Months after a discriminatory joint statement issued in April by 53 New York University student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace, which declared that the student organizations would boycott two pro-Israel student groups on campus, anti-Israel fervor has intensified as a BDS resolution is expected to be brought forward on Nov. 1.
The measure will be introduced by student senators Rose Asaf, a co-founder of Jewish Voice for Peace at NYU, and Bayan Abubakr, according to the student-run Washington Square News. She declined to comment about the specifics of the resolution.
Only students with NYU IDs will be allowed to attend the meeting. The anonymous final vote, to protect student privacy, will be held on Dec. 6.
“In 2017, SJP and JVP introduced a resolution that they claimed was about promoting academic freedom,” Rena Nasar, StandWithUs Tri-State Campus Director, told JNS. “Now they are pushing a campaign that has been widely condemned for violating academic freedom and free speech, not to mention fueling hatred and conflict. The irony and hypocrisy could not be more clear.”
“BDS infantilizes Palestinians, removing any responsibility or agency from their end,” Gabe Hoffman, treasurer of Realize Israel, one of the two pro-Israel groups targeted last semester, told The Algemeiner. “It hinders the prospects of a mutually agreed-upon peaceful solution and ultimately hurts the wrong people—namely, the near 50,000 Palestinians with jobs at risk if their firms are sanctioned.”
Joshua Reichek, treasurer of TorchPAC, the other pro-Israel group targeted, told The Algemeiner, “while I do not agree with all of the policies of the Israeli government, I would imagine that most people would rightly view an attempt to boycott Americans or divest from all American institutions due to Trump’s policies as ignorant and bigoted.”
Asaf has an extensive history of anti-Israel activity.
Earlier this year, she partook in a “Return the Birthright” protest outside the Taglit Birthright Gala in New York City. Featured in a Twitter video wearing a JVP T-shirt, she said she attended because she refused “to be complicit in apartheid.”
She characterized Birthright as “a free trip on stolen land.”
