitimizing” and “applying a double-standard to the state of Israel.”

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: http://as.nyu.edu/meis/people/faculty.zachary-lockman.html