Profs accuse Israel of oppression, call for 'ending capitalism'

During a webinar focusing on “Black Lives Matter, Israeli Annexation and BDS,” college professors accused Israel of being oppressive and said that companies should “end capitalism” to “take accountability” for supporting Israel.

The webinar was hosted on June 30 by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and included Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, Robin D.G. Kelly of UCLA, Terri Ginsberg of the American University of Cairo, and Daniel Segal of Pitzer College. 

“Ending capitalism, that is the ultimate solution,” Abdulhadi said of how companies can “take accountability” for supporting Israel.

Abdulhadi says she, along with her colleagues at colleges, want to “abolish” the police and prisons, and institute free college.

She is the director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Department, which recently came under scrutiny over its plan to host a terrorist hijacker at a university-sponsored event, as Campus Reform previously reported. 

[RELATED: California prof claims Israel will put non-Jews ‘in mass prisons’ amid coronavirus]

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However, the group of academics did not just blame police and prisons for what they see as oppression coming from Israel. During the webinar, Abdulhadi said that U.S. police, along with the FBI and military, are complicit as well.

“The US FBI, Police, and military are NOT innocent bystanders… they are in it together, they are co-organizing with each other and it’s really really important,” Abdulhadi said.

Kelly strongly backed what Abdulhadi said, and agreed that she was the person to say it.

”Rabab has faced decades, decades, decades of repression, violent repression within institutions she works in,” Kelly said of Abdulhadi.

As far as looking for a solution to this problem, Kelly followed Abdulhadi’s thinking regarding police, stating that “replacing police, military and prisons with non-carceral paths for safety and justice,” would be a good way to cease the oppression of the Palestinians.

The meeting was inspired by the death of George Floyd by a former police officer, attempting to use Floyd as a metaphor for Israel.

”The knee-to-neck chokehold that [officer police officer] Chauvin used to murder George Floyd has been used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through seventy-two years of ethnic cleansing and dispassion,” Kelly said, citing a statement from University of California faculty members, which called for the UC system to “divest [from] companies that profit off of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine...”

[RELATED: Rutgers prof calls Israel ‘terrorist’ attack involving her cousin an ‘accident’]

Segal, who was the host of the discussion, started the webinar saying that by Pitzer College’s “occupation of indigenous land,” he believes that Pitzer is “continuing the project of settler-colonialism.”

While not a professor,  former president of the NYC Students for Justice Palestine Nerdeen Kiswani was present at the webinar. 

In the past, Kiswani reportedly celebrated an attack that killed four Israeli Jews. 

On this specific occasion, she urged Palestinians to not make themselves “palatable for white, Western consumption.” Kiswani is now the chair of “Within Our Lifetime | United for Palestine,” an organization that is admittedly “anti-Zionist.”

Kelley, Segal, Abdulhadi, and Kiswani did not respond to Campus Reform’s request for comment in time for publication.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @Dean_Barker