The Case Against Divestment

Editor’s note: Earlier this year, the Brown Divestment Coalition (BDC) submitted a recommendation to the Brown University Corporation to “divest from companies that profit from and facilitate gross human rights abuses committed by Israel throughout occupied Palestine.” Next month, the Corporation of Brown University Management will vote on the resolution. 

We publish below a summary of a counterproposal submitted by four Brown alumni, working with the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), which may be useful for pro-Israel activists at other campuses across the country. 

---

INTRODUCTION

An expanded version of this report was formally submitted to the Advisory Committee on University Resource Management (ACURM) earlier this month. The report aims to debunk “45 false claims” made by the Brown Divestment Coalition (BDC), which, according to the report, “involve demonstrably false statements, misleading omissions, intellectually dishonest arguments and highly emotive language designed to distract readers from the fundamental truth that the BDC cause is based on bigotry and lies, not justice.”

FALSE CLAIM #1

Claim: “On Nov. 8 2023, 20 members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now engaged in a peaceful sit-in at University Hall The university had them arrested once the building closed for the day … These students’ crimes? Asking that [the administration] respect the voices of the Brown community and formally consider a report …” 

Facts: The students were not arrested for asking that their voices be respected. They were arrested for trespassing within school buildings. BDC omits the dangerous rhetoric that has characterized these protests.

FALSE CLAIM #2

Claim: “These activists staged another sit-in with the same demand, this time in honor of and in solidarity with Hisham Awartani.”

Facts: While the shooting of Mr. Awartani was tragic, it does not appear to have been motivated by animus based on his Palestinian background. The shooter, Jason Eaton, who has a long history of mental illness, appears to have been pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. 

Mr. Awartani was a victim of gun violence, not of hate.

FALSE CLAIM #3

Claim: “We acknowledge there is a vocal minority of students who do not support divestment…” 

Facts: The assertion that opposition to divestment is from only a “vocal minority” is unsupported. It appears there’s only a vocal minority in favor of divestment, an issue which most of the student body is uninterested in addressing.

FALSE CLAIM #4

Claim: “Referendum Results: 69% of those undergraduate students who voted for the referendum voted yes to the question, ‘Should the Brown University administration divest all stocks, funds, endowment, and other monetary instruments from companies complicit in human rights abuses in Palestine?’” 

Facts: As noted above, the figure of 69% is of the minority of students who voted, who represented only 27.5% of the student body.

FALSE CLAIM #5

Claim: “The occupation of Palestinian land by the Israeli government violates article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention … Israel has consistently transferred parts of its own civilian population into occupied Palestinian territories.” 

Facts: Occupation does not violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which, far from outlawing occupation, recognizes its frequency in armed conflict and codifies the rules by which an occupation is to be carried out. Nowhere in the Convention is the word “settlement” or “settler” mentioned. 

As Robbie Sabel, Professor of International Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, explained, “It is not a logical interpretation of international law that would allow citizens of all States to live in the West Bank but for it to be a war crime to allow Israeli citizens to do so.” That this does not violate the Geneva Conventions is further evidenced by state practice.

FALSE CLAIM #6

Claim: “The total area of Palestinian land on the Israeli side of the wall amounts to 9.5% of the West Bank…”

Facts: The land in question is not “Palestinian land.” There is not now, nor has there ever been, a state called “Palestine” with sovereignty over any land. Nor is any plot of land designated for a future Palestinian state. The BDC misleadingly suggests that the borders of a future Palestinian state are set in stone according to the armistice lines set between Israel, Jordan and Egypt in 1949.

Instead, they are to be negotiated between the two parties. That is why all the major peace proposals, which the Palestinian leadership has consistently rejected, have involved land swaps which would provide the proposed Palestinian state with plots of land on the Israeli side of the 1949 armistice lines.

