Thomas Abowd

Overview

Thomas Abowd has mocked the Jewish Bible, trivialized anti-Semitism and was at the center of controversy after offering a university class that demonized Israel.

He has promoted the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and defended disgraced anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita.

Abowd is an advisory board member for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in Boston (JVP Boston).

Abowd was listed as a lecturer of American Studies, Anthropology and Arabic Culture, at Tufts University (Tufts) in 2016.

As of July 2024, Abowd was listed as an instructor for a Fall 2024 African and African Diaspora Studies course at Boston College (BC) titled: “Community Advocacy and Research Engagement.”

Abowd is the author of the 2014 book, titled: “Colonial Jerusalem - The Spatial Construction of Identity and Difference in a City of Myth, 1948–2012.”

Abowd is a member of the Facebook group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Tufts (Tufts SJP). In October 2014, Abowd attended the 2014 National SJP Conference, which was hosted by Tufts SJP.

Abowd is also a member of the Facebook group for the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).

Abowd received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology, from Columbia University.

Abowd received a Fulbright award to conduct research and teach at Birzeit University in Ramallah, from December 2011 to October 2012.

Birzeit University’s student body has celebrated terrorists since at least 2003. In 2003, 2015 and 2016, Birzeit University students elected Hamas’ student wing to power.

Abowd has been an anti-Israel agitator since the early 1990’s.

Mocking the Jewish Bible

On March 17, 2015, during a talk at the Jerusalem Fund, Abowd derided the Bible as a “celestial real estate guide.”

The Jerusalem Fund is an anti-Israel think tank in Washington, D.C. that frequently hosts events demonizing Israel. It has also hosted activists in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and spread hatred of Israel on Twitter.

On April 10, 2013, Abowd stated [00:17:02]: “there are even of course, many religious Jews who reject that reading of the Bible as real estate guide or the bible as, God as realtor...but it was part of the Jewish national movement for a homeland in Palestine.”

Abowd then called [00:17:25] Palestinians the “indigenous population who owned most of the country and were the majority of the population” and showed a series of discredited maps known as “The Map That Lies.”

The maps claim that lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” were purportedly stolen by Israel. In February 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled copies of a college textbook containing the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, American cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

Trivializing Anti-Semitism

In a March 6, 2015, post to the Tufts SJP Facebook page, Abowd dismissed the notion of anti-Semitic hatred in comments from Tufts SJP activists like: “White Jews are definitely White,” “Israel was a state built by White Jewish men for White Jewish men” and “Zionism is white supremacist.”

Abowd commented: “I missed all the ‘so much anti-Semitic hate here’--sounds quite delusional to me.”

Abowd also praised comments suggesting Israel was “racist as f**k” and maintained a “system of ethno-religious oppression.”

Demonizing Israel in the Classroom

In the Fall Semester of 2018, Abowd offered a class titled: “Colonizing Palestine,” the announcement of which triggered controversy among pro-Israel and Jewish students on and off campus.

According to the course description: “students will address crucial questions relating to this embattled nation, the Israeli state which illegally occupies Palestine.”

Following the announcement of the class, one student published an op-ed in the campus newspaper, explaining that “the university’s blind endorsement of “Colonizing Palestine” poses real threats to the academic freedom of students and quite literally denies Jewish indigeneity to Israel.”

Abowd responded to the article and other criticisms by publishing his own op-ed, in which he he described the pro-Israel organization on campus,“Tufts Friends of Israel” as “a tragically misguided organization affiliated with Tufts Hillel.”

Abowd also said: “Attempts to represent biblical stories and myths as incontrovertibly historical (e.g. the myths around the so-called King David) and then to deploy them to legitimize the expulsion and denigration of another people in the 21st century are examples of classic colonial ideology.”

Abowd then wrote: “Let’s remember that we at Tufts are not living under Israeli military rule, where Palestinian freedom of expression has not only been brutally suppressed... the vast majority of us do not (yet) live under conditions where students and professors can be tortured, beaten and killed for expressing political views, as Palestinians as young as 10 and 11 have been.”

The Tufts Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora released a statement to support Abowd and the course, commenting that “we know that teaching about colonialism and racism often produces backlash. We see, unfortunately more and more that valid criticism of Israel is being portrayed as anti-Semitic.”

The statement continued: “We will not let these spurious attacks derail inquiry at our university. We pledge to start the school year with a renewed commitment to studying the institutional and rhetorical structures of racism, colonization and decolonization in comparative context, and the creativity and cultures of colonized people. Please join us in offering support to Prof. Abowd.”

Demonizing Israel

On November 11, 2016, Abowd, in a talk at the Jerusalem Fund, said that Israel governs through [00:15:13] “racial logic” in Jerusalem, [00:19:50] “enabled by a range of potent myths” about Jewish history in Jerusalem.

Abowd belittled Israel’s claim to Jerusalem, saying [00:19:26]that Israel “privileges [Jews] to the exclusion of others, so you get this deep sort of biblical historical notion of an unchanging Jewish essence and connections to the Holy Land.”

He also mocked [00:14:35] Israel for considering Jerusalem an “eternal place, an unchanging immutable part of Jewish history.”

