Largest Jewish History Museum in US Appoints CEO Who Defends Boycotts on Israel

The Center for Jewish History has hired a vocal supporter of punitive actions against the Jewish state to run its prestigious institutions.  

The Center for Jewish History, which serves as a central hub of scholarly research, events, exhibitions and performances, has recently appointed David N. Myers as its new President and Chief Executive Officer, although he has legitimized the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).

The New York-based museum is a partnership of five Jewish history, scholarship, and art organizations that constitute the biggest repository of Jewish history in the US.

Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, pointed to several articles written by Myers, a UCLA history professor, in which he expressed virulent anti-Israel positions. In a July 2006 Los Angeles Times op-ed, for instance, Myers “employed all the usual clichés—”cycle of violence,” “disproportionately harsh”—to single Israel out as “the most responsible party” for the “escalating violence,” Campus Watch wrote.

In a piece titled “Rethinking the Jewish Nation” in the Winter 2011 edition of the Havruta Journal, Myers argued that “Statist Zionism,” or a Jewish state, should give way to a “global Jewish collective.”

In an op-ed in the LA Jewish Journal titled “Another Way To Look at BDS,” Myers defended a boycott of Israel and blamed Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria for BDS.

“Jews do themselves no benefit by taking aim at BDS without struggling to end the occupation and granting Palestinians the right to self-determination,” Myers wrote. “We are rapidly losing credibility in the world, among long-standing friends, on college campuses and particularly with our own Jewish youth, who no longer buy the hasbara refrain of Israel’s unblemished virtue.”

“To right an ongoing injustice (and halt Israel’s plummeting reputation in the world), it is imperative to fight the root cause of BDS, which is not anti-Semitism, but rather the occupation,” he stressed, relating to Israel’s presence in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, Israel’s biblical heartland.

The anti-Israel BDS movement promotes financial, academic and cultural boycotts against Israel, ostensibly as a nonviolent struggle against the so-called “Israeli occupation.”

Critics say its activities are a modern form of anti-Semitism and that its true objective is to destroy the State of Israel.

Myers calls for the launching of a campaign “that makes clear that we stand with Israel and its right to exist, but can no longer tolerate the occupation and settlement-building.”

“They are key factors in the denial of national rights to Palestinians and add fuel to the frustration-driven violence of today,” he wrote, apparently blaming Islamic terrorism on the State of Israel.

“Almost 50 years after the territorial conquests in 1967, with hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jewish civilians dwelling on land that the world regards as illegally settled, it seems hard to dispute that the occupation has been a tragic mistake. It is the Masada of our time — a seemingly bold and heroic pursuit, but ultimately a project of moral failing, political error and collective suicide,” he wrote.

Myers fails to mention of the fact that the Arab world has worked to destroy Israel since well before Israel liberated Judea and Samaria during the Six Day War in 1967.

Myers also serves as a board member of The New Israel Fund, a radical organization that supports a boycott of Israel and, according to a statement last month by Israel’s cultural minister, aids terrorists.

“The Center for Jewish History has hired someone who is a radical leftist. The Center must be challenged on this,” Truth Revolt, which reported on the incident, stated.

By: United with Israel Staff