https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/shameful-anti-israel-bias-middle-east-studies-joseph-puder/
The anti-Israel and antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement were given another win by an American academic association this time; it was the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). On March 23, 2022, its membership approved a resolution endorsing “the Palestinian call for solidarity in the form of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).” The vote was 768-167 in favor of the resolution, which held Israel accountable for alleged human rights violations as suggested by the pro-Palestinian-led organization. The resolution calls for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions and universities.
It is rather ironic, if not extremely cynical that the actual founder of the BDS Movement, Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian-Arab who was born in Qatar, not in “Palestine,” received his Master’s degree in philosophy in the heartland of Zionist Israel, at Tel Aviv University. He and many of his fellow Palestinian students have enjoyed total academic freedom there, including participation in anti-Israel demonstrations, that they wouldn’t dare hold in Palestinian universities, where they would likely be beaten, arrested, banished, or even killed.
The same Barghouti who incites against Israel worldwide, with charges of “apartheid,” declared in June 2013, “We have no faith in the so-called negotiations,” and rejected the idea of a two-state solution. He has likewise rejected peace between Israel and the Palestinians, and advocates the dissolution of the Jewish state. When asked by an Arab interviewer Ali Mustafa (Electronic Intifada, May 2009) to explain calling Israel “an apartheid state,” he claimed that “he doesn’t need to prove it…”