Omar Barghouti (born 1964) is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a leading light of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. He has become well known for his two books: "The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid" (Verso Books, 2001) BDS — Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket Books, 2011). He is a frequent speaker at events around the world preaching a one-state solution and calling Israel an apartheid state.
Barghouti was born in 1964 in Qatar, but grew up in Egypt. He then lived in the United States for 11 years while a student at Columbia University from where he received a Masters degree in electrical engineering, and then moving to Ramallah. His U.S. born child currently attends college in Indiana. He is a member of the the Berghouti extended family clan that is well known as a major player in regional Arab politics.
Barghouti has been attending Tel Aviv University from 2009 where he received a masters degree in “ethics,” and hopes to obtain a doctorate in Ethics. He attends a university that he described (in Counterpunch): that refuses to date to acknowledge the fact that it sits on top of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village (Sheikh Muwannis). Some of TAU's departments are also organically linked to the military and intelligence establishment.
When asked how he can study at an Israeli university despite his call for a boycott of Israeli universities, he commented: "My studies at Tel Aviv University are a personal matter and I have no interest in commenting." The university that he has maligned has refused to expel him despite a petition lodged by students calling for his expulsion. It is from this perch within Israeli academia that Barghouti runs his global campaign to have all academics everywhere shun their Israeli colleagues until all Arab demands against Israel are met in full.
PACBI released a statement branding the calls to expel Barghouti as "McCarthyist". In this statement, PACBI defended Barghouti by asserting that requiring Palestinians to boycott Israeli universities themselves as a prerequisite to endorsing the BDS call is "an absurd position, given the complete lack of alternatives available" to them and that it would effectively amount to requiring Palestinians to deny themselves education. Of course, this statement does not fit with the fact that Barghouti did have an alternative as he was able to study at Columbia University, one of the top universities in the world.
If the global leadership of the BDS movement resides anywhere, it resides at Tel Aviv University where Barghouti as a graduate student whose graduate school workload as light or as heavy as he chooses to make it, gets to dwell in highly-subsidized perpetual adolescence. He gets to endlessly complain about his movement being silenced, even as he jets around the planet in luxury delivering his message and penning articles that routinely get published in major newspapers. In this role he takes no risks while claiming great courage, the ultimate middle class warrior acting as a stand-in for the repressed of the world.
Indeed, Barghouti has become the poster child of the BDS Movement (Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions of the state of Israel) because of his book and command of English. He has a way with words and describes the movement as necessary because "if you don't leash that mad dog, it will bite everyone". When the Irish trade union movement in 2010 met to discuss their controversial boycott resolutions against Israel, Barghouti was on the agenda.
As an example of Omar Barghouti travels, his schedule for 2011 included: between April 9-15, 2011, Barghouti visited New York University, Columbia University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Brown University, Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Hampshire College. On July 4, 2011, he spoke at the University of Toronto, and on July 23, 2011 he was at the Southbank Centre as part of the 2011 London Literature Festival.
At a Sabeel conference in a California church (March 2010), Barghouti alleged that Israel is committing “slow genocide” in Gaza by contaminating the water supply: “There are no death camps. Israel is too sophisticated for that. Israel is a more evolved war criminal. It does things slower.”
Barghouti has been active in the cultural boycott of Israel. He led calls for Paul McCartney not to perform in Israel in 2008. McCartney gained worldwide fame as a member of The Beatles and is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history. Despite the call, McCartney entertained a crowd of 45,000 in Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park on Sept. 25, 2008 (see picture above).
In 2009, he attempted to initiate a boycott of The Batsheva Dance Company of Tel Aviv in its tour of the US and Canada in January, February, and March, 2009. He declared that it was imperative for those working for justice in Palestine to start organizing to persuade those hosting the Batsheva Dance Company to cancel the upcoming performances.
Barghouti has consistently spoken of Israel as an apartheid state, stating: "From now on, it will be acceptable to compare Israel's apartheid system to its South African predecessor. As a consequence, proposing practical measures to punish Israeli institutions for their role in the racist and colonial policies of their state will no longer be considered beyond the pale."
Barghouti refers to Israeli practices using Nazi Germany rhetoric: "Many of the methods of collective and individual “punishment” meted out to Palestinian civilians at the hands of young, racist, often sadistic and ever impervious Israeli soldiers at the hundreds of checkpoints littering the occupied Palestinian territories are reminiscent of common Nazi practices against the Jews."
In his talks, he creates his own reality about Israel through racially charged rhetoric and false clams of discrimination. “Palestinian communities… have been recently subjected to some of the worst, ongoing Israeli campaigns of gradual ethnic cleansing intended to Judaize their space.” It is illegal for non-Jews to purchase property in “most places in Israel, that non-Jews are “not entitled to even apply” for most jobs in government ministries, healthcare and education; that “there are many bureaucratic rules that make it very difficult for [non-Jewish Israelis] to get service” in healthcare clinics in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods; and that only a Jew can be a citizen in Israel.
Barghouti accuses Palestinians who have engaged with Israelis in intellectual debates and artistic partnerships of being "guilty of moral blindness and political shortsightedness" and "clinically delusional or dangerously deceptive." Samir El-Youssef states that "Barghouti’s 'true peace based on justice' is that Israel must be punished, brought down to its knees, before a Palestinian is allowed to greet an Israeli in the street".
In his book, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket Books, 2011), Barghouti is unequivocally opposed to a two states solution. He says: “The two-state solution is not only impossible to achieve now — Israel has made it an absolute pipe dream that cannot happen — but also, crucially, an immoral solution. At best it would address some of the rights of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, a mere one-third of the Palestinian people”.
But in a moment of candour, he reveals that the political basis of BDS is not compatible with two states either. He wrote: “You cannot practically reconcile the right of return for refugees with a negotiated two-state solution”. There it is in black and white: support BDS and you are tied to a single state solution.
Regarding the land of Israel, "Barghouti argues that the Palestinians have inalienable rights, while those of the Jews were acquired, even if they received international recognition." As a consequence, Israeli Jews have no right to self determination at all. He cannot conceptualize them as a nation, therefore their self determination is not even discussed. He sugar-coats his “solution”, saying he wants “a secular democratic state where nobody is thrown into the sea, nobody is sent back to Poland, and nobody is left suffering in refugee camps”.
Barghouti’s contempt for the Israeli left. “...most of what passes as ‘left’ in Israel are Zionist parties and groups that make some far-right parties in Europe look as moral as Mother Teresa”. And “The so-called peace groups in Israel largely work to improve Israeli oppression against the Palestinians, rather than eliminate it, with their chief objective being the guarantee of Israel’s future as a ‘Jewish’ — that is, exclusivist — state. The most radical Israeli ‘Zionist-left’ figures and groups are still Zionist, adhering to the racist principles of Zionism that treat the indigenous Palestinians as lesser humans who are the obstacle or a ‘demographic threat’...”
Barghouti is quite upfront that BDS ultimately means ostracizing everything Israeli. The campaign is “working to expel Israel and its complicit institutions from international and interstate academic, cultural, sporting... environmental, financial, trade, and other forums.”
Further Reading:
Susan Abulhawa: A charming star performer for the propagation of hate against Jews and Israel
Hind Awwad: Palestinian boycott coordinator provides a Sweet Face for Hatred against Israel
