University President Attacks BDS Movement
Point Park University president Paul Hennigan has a recent op-ed in the Pittsburg Jewish Chronicle, in which he declares that BDS is a form of discrimination. “All forms of anti-Semitism, which includes support for the BDS movement, generally defined as Palestinian-led campaign promoting various forms of boycott against Israel, has no place at Point Park University,” writes Hennigan.
There’s an interesting backstory to this op-ed. Dr. Channa Newman has taught at the school for almost 60 years, where she’s the chair of the humanities and social sciences department. In 2018, Newman was charged with Title IX violation after a student complaint. She was reinstated after an investigation was carried out, but now she’s suing the school over alleged emotional distress and harm to her reputation.
In the lawsuit, Newman (who is a Holocaust survivor with U.S. and Israeli citizenship) alleges that multiple professors sought to remove her from her position over her pro-Israel views. Professor Robert Ross and Professor J. Dwight Hines “advanced militant and hateful views against Israel and in favor of BDS that are anti-Semitic and lead to the creation of a hostile work environment,” she claims.
In his op-ed, Hennigan says he can’t legally divulge details from the case, but also denies Newman’s claims. “Going forward, Point Park intends to defend itself against Dr. Newman’s claims,” he writes, “At the same time, she remains, as mentioned, a member of the Point Park community who will be afforded the respect and dignity afforded to all students, faculty, and staff.”
The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has released a statement in response to Hennigan’s op-ed. “We strongly condemn this characterization of the BDS movement, in which you ignore its central principled and inclusive call ‘that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity‘,” it reads, “Your mischaracterization feeds into the destructive logic that human rights are a zero sum game. In doing so, your Op-Ed foments the very discrimination and divisiveness you say you oppose. One could ask instead: ‘what does it say about Israel if demanding equal rights for all its citizens, and justice for those whose land it is occupying, is a threat to that country?'”
Ramadan Date Boycott
American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) has launched its annual boycott of Israeli dates. AMP began the boycott back in 2012, as many are grown in Jordan Valley and West Bank settlements. There’s evidence that the boycott has had an impact. According to Economic Research Service of the US Department of Agriculture data cited by the group, the volume of Israeli dates being imported to the United States has dropped from 23 million pounds to 7 million pounds over the past few years.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is calling for people to join the boycott. Here’s CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad: “CAIR affirms the First Amendment right of Americans to engage in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad. Throughout our nation’s history, Americans have engaged in many important morally driven boycotts, including the Boston Tea Party and the boycott of apartheid South Africa. The American-led boycott of Israeli dates,many of which are grown and packaged in illegal Israeli settlements, is a continuation of our great nation’s proud tradition of waging economic boycotts to protest injustice.”
Bernie and the Democratic Platform
I checked in with Arab American Institute co-founder James Zogby yesterday. Zogby worked for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns and in 2016 he was part of Bernie Sanders’s committee to draft the Democratic Party platform. I asked him whether Sanders had shifted the Democratic Party on Israel at all this time around and what the looming platform battle might look like. Here’s what he told me:
“I think Bernie acted as a midwife for a changing discourse that was always there, as Jackson had in the 1980s. However, I never underestimate the power of an entrenched lobby. It’s supporters continue to frustrate the debate out of fear and out of habit.
One of the things that intrigued me as a possible sign people that Democrats are aware of this shift, has been this group Democratic Majority for Israel. [A Democratic pro-Israel lobbying group that was formed in 2019] A lot of people of who belong to that group are the same people who blocked us from having a platform debate about Palestine in 1988. They spent seven figures on ads attacking Bernie, but the ads never actually mentioned Israel. It’s kind of weird for a group that calls itself the Democratic Majority of Israel to not actually mention Israel. Their politics might be problematic, but they’re also smart. They know there weren’t votes to be gained by mentioning it. They knew saying, “Bernie is bad on Israel” was not going to help them. They were trying to go for the jugular and they wouldn’t touch it. They knew it wasn’t a winner.
Will Democrats consider something like this when they start drafting the platform or will they want to fall back on pablum? What I now call “two-state absolution.” Will they recognize what we currently have is a combination of Trump, Netanyahu, and Netanyahu’s aggressiveness in the West Bank, that there’s no liberal darling on the horizon in Israel? The question is not just whether the party realizes all this, but whether any of it will have an actual impact because there’s also going to be the usual pressure from major donors.”
Odds & Ends
Earlier this year, Jacobin staff writer Branko Marcetic published a book on Joe Biden’s political career called Yesterday’s Man. It’s a thorough and important dissection of the presumptive Democratic nominee. This week I spoke with Marcetic about Biden’s hawkish record, his disagreements with Obama, his farcical Iraq vote defense, and what his foreign policy might look like if he beats Trump. You can read the interview at our website and you can buy his book at Verso’s.
Andom Ghebreghiorgis is 1 of 5 challengers trying to unseat pro-Israel Democrat Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th congressional district. This week he held an online town hall with activist Linda Sarsour. “I think that with the Donald Trump presidency, we are working against a brick wall, and I think with Joe Biden there’s a fence there, and we are going to have to figure out how we jump over that fence,” Sarsour told him. Ghebreghiorgis has made conditioning aid to Israel a large part of his campaign. We interviewed him about the race last year.
The Intercept reports that Rashida Tlaib’s primary challenger, Brenda Jones, took illegal campaign money while running for city council reelection in 2017. “During her 2017 bid for reelection to city council, Jones accepted $5,500 in campaign contributions from then-First Independence Bank Chair and CEO Barry Clay, and an additional $4,000 in campaign contributions from First Independence Bank board member Douglas Diggs,” writes Matthew Cunningham-Cook, “The donations occurred as First Independence had a contract with the Detroit police and fire pension fund, of which Jones, as president of the city council, is a trustee.”
Writing in Bloomberg, Hussein Ibish suggests that Netanyahu might speed up his plan to annex the West Bank based on looming U.S. presidential election: “None of the leading Democrats have embraced the Trump proposal. So it would be reasonable for Netanyahu to conclude that this opportunity for Israel to seize large swaths of Palestinian territory with American approval may never be on offer again. Once the deed is done, it would be extremely difficult for another president, whether Biden or anyone else, to force an Israeli withdrawal.”
The Nation’s Ken Klippenstein obtained an intelligence brief in which the U.S. military admits that Trump’s Iran sanctions have made its COVID-19 crisis worse. The document asserts that the sanctions have “left Iran bereft of financial resources to mount an effective public health response” and that the country is now “unable to order ventilators from abroad, which are crucial for treatment.”
Ramadan Kareem. Take care of one another and wash your hands,
Michael
