By Kenneth Bandler
NEW YORK – The American Jewish Committee on Wednesday praised an anti-terrorism decision of the U.S. Supreme Court as well as a statement issued by the leadership of the University of California against the BDS movement. Additionally, AJC announced it is partnering with IsraAID to bring relief to earthquake victims in Ecuador.
The Supreme Court decision upheld the rights of Americans to seek compensation from Iran and other state sponsors of terrorism.
“The Supreme Court decision allows Congress to hold Iran accountable for the terrorism that it has perpetrated directly or via Hezbollah and other proxies,” said AJC CEO David Harris. “Survivors of Iranian terror, as well as families of victims, must have the ability to seek restitution. Although the method Congress chose was unusual, it was, as the Court observed, fully justified in the circumstances.”
More than 1,000 victims, or their families, of Iranian-sponsored terrorist attacks had sued the Iranian government, seeking $1.75 billion in assets owned by Bank Markazi, the Central Bank of Iran, and held in a New York bank account. Among the victims were 241 U.S. Marines murdered in a 1983 attack in Beirut by the Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah.
The Court, in Bank Markazi v. Peterson, No. 14-770, ruled, 6-2, that the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Obama in 2012, enabled the plaintiffs to seek payments from Iranian assets in the U.S.
Elsewhere, President Janet Napolitano and the chancellors of the various universities within the University of California system were praised for opposing the proposed American Association of Anthropologists’ boycott of Israel.
“The University of California believes that an academic boycott is an inappropriate response to a foreign policy issue and one that threatens academic freedom and sets a damaging precedent for academia,” the UC leaders wrote in a statement. “We urge Association members to consider the boycott’s potentially harmful impacts and oppose this resolution.”
A resolution urging anthropologists at colleges and universities across the U.S. to boycott Israeli academic institutions was adopted last November at the AAA’s annual meeting, subject to approval by the organization’s full membership, which this month began voting on the measure.
“University of California President Janet Napolitano and the chancellors of schools across the state have delivered a clear-eyed, rational rebuke to this totally misguided, harmful proposal,” said Dan Elbaum, AJC’s Assistant Executive Director and Director of Regional Offices. “The sponsors of the AAA resolution are aligned with the BDS movement and, let’s be clear, have zero interest in a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rather, tellingly, they consider Israel, a member state of the UN since 1949, as an illegitimate entity that has no place in the community of nations.”
In Ecuador, meanwhile, AJC is partnering with IsraAid, the Israeli humanitarian relief organization, to provide emergency assistance in Ecuador, struck by a devastating earthquake.
“We mourn with the people of Ecuador who lost loved ones and pray for the recovery of the many injured and their severely damaged communities,” said Dina Siegel Vann, director of AJC’s Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Institute for Latino and Latin American Affairs.
Aiding Ecuador is the latest in a long series of cooperative arrangements between AJC and IsraAid to help alleviate humanitarian crises and disasters around the world. IsraAid often is one of the first non-governmental groups to reach the site of a disaster, no matter the distance from Israel, and provide urgently needed assistance.
Some recent examples of AJC-IsraAID collaboration were aid to Yazidis and other refugees in the Kurdish region of Iraq, assistance to migrants in Germany and the Greek island of Lesbos, and help for the victims of natural disasters in Fiji, Japan, Haiti, the Philippines, Peru, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Myanmar.
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Bandler is director of media relations for the American Jewish Committee (AJC)