Abowd also said [00:9:16] that Israel maintains “apartheid-like” policies in Jerusalem, that Israel practices “settler colonialism” and wants the “elimination of a native … indigenous” people.

Abowd added [00:11:10] that it was important today to “see Israeli governance as colonial governance” and that Israel had a “logic of elimination” against Arabs since it was founded in 1948.

On July 27, 2015, Abowd participated in a JVP Boston event about Operation Protective Edge (OPE), to “commemorate Israel’s 2014 assault on Gaza, one year later.”

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

On March 17, 2015, in a talk at the Jerusalem Fund, Abowd claimed [00:13:25] that Israel “has built up a whole national mythology around the City of David.” The City of David is an archeological complex with structures over three thousand years old, recounting the Jewish presence in Jerusalem back to biblical times.

Abowd referred [00:25:30] to the idea of Jews returning to Israel as the “weaponization of myth.” The “myth” is the belief that God promised the Land of Israel to the Jewish people in the Bible.

According to a March 5, 2015 article in the campus paper, Tufts Daily, Abowd spoke at an SJP event during Israel Apartheid Week (IAW).

Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) is presented internationally as a “series of events that seeks to raise awareness of…Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian people.” One of its goals is to build support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. IAW has been renamed Palestine Awareness Week.

Abowd reportedly said about Israel: “‘It is a cultural project of control, and it has always been in every context. Colonial dominance is solidified through ideologies … and mythologies through Bible stories or the interpretations of sacred texts.’”

Abowd also reportedly claimed: “We have apartheid right here on this campus, and we have apartheid right here in this city.”

On April 10, 2013, in a talk at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Abowd implied that Israel’s founding in 1948 and its continued existence is illegitimate, stating that Israel “continues to take and colonize and appropriate Palestinian land for the last almost seven decades.”

Abowd also claimed [00:09:35] that the U.S was “in violation of international law” for being an Israeli ally since its founding in 1948 and referred [00:11:35] to The “Map That Lies.”

Abowd also said [00:12:18] that Israel kept the residents Gaza in essentially “one large prison camp,” insinuating that Israel alone maintains a “siege” on Gaza.

The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.

Promoting BDS

On August 11, 2014, Abowd signed and shared a petition on Facebook for a boycott of Hewlett Packard (HP). Abowd’s post featured a photo of a “die-in,” with a caption claiming HP “enables Israel’s massacre of Palestinians.”

On August 8, 2014, Abowd signed and shared a petition on Facebook to cancel a conference with The Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli university with ties to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The petition alleged that INSS bore “responsibility for envisioning and formulating all the war crimes committed by the Israeli Occupation Forces.”

During OPE, Abowd spoke at a July 9, 2014, JVP protest in front of the “locations of three companies they say are complicit in the violence: TIAA-CREF, Veolia, and Macy’s.”

Throughout the summer of 2014 — during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — Hamas's deployment of human shields was extensively documented and publicized. Hamas encouraged Gazans to act as human shields to frustrate Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.

According to a JVP press release the protest, Abowd insinuated that during OPE, Israel intentionally targeted civilians, saying: “we all witnessed Israeli jets bombing Palestinian civilian areas this week, Israeli troops storming Palestinian refugee camps and cities, and the killing of Palestinian civilians.”

Abowd later made his Facebook cover photo an image of himself speaking at the rally.

On May 4, 2013, Abowd signed and shared an American Studies Association (ASA) petition to support a “resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions.”

Defending Steven Salaita

On December 25, 2014, Abowd on Facebook blamed “anti-Arab racists” for the University of Illinois’ (U of I) retraction of a job offer to professor Steven Salaita.

On September 2, 2014, Abowd signed and shared on Facebook a petition demanding that Salaita be reinstated. Abowd claimed in his Facebook post that the UIUC Chancellor “has no commitment to academic freedom.”

Abowd is also a member of the Facebook group: “Salaita academic freedom resources.”

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

PYM

In 2012, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM USA) released a statement saying: “Our liberation...will be gained with the path that was written with the blood of our martyrs. We reaffirm that the only path that we are concerned with is the path that explicitly heads towards the liberation of our land and the return of our people to Palestine.”

PYM organized rallies demonizing Israel where it displays propaganda posters supporting the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.

On October 25, 2015, PYM called to support “intifada” during a period when Palestinian radicals across Israel stabbed and hacked to death scores of Israeli civilians. PYM alleged that “Al-Aqsa Mosque has been the target of particularly brutal assaults” and that “... arbitrary killings are committed daily by the Zionist military and settlers.”

On November 10, 2015, the PYM Facebook page displayed a photo of masked Palestinian radicals throwing rocks and firing rocks from slingshots. That photo was used to promote at least 25 anti-Israel rallies across the globe on or around November 29, 2015 under the banner of “Transnational mobilization for Palestinian resistance.”

On November 30, 2015, PYM displayed a photo on Facebook from one of the rallies showing a sign in support of PFLP member Khalida Jarrar, who confessed to inciting violence and calling for terrorists to abduct Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.

Another sign showed support for PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sadat, who was convicted for the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.