In advance of this weekend’s BDS con­fer­ence at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, we are high­light­ing five of the most anti-Israel indi­vid­u­als sched­uled to speak at the conference.

Today we pro­file Philip Weiss, a writer and the founder of an anti-Zionist blog called “Mondoweiss.”

Weiss reg­u­larly tries to por­tray Israel as the only antag­o­nist in the Israeli-Palestinian con­flict, includ­ing describ­ing much of its his­tory asa “neo­colo­nial­ist land­grab.” Weiss alleges that Israel abuses the mem­ory of the Holo­caust in order to jus­tify the “end­less mis­treat­ment of Pales­tini­ans” and that Israeli pol­icy toward the Pales­tini­ans is a sort of vic­ar­i­ous revenge for the Holo­caust, with Pales­tini­ans stand­ing in for the Nazis and the “abused becom­ing the abuser.”

After a visit to Gaza in 2009, Weiss described the Gaza War as an “assault…[that] reminded me of what I had heard about the Jews in War­saw and in Ger­many and Aus­tria in the runup to the Sec­ond World War. Those Jews were per­se­cuted; and these Pales­tini­ans were too.”

Weiss has also fre­quently alluded to an exces­sively pow­er­ful pro-Israel lobby, even claim­ing that Pres­i­dent Obama’s insuf­fi­cient focus on the rev­o­lu­tion in Egypt dur­ing his 2011 State of the Union address was a result of “the unwa­ver­ing influ­ence of the Israel lobby in our pub­lic life.”

Num­ber 5: J Kehaulani Kauanui

Num­ber 4: Helena Cobban

Num­ber 3: Kristin Szremski

Num­ber 2: Ali Abunimah

Tags: ADL, anti-Israel, bds, philip weiss