On January 7, Omar Barghouti, who is now pursuing a PhD at Tel Aviv University in Philosophy spoke in California to promote boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, even his own university.

Few people know that Barghouti, who founded the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, which attacks Israel's academics abroad and Israeli universities at home, an extension of the Arab League Boycott, is in fact not a "Palestinian" or Israeli-Arab.

He was born in Qatar and grew up in Kuwait. His home countries are technically still at war with Israel. Barghouti's fellow TAU students and other academics organized a petition asking the University to expel him for his anti-Israel political activities, but TAU's administration has refused to do so.

Speaking in Oakland, California, he saw nothing hypocritical about his own status as a subsidized graduate student in Israel, likening himself to Nelson Mandela. The speaking engagements were sponsored by assorted groups affiliated with the ISM in order to raise funds for the Middle East Children's Alliance, an ISM group that launders most of the ISM's "tax deductible" donations on the US West Coast.

Other sponsoring groups included the anti-Israel extremist group Jewish Voice for Peace, which is made up for the most part of Marxist Jews and Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, which calls for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state and an unconditional right of anyone pretending to be a "Palestinian" to "return" to Israel.

Few know that Barghouti..is not a "Palestinian", he was born in Qatar and grew up in Kuwait, ..still technically at war with Israel.
About 300 people were in attendance at the Oakland event, most aging 60s radicals. Barghouti himself, said his speech would not be about Israel but about the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Oakland movements in the United States.

But after making one brief allusion to the OWS movement in the US and claiming economic exploitation and denial of human rights was "worse in the United States even than in Israel," he declared Israel as part of the "one per cent" that is economically exploiting the other "ninety-nine per cent" of humanity. Barghouti spent the next two hours attacking only Israel and claiming it is an apartheid state like 1980's South Africa.The audience ate it up, applauding loudly at several points during his lecture.

Barghouti began the lecture stating, "Israelis have been colonizing our lands since the Nakba in 1948." Throughout the lecture he acknowledged no Jewish history or any right to any part of the land of Israel by Jews.

Barghouti then accused Israel of "a worse massacre than anything done by European colonialism." Barghouti claimed Israel purposely suppresses Palestinian education during the Intifadas. "Israel shut down all Palestinian universities in the 1970's, and in 1994 shut down schools in the West Bank." Of course, Barghouti did not mention that those universities were actually built by the Israelis in the first place and were bases and organizing locations for terrorist groups murdering Israeli civilians in terrorist attacks. "In 1989, occupied Palestinians had to organize illegal classes in West Bank schools," he said, proclaiming this an example of human rights violations and racism.

Barghouti suggested IDF promote the idea of raping Palestinian women (which it has not and which Israeli soldiers have never done) and called his example "part of the radicalization program the entire country is undergoing" by Israel against the Arab population.

He then falsely described conditions in Gaza as the "most subhuman" in the world. He failed to mention the Jacuzzis and designer stores in the malls. He recounted an unverified tale of an elderly Palestinian woman "shot while walking along" there for no reason at all and accused Israel again of "ethnic cleansing."

He vowed, "Israel must recognize the right of refugees to return." He conveniently left out the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the Oslo "Peace Process" and voiced the goals of Hamas that Israel must be flooded with as many Arabs as possible to overrun the Jewish population.

Besides false claims about apartheid in Israel (Barghouti himself is proof this is untrue), he then went on to claim falsely that 93% of the land in the "West Bank" is off limits to non-Jews and said Israel has communities where only Jews can live. Actually, Israel is full of communities where Jews cannot live, only Arabs.

Meanwhile, Barghouti had no criticism of the law in the Palestinian Authority that metes out a death sentence, even retroactively, if someone sells his land to a Jew. Barghouti also repeated the oft-used canard of "Jewish only roads" in the West Bank.

Barghouti discussed the Arab Spring, particularly in Egypt, which he called "BDS multiplied" and which he said should encourage "no normalization with Israel." He then began discussing the 1 per cent vs. the 99 per cent theme of the Occupy Wall Street people (that is, their claim that 1% control all wealth for the other 99% of world population who are "oppressed".) Making the Jews the owners of wealth is a canard right out of the Middle Ages.

He continued, "Suddenly it makes sense to see Israel was fully involved in the 1% agenda that included the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." (Barghouti conveniently ignored the profit mongering by OPEC and the overstuffed Saudis who actually fund his BDS movement even today and that the war in Afghanistan followed as a result of the 9/11 attacks on US soil.)

Barghouti explained, "It's the Israel lobby following American interests that serves the 1%." "The Department of Homeland Security, the Military, banks and US weapons manufacturers make war "on us because it's good business," he declared, "but is it good for the other 99%?" he asked.

He then claimed that the Palestinian people should have the right to vote for national self-determination but that the Jews in Israel have no such voting rights. "I've researched this and international law says occupiers have no right to vote for self-determination."

Since 63% of Israel's Jews were born in Israel, when I asked him why they had no right to vote for self-determination and would have to live under Arab rule, Barghouti merely repeated that he researched international law and occupiers (all the Jews in Israel) have no voting rights at all about how they should live or be governed.

Barghouti threw out this whopper: "Israel does not consider itself a nation".
Barghouti also maintained that Christians were being persecuted in the Holy Land by Israel, not by the Muslim Palestinians (who have driven most Christians out of Bethlehem) and that many Christians were on the same side as him. "After all," he told the audience, "Jesus was a Palestinian!" Again, the audience of mostly Jewish radicals cheered him on and offered no criticism.

These geriatric Marxist Jews from Jewish Voice for Peace gave him cheers and ovations on his legal claims, too. The hosts continued to repeat the Big Lie that Barghouti was a "human rights activist."

Then Barghouti threw out this whopper: "Israel does not consider itself a nation", he said. He based his statement on the Supreme Court finding that a single Israeli identity card was not required when current cards list religious and ethnic denominations.. He told the audience that Israel was responsible for the War in Iraq insisting that Israel knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (all Western intelligence services on their own had the same information and not from Israel) and that now Israel is trying to get the US to attack Iran.

Barghouti: summed up the only way to realize full equality for humanity is to boycott and financially harm the Jews. How about boycotting Barghouti?