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Editor’s note: In a report released today, the David Horowitz Freedom Center named university leaders from prestigious American campuses including UCLA, Columbia University, Kent State University, Tufts University, and the University of Chicago to the list of the “Top Ten University Leaders Who Are Supporters of Terror.”

These university leaders provide organizational and monetary support to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a campus organization which functions as an arm of the anti-Israel terror group Hamas and which has repeatedly acted to terrorize Jewish students on campus. They also imbue SJP with a false veneer of legitimacy by permitting it to benefit from its association with the university’s academic prestige. Even when SJP chapters repeatedly violate campus rules prohibiting the disruption of campus events (usually pro-Israel events) or when its members chant genocidal slogans, use hateful slurs, and commit violence against Jewish students on campus, university presidents and administrations repeatedly ignore or forgive these hostile, discriminatory, and unlawful acts.

This report exposes ten presidents and chancellors of prominent American universities who have renounced their duty to protect the welfare of all students on their campus by allowing the hateful, pro-terrorist rhetoric and actions of Students for Justice in Palestine to proceed unchecked.

Read the full report below.

The Top Ten University Leaders Who Are Supporters of Terror

Introduction:

For nearly two decades, the campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has established a beachhead of support for anti-Israel terrorists on American campuses, resulting in a dramatic rise in anti-Semitic incidents and the harassment of Jewish students. After many years of denial, the American and Jewish press have finally begun to take notice of this epidemic of hostility towards Jews and supporters of Israel, but the true depravity of SJP still escapes their notice. While most of the press coverage debates whether SJP’s anti-Zionism has