SPME Petition 26

We, the undersigned faculty, unequivocally oppose calls for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

We must educate our communities about the real nature and purpose of BDS and the dangers it poses.

BDS uses false premises that mischaracterize Israel  in order to justify calling for sanctions against it.  Yet, Israel is the Middle East's only democracy, and enshrines in law and enforces fully equal rights for its 1.6 million Arab citizens who form 20 percent of the population.   Israel's open and self-critical society, with its hundreds of human rights groups, attempts to uphold the highest international standards of conduct.  At the forefront of scientific and technological innovations, Israel has actively shared its advances with the world through joint research projects and through its multiple international humanitarian programs.   Israel has sought peace with all its neighbors, particularly with the Palestinians.  In 2000 and 2008, Israel made concrete proposals for a Palestinian state that would exist alongside it in security and mutual recognition.  The Palestinians rejected those offers. BDS advocates intentionally ignore these facts.

BDS deceptively claims that its purpose is to champion Palestinian rights, but its real purpose is to eliminate the Jewish state. Norman Finkelstein, a prominent advocate for Palestinians, declared that BDS activists care less about human rights than about destroying Israel, and that "there's a large segment….of the movement that wants to eliminate Israel," primarily through their demand  for a Palestinian "right of return" which would effectively flood Israel with Palestinians and turn it into a Palestinian Arab country.  Omar Barghouti, BDS founder and leader, openly admitted that BDS against Israel would continue until Israelis and Palestinians form one Palestinian Arab state. BDS is thus a deplorable attempt to delegitimize an ancient people's ethnic identity and to deny the Jewish people the right to self-determination.  Furthermore, by denying the right of self-determination only to the Jewish people and by obsessively focusing on fabricated Israeli misdeeds instead of on other countries guilty of rampant human rights abuses, BDS claims are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not in their intent," according to former Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers.

Finally, BDS subverts all hopes for peace.  It promotes an extremist agenda.  It does nothing to encourage reconciliation, or Palestinians' return to    direct negotiations. BDS is a misguided form of economic warfare against Israel and violates decades of Israeli-Palestinian pledged agreements for a peaceful, negotiated settlement.  Moreover, BDS gives support to Palestinians extremists and their allies abroad and in this country who oppose peaceful coexistence and the right of both Palestinians and Jews to self-determination,  and who malign and try to silence Israel's supporters.

Therefore, we call upon students, faculty and all concerned citizens to join us in condemning efforts to use academia to promote BDS.  The campaign does not belong on our campuses.  It abandons scholarly principles, degrades campus civility, and violates the precepts of rational academic inquiry.

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