A graduate of Tel Aviv University, he is a former Human Rights Watch lawyer and a former senior attorney for Adalah, a rabidly anti-Israel group that has lent its support to efforts to link Israel with apartheid and even once filed a petition, still on their site, falsely claiming that Israel was planning to bury hundreds of Palestinians supposedly killed in Jenin in mass graves.
Dakwar just posted this tweet, linking to an Al Jazeera anti-Israel propaganda piece:
The entire purpose of Herzl's modern Zionism is to provide a safe haven for persecuted Jews to go - but for Dakwar, this is unacceptable. Encouraging Jews to move to the Jewish state is, in his words, "exploit'ing' horrible acts of anti-semitism."
Yes, a person who is supposedly supportive of civil rights wants to take away the right of Jews to choose to move to the Jewish state when they are being attacked. Apparently, he prefers that they stay where they are and suffer.
Beyond that, his assertion that anti-Zionism is unrelated to antisemitism is another strange position for a human rights advocate to take. No one is saying that they are exactly the same, but to deny that much of the antisemitism in the world takes the form of anti-Zionism is to deny reality. Of course, the fact that the people who hide their hatred for Jews under the false pretense of caring being simply anti-Israel comes from the same political circles that Dakwar hangs out in may have something to do with his justification of left-wing anti-semitism.
Not to mention that to deny the Jewish people have a right to self determination (or to deny the there are a Jewish people altogether, which often goes hand in hand with this) is unquestioningly antisemitic. And this is a position that is appears that Jamil Dakwar holds.
Moreover, it is shocking that a "human rights" advocate cannot even consider that anti-Zionism as it is practiced today is inherently a denial of human rights. To deny Zionists the right to participate in left-wing causes, to deny their right to speak on campus, to create a hostile environment for them in various parts of the US and Europe are also violations of human rights. Yet the ACLU "human rights" division is silent on that violation of human rights for people who hold different political opinions than they do.
This is the opposite of human rights and it is disgusting that a person who is vehemently against the human rights of the vast majority of world Jewry represents the ACLU's human rights agenda.
(h/t Adam Levick)