Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti (born 1964) is a founding committee member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and a co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Barghouti was born in Qatar to a Palestinian family from the Barghouti clan, and at a young age moved to Egypt, where he grew up. In 1982, he moved to the United States, where he lived for 11 years and earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University. In 1993, he moved to Israel following his marriage to an Israeli-Arab woman. He holds Israeli permanent residency status and lives in Acre. Although Barghouti actively lobbies for worldwide economic, cultural and academic boycott of Israel, Barghouti himself was studying at Tel Aviv University (TAU) as of 2009. He holds a master's degree in philosophy (ethics) from the university, and is pursuing a PhD. When interviewed regarding his degree from TAU, Barghouti commented: "my studies at Tel Aviv University are a personal matter and I have no interest in commenting." A petition was created that drew over 184,000 signatories asking for the university to expel him, but he was not expelled. When asked about his attendance at an Israeli university in a 2015 interview with the Associated Press, Barghouti said Palestinians "cannot possibly observe the same boycott guidelines as asked of internationals" and that "indigenous population" is entitled to all services they can get from the system.

In March 2017, Barghouti was arrested in Israel on suspicion of tax evasion of about $700,000.

Barghouti opposes the two-state solution. He has consistently described Israel as an apartheid state, saying: "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." Also: "Characterising Israel's legalised system of discrimination as apartheid – as was done by Tutu, Jimmy Carter and even a former Israeli attorney general – does not equate Israel with South Africa. No two oppressive regimes are identical. Rather, it asserts that Israel's bestowal of rights and privileges according to ethnic and religious criteria fits the UN-adopted definition of apartheid." Barghouti advocates what he holds to be an ethical vision for a unitary, secular democratic state for "historic Palestine", present-day Israel and the Palestinian territories. He refers to Israeli practices using comparisons to Nazi Germany: "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." He believes that "Israeli society is shifting very far to the right, with ethnic cleansing becoming a mainstream term that's used in academia, in the media, in parliament, in conferences."

...
Wikipedia