FALSE CLAIM #7

Claim: “The placement of this wall has therefore allowed for additional land annexation by Israel …” 

Facts: Israel has not “annexed” land on either side of the security barrier. 

Moreover, the placement of the wall, and the route it follows, was guided by a balance of security considerations and the rights of local inhabitants and was heavily litigated in Israeli courts. 

FALSE CLAIM #8

Claim: “Under Israeli military law, the Palestinian people are subjected to a system of separate and unequal laws and services.” 

Facts: Under the laws of occupation, found in the Geneva Conventions and Hague Regulations –which Israel voluntarily applies – the application of a separate set of laws, namely military law, is, in fact, required. For Israel to apply its civil law to Palestinians would, ironically, require it to annex the West Bank. 

It is notable that the Palestinian Authority has since implemented an actual system of unequal and discriminatory laws, including forbidding the sale of land to Jews, a “crime” punishable by death.

FALSE CLAIM #9

Claim: “Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: ‘No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.’

“According to Amnesty International, Palestinian civilians are collectively punished in the form of home demolitions by the Israeli government … Nearly 50,000 Palestinian structures were razed by the IDF from 1967-2019.” 

Facts: This claim is one of the most egregiously misleading. The authors cite no source for the claim that “nearly 50,000 Palestinian structures were razed by the IDF from 1967-2019.” The likely reason is that it would quickly expose the dishonesty of the claim. 

The 50,000 figure appears to come from the activist organization, The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). But as ICAHD explains, its figures include multiple types of house demolitions and, according to ICAHD itself, in fact punitive demolitions account for only 1% of all defined demolitions. Far from 50,000 homes being “punitively” demolished, the real figure is around 500. 

FALSE CLAIM #10

Claim: “Brown University has made commitments to promoting good-will solutions to the conflict on campus, through discussion, outreach, and education. The University hosts speakers, seminars, and events on the conflict, which has for the past several years included a regular Israel-Palestine Lecture Series.” 

Facts: As documented in a 2023 report by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), numerous events hosted by Brown University on the subject have involved speakers promoting blatant antisemitism and extremism.

The university has done little to nothing to promote “good will solutions” to the issues dividing Israel and the Palestinians. The university has exacerbated the problem of Brown students and faculty being unable or unwilling to discuss the Israel-Palestinian situation in an honest way.

FALSE CLAIM #11

Claim: “The Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded in 2005 as a grassroots, nonviolent Palestinian civil society movement inspired by protests against South African apartheid.” 

Facts: While the BDS Movement (capital “M”), the organization, was founded in 2005, the movement (lower case “m”) is an outgrowth of an organized boycott that began years before the State of Israel was even formed. In 1945, the newly formed Arab League instituted a boycott of Jewish goods and services in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1945. The Arab League pledged to “combat Zionist industry,” three years before Israel declared independence.

The attempt to depict the anti-Jewish boycott movement as having begun in 2005 is an effort to erase its controversial and antisemitic origins. This current iteration began with the infamous 2001 Durban “Anti-Racism” Conference, which the late Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), a Holocaust survivor, described as “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I had seen since the Nazi period.” 

It had nothing whatsoever to do with a “grassroots” movement “inspired by protests against South African apartheid.” That argument is pure fiction.

FALSE CLAIM #12

Claim: “Ending Illegal Occupation: ‘Ending [Israeli] occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.’” 

Facts: There is no such thing as an “illegal occupation.” As explained by the late Yoram Dinstein, former Dean of the Faculty of Law at Tel Aviv University: “In truth, international law – far from stigmatizing belligerent occupation with illegality – recognizes its frequency and regulates its application in great detail.” The International Committee of the Red Cross, hardly a friend of Israel, is of a similar view, “Regarded from a purely [international humanitarian law] perspective, occupation law applies equally to all occupations, whether or not they are the result of force used lawfully.”

FALSE CLAIM #13

Claim: “Equal Rights for all Israeli Citizens: ‘Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality’” 

Facts: Israeli law already guarantees the equal rights of all of Israel’s citizens, regardless of race or religion. In fact, the Israeli Supreme Court has gone so far as to apply positive discrimination in favor of Israel’s Arab minority, ruling that while Arabs may not be excluded from majority Jewish communities, Jews may be barred from residing in Bedouin Arab towns.

FALSE CLAIM #14

Claim: “Respecting the Right of Return: ‘Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in U.N. resolution 194’” 

Facts: The “right of return” is a myth created to sustain the Arab world’s hope and desire that Israel be wiped off the face of the earth. Resolution 194 was rejected by the Arab parties, who refused to negotiate with Israel as called for in the resolution. It is also made conditional on the willingness of Palestinians to “live at peace with their neighbors.” The widespread support of Palestinians for Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 shows that condition clearly has not been met. 

FALSE CLAIM #15

Claim: “While Palestinian citizens of Israel are permitted to vote and hold office, they may be forbidden by the Supreme Court of Israel if they engage in ‘negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.’”

Facts: This language misleadingly suggests this rule applies only to Arab Israelis, when, in fact, it applies to all Israeli citizens, regardless of ethnic or religious identity.

This practice is the equivalent of oaths of office across the world.

FALSE CLAIM #16

Claim: “In 2018, the Knesset passed ‘The Basic Law: Israel — The Nation-State of the Jewish People.’ It states that the ‘exercise of the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.’ In other words, Palestinian citizens of Israel are not entitled to the self-determination that Israel claims for its Jewish citizens.” 

Facts: As an initial matter, BDC ignores that the law it references has been interpreted by the Israeli Supreme Court as having no effect on any of the rights of any Israeli citizen. As then-Chief Justice Hayut ruled: “The Nation-State Basic Law does not violate the State of Israel’s nature as a democratic state. It does not give preferential status to the Jewish identity of the state over its democratic identity. It does not detract from the principle of equality’s status in our legal system.”

The right to self-determination does not equal a right to carve out a new state from an existing one. For example, while the Quebecois have a right to self-determination, that does not entitle them to secede from Canada and form their own state.

So while the Jewish people were able to exercise their self-determination in the form of a nation state (an option given to, but rejected by, Palestinian Arabs), that does not negate the existence of self-determination for the non-Jewish population in Israel, whose self-determination is exercised in the form of political, social, cultural, and other rights. 

FALSE CLAIM #17

Claim: “Furthermore, housing discrimination prevents Palestinian citizens of Israel from residing within major Israeli cities at the same rates as Jewish citizens, isolating them into sparse enclaves.”  

Facts: This is a complete fabrication.

There is no law preventing Arab Israelis from residing anywhere that a Jewish Israeli can. In fact,, the only housing discrimination legally allowed is against Jews, who may be prohibited from residing in Bedouin Arab communities.. The argument put forward by the authors is that if you discount all the Arab Israelis living elsewhere in Israel, Arab Israelis only live in a small part of the land.

That is an obvious absurdity.

FALSE CLAIM #18

Claim: “While Palestinian citizens of Israel have the privileges of voting and running for office denied to Palestinians of other location categories, they still do not exist on equal status with Israel’s Jewish citizens.” 

Facts: This sentence lists several ways in which Arab Israelis are fully equal to Jewish Israelis, before claiming – without providing any evidence, examples, or sources – that Arab Israelis are not fully equal to Jewish Israelis. The accusation requires actual evidence.

FALSE CLAIM #19

Claim: “In terms of the right of return, U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 states clearly in regards to the Palestinians displaced in 1948 …” 

Facts: As noted earlier, the supposed “right of return” is a myth.

FALSE CLAIM #20

Claim: “According to the UNRWA, 5.9 million Palestinians are refugees today.”

Facts: This figure is deeply misleading. It applies the definition of “refugee” used by UNRWA, applicable only to Palestinians. Under the 1954 Refugee Convention, one must individually meet a set of requirements to be considered a refugee. Under the UNRWA definition, these requirements are waived for Palestinians. All patrilineal descendants of the original refugees are automatically given refugee status regardless of whether they would individually meet the Refugee Convention definition. The true figure, under the universal 1954 Convention definition, was estimated to be less than 200,000 in 2021.

FALSE CLAIM #21

Claim: “To accomplish these goals, BDS is at its core a nonviolent struggle.”

Facts: To call BDS a “nonviolent” struggle is akin to depicting the Nazi boycott of Jewish stores as a “nonviolent.”  It divorces the boycott from the larger, virulently antisemitic movement of which it is but one element. 

The BDS Movement itself is directly tied to terrorist organizations. The very first member organization listed by the BDS Movement is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (PNIF), a coalition of terrorist organizations, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Obviously, these organizations are not interested in a solely “nonviolent struggle.” 

FALSE CLAIM #22

Claim: “As founding member of the BDS movement Omar Barghouti articulated, ‘BDS targets complicity, not identity.’” 

Facts: This is also a demonstrably false claim about BDS, using a carefully curated quote. Consider other remarks of Barghouti, such as: “No Palestinian – rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian—will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.” Thus, it is absolutely about identity for the “founder” of the BDS movement.

BDS activists have regularly targeted Jewish community organizations with no real connection to Israel or any involvement in any alleged “crimes,” such as the so-called “Boston Mapping Project,” which targeted dozens of Jewish institutions Even organizations sharply critical of Israel were included for being Jewish.

FALSE CLAIM #23

Claim: “BDS does not promote a one-state over a two-state solution, or vice-versa; participating in a divestment campaign would not require Brown to back one political solution over another, but rather side with bare-minimum human rights law.”

Facts: This is another blatant lie. BDS promotes positions that they openly acknowledge are steps toward the destruction of the Jewish state, such as the imaginary “right of return,” which Barghouti claims: “You cannot reconcile the right of return for refugees with a two-state solution … a return for refugees would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. A two-state solution was never moral and it’s no longer working.”

FALSE CLAIM #24

Claim: “In Palestine, the current members of the BDS National Committee include the General Union of Palestinian Workers, Global Palestine Right of Return Coalition, Palestinian Bar Association, Palestinian Medical Association, [and others].” 

Facts: This passage underscores, as much as or better than, any other of BDC’s many deceits. The authors clearly researched who is a part of the BDS National Committee but chose to conceal the one member that contradicts everything BDC claims about BDS.

That member is the PNIF.  BDC intentionally curated the membership list to omit the terrorist-designated groups whose causes they proudly and shamelessly champion. 

FALSE CLAIM #25

Claim: “As the examples below demonstrate, divestment campaigns, especially when embraced by prestigious institutions with large endowments, national, and international influence, are an important starting point for placing systemic pressure on states, corporations, and institutions to cease human rights abuses, violations of international law, and other social harms.” 

Facts: Similarity in tactics does not equate to a similarity in justness of the cause. Boycotts  of Jewish academics by “prestigious institutions” was an early feature of life in Nazi Germany too.

FALSE CLAIM #26

Claim: “The campaigns helped increase the political power and legitimacy that anti-apartheid leaders held within South Africa …” 

Facts: There are no individuals among Palestinian leadership who even arguably can be compared with “anti-apartheid leaders” in South Africa. Unlike Israel, the PA actually has on paper laws akin to the racist apartheid laws of South Africa, such as barring the sale of land to Jews and prohibiting Jews from worshipping at their holy sites. 

FALSE CLAIM #27

Claim: “Leading human rights organizations have charged Israel with the crime of apartheid since 2019. They include prominent Israeli human rights organizations Yesh Din and B’Tselem as well as international organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.” 

Facts: While a full rebuttal of the “apartheid” charge is beyond the scope of this document, it is necessary to point out that the allegations made by these organizations have been debunked time and time again. Tellingly, these organizations have refused to correct the record even when directly informed about some of the hundreds of objectively false claims underpinning their allegations.

FALSE CLAIM #28

 Claim: “This is the consensus of all reputable human rights organizations that have endeavored to investigate the topic.” 

Facts: BDC engages in the fallacy of an appeal to a supposed higher authority. Rather than tangle with the hundreds of factual and legal errors, omissions, and misleading claims noted above, BDC hopes to distract readers by waving around the phrase “reputable human rights organizations.” But when an allegation of a violation of international law is made, what matters is not who made the charge but rather the arguments and the supporting evidence. 

Moreover, the implication that there is a “consensus” is deeply misleading. 

FALSE CLAIM #29

Claim: “In response [to] the claims made by South Africa, the court assented [sic] that ‘at least some of the acts and omissions alleged by South Africa to have been committed by Israel in Gaza appear to be capable of falling within the provisions of the (Genocide) Convention,’ legitimizing the severity of the situation, as well as the court’s jurisdiction over it.” 

Fact: BDC wants you to believe that the charge of “genocide” against Israel has been given credibility by a judicial order at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Joan Donoghue, who was the president of the court at the time, made it clear that the ICJ did no such thing: “I’m correcting what’s often said in the media – it didn’t decide that the claim of genocide was plausible.”

All the order did was declare that if everything South Africa claimed was true, then the allegations might properly fall under the Genocide Convention. The actual substance of the allegations, if any, has yet to be litigated.

FALSE CLAIM #30

Claim: “Since early October, at least 26,000 Palestinian people have been killed, including more than 10,000 children.”

Facts: BDC omits the source of these figures: Hamas.  Even the United Nations has downplayed these figures in ways that cast serious doubt on the highly charged claims about the proportion of women and children among the fatalities.

Moreover, “people” is inclusive of Palestinian terrorists. While Hamas avoids distinguishing between civilians and combatants when peddling its statistics, the Israel Defense Forces have estimated they’ve eliminated approximately 14,000 terrorists, and that approximately 16,000 Gazan civilians have also been killed in the fighting. While each civilian death is a tragedy, a nearly 1-to-1 ratio of civilians to combatants would be unprecedented in modern military operations in urban areas. 

Hamas’s entire strategy is designed to exacerbate civilian harm. 

FALSE CLAIM #31

Claim: “Only ‘16 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are ‘minimally or partially functioning,’’ with “healthcare workers increasingly unable to adequately address disease or other life-threatening conditions that arise from overcrowding, flooding, and hunger.”

Facts: The authors depict a dire situation without addressing the causes. Hamas has exploited hospitals in Gaza, using them as command-and-control centers, arms caches, and detention centers for hostages.

Hamas having done so both constitutes a war crime and renders the hospitals legitimate targets under international law. Israel has facilitated enormous amounts of medical aid into the Gaza Strip.

FALSE CLAIM #32

Claim: “Shrinking sources of clean water endanger ever larger numbers of Palestinian civilians, and Israeli refusal to admit fuel for desalination plants has forced vulnerable populations to depend on water that is ‘highly salinated or polluted.’” 

Facts: Gazans are not being forced to depend on “highly salinated or polluted water.” Israel has repaired and opened the three water pipelines into Gaza. Two additional pipelines were constructed from Egypt. These pipelines alone are capable of providing enough clean water to a large majority of Gazans.

Notably, the authors once again omit any real analysis of the causes of the dire situation they present to blame Israel. The Palestinian Authority was given control of most of Gaza’s water infrastructure in 1995, and then total control in 2005. Hamas has mismanaged the infrastructure and has openly boasted about how it digs up water pipelines for the purpose of turning them into rockets meant to kill Jews.

FALSE CLAIM #33

Claim: “Ninety-three percent of Gazans are currently facing ‘crisis levels of hunger’ as a result of Israeli policies that seek to induce extreme deprivation onto the captive population.”

Facts: This claim is simply baseless. Israel has continuously scaled up its efforts to facilitate humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. 

FALSE CLAIM #34

Claim: “More than 100 journalists have been murdered…” 

Facts: The description of many of these individuals as “journalists” is misleading. Many of these individuals have turned out to be members of terrorist organizations. Some, such as Al-Jazeera’s Ismail al-Ghoul, even participated in the Oct. 7 massacre. 

Many held Israeli civilians hostage in their own homes and worked for “media” outlets directly connected to these terrorist organizations. These people were not actual journalists; they were propagandists in the employ of a terrorist organization. 

FALSE CLAIM #35

Claim: “Lifesaving resources are being slowed or outright blocked by Israeli government and military forces.” 

Facts: Israeli forces are not responsible for the slow pace of aid delivery. In fact, enormous amounts of aid (over 920,000 tons) have entered Gaza faster than aid agencies like the United Nations can deliver it within the territory.

What BDC appears to be complaining about are the inspections carried out by Israel of aid shipments being sent into Gaza. Beyond not actually being responsible for the slow delivery of aid, there is nothing illegal or untoward about such inspections. 

FALSE CLAIM #36

Claim: “More than 100 aid workers affiliated with the U.N. were murdered in the first month of bombardment alone.”

Facts: Once again, the authors allege criminal intent without supporting evidence. Without that evidence, these accusations cannot be taken seriously, as they simply seek to mask the lack of substance behind the charge.

FALSE CLAIM #37

Claim: “Attacks on aid convoys, limits on hours in which humanitarian vehicles can move through checkpoints, and lengthy inspections of shipments of food and medical supplies have bottlenecked access to vital resources that growing numbers of refugees are ‘wholly reliant on… to survive.’” 

Facts: This is, once again, a flat-out lie. The bottleneck is not Israeli inspections or restrictions, but rather the inability of the United Nations to scale up its aid delivery within the territory. It has been Egypt which has declined to coordinate with Israel to reopen the humanitarian aid crossing.

FALSE CLAIM #38

Claim: “Israeli military control of checkpoints connecting Gaza to Israel and Egypt not only deny displaced Palestinians the ability to escape to safety but gives military forces the ability to deny them aid through border closures and blockades.” 

Facts: Here, BDC misleads by omission. The full story is a case study in how “international law” seems to be applied differently against only the Jewish state. The reason Gazans were not able to escape to safety into Egypt had nothing to do with Israel. Gazans were prohibited from finding refuge in Egypt by Egypt.

To this day, no Arab country has agreed to take in displaced Palestinians, with the exception of a limited number of temporary entries to receive medical care.

FALSE CLAIM #39

Claim: “Eighty-five percent of people living in Gaza have been forcibly displaced by Israeli attacks—nearly two million people are now refugees.” 

Facts: Once again, BDC misleads by omitting the party responsible for the situation – Hamas. There is a reason for the prohibitions in the law of armed conflict on locating military targets in civilian areas: It puts civilians in harm’s way. 

Israel’s evacuation orders have been designed, in compliance with international law, to remove civilians from those areas in which it must operate to eliminate Palestinian terrorist targets that have been unlawfully embedded in those areas.

In other words, the legal wrong that led to this displacement is not that of Israel, but that of Hamas, who built their terror infrastructure underneath their homes.

FALSE CLAIM #40

Claim: “The scale of destruction to civilians’ homes is staggering — nearly 80% of Palestinians in Gaza have no home to return to.” 

Facts: This claim is unsupported even by the cited source. The U.N. News story cited by the authors derives a faulty conclusion from its own data, presumably to advance its own political narrative. Many – if not most – of those Gazans are displaced because of evacuation orders, not necessarily because their homes no longer exist.

According to a recent UNOSTAT damage assessment, the total number of structures destroyed, severely damaged, moderately damaged, and possibly damaged is about 55% of the total structures in Gaza. If one removes the “possibly” damaged structures, the figure drops to below 40%.

FALSE CLAIM #41

Claim: “Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023 …” 

Facts: This claim, standing alone, warrants the dismissal in its entirety of the BDC proposal. It could not be clearer that Israel did not launch a war on Gaza. Precisely the opposite is true; Palestinian terrorists launched the war on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. If the BDC is willing to lie about something so basic and obvious, none of its other claims can be taken seriously.

This claim, standing alone, warrants the dismissal in its entirety of the BDC proposal. It could not be clearer that Israel did not launch a war on Gaza. Precisely the opposite is true; Palestinian terrorists launched the war on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. If the BDC is willing to lie about something so basic and obvious, none of its other claims can be taken seriously.

FALSE CLAIM #42

Claim: “On Dec. 7, prominent Palestinian poet and professor Rafaat Alareer, who was known as the ‘voice of Gaza,’ was killed by an Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza.” 

Facts: Refaat Alareer was not simply a “poet and professor.” Alareer was a notorious antisemite. Prior to his death, Alareer spent his time online celebrating and cruelly mocking the death of Israeli civilians, including children, murdered on Oct. 7.

FALSE CLAIM #43

Claim: “Recently, the Israeli Occupation Forces arrested 25 student activists at An-Najah University in Nablus, in the West Bank, during a sit-in where students were protesting internal university policies on tuition payment. Birzeit University students, staff, and faculty have faced similar and constant raids targeting Palestinian students who have been abducted, detained, and brutalized by the Israeli military for decades, which goes well beyond the obstruction of their rights to education.” 

Facts: Students were not arrested for protesting internal university policies. To the contrary, they were arrested for their affiliations with Hamas.

The student factions of Hamas and other terrorist organizations regularly held rallies and parades glorifying terrorism. Students from these universities have carried out terror attacks targeting Israelis or have been otherwise involved in terrorist activity.

FALSE CLAIM #44

Claim: “These blatant obstructions of education should be of utmost concern to Brown University. Such obstructions are a clear contravention of the right to education enshrined in Article 26 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.”

Facts: The actions of Israel are not, in fact, a “clear contravention of the right to education.” In the law of armed conflict Steven Haines explained, “A school is ordinarily a civilian object, of course, and not subject to lawful targeting. If, however, military forces use it, the school loses its protected status and becomes a military objective.”

The war began with the savagery of Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, has severely affected the ability of Israeli students to access education, particularly for the children of the thousands displaced in southern and northern Israel by the indiscriminate attacks of Palestinian and Hezbollah terrorists.

FALSE CLAIM #45

Claim: The use of “Palestinian citizens of Israel” throughout the document.

Facts: The authors refer to Arab citizens of Israel as “Palestinian citizens of Israel,” in spite of the fact that very few actually identify as “Palestinian.” Surveys consistently show that only a small minority define themselves primarily as “Palestinian.” Instead, these surveys show most prefer to be referred to as “Arab-Israeli.”

Propagandists, like the BDC, treat facts as devices to be manipulated, hidden, and disguised in service of partisan ends. Peacemakers work with the facts as they are, not as they wish them to be.

CONCLUSION

“Brown University, as one of the leading institutions of higher education in the world, has a moral and professional obligation to embrace and embody intellectual honesty. Instead of being led astray by the BDC, Brown must tangle with the facts. Propagandists, like the BDC, treat facts as devices to be manipulated, hidden, and disguised in service of partisan ends. Peacemakers work with the facts as they are, not as they wish them to be. Solutions based on lies will only perpetuate conflict and the accompanying harms. The BDC is not willing to engage honestly with the facts. It seeks to exploit Brown for purely partisan ends. If Brown University is to maintain its image and uphold its mission, it must reject BDC’s bad faith ploy.”