BDS activist Lara Alqasem apparently came by her hatred for the Jewish State honestly. Her father was a “raging anti-Semite,” a David Duke supporter and an anti-Israel zealot, the Canary Mission revealed.
By Adina Katz
The father of Lara Alqasem, the 2016-2017 president of the virulently anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Florida and an activist for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, is a “raging anti-Semite,” the Canary Mission revealed.
Lara became famous in Israel as the University of Florida student who was detained for 15 days at Ben-Gurion Airport because of her BDS activism. The Supreme Court ruled that she can remain in Israel, where she had registered to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Rafiq Alqasem, her father, is also a BDS and SJP supporter. Furthermore, he has promoted David Duke and white nationalist propaganda, praised anti-Semite Brother Nathanael, spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power and equated Israel with Nazi Germany, according to the Canary Mission.
Alqasem has also justified terrorism against Israelis, glorified terrorists and demonized Israel.
On March 16, 2016, Alqasem shared a link on Facebook from the pro-Hitler site tomatobubble.com, titled: “THE ZIO STEAMROLLER: 30 WHO GOT CRUSHED!” The term “Zio” is a derogatory reference to Zionists and an anti-Semitic slur.
The tomatobubble.com article “listed senators, journalists, actors and academics who were purportedly ‘crushed’ for praising Hitler or being ‘critical of the … Jewish Lobby’ or denying the Holocaust,” the Canary Mission noted. It also defended virulent anti-Semites such as Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, Holocaust denier David Irving and neo-Nazi publisher, Ernst Zundel.
Rafiq Alqasem’s demonization of Israel is extreme. The Canary Mission provided many examples, one of which was a Facebook post he shared on March 10, 2016, showing an image of a young woman with blackened hands covering her mouth and forehead. On the hands were multiple Stars of David and a hook-nosed soldier with razor-sharp teeth. The image was captioned: “Israel wants your silence.”
On March 13, 2016, Alqasem shared a Facebook page honoring George Habash, founder of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and known as the “godfather of Middle East terrorism.” The page includes a photo of a beaming Habash with Yasser Arafat, the “father of modern terrorism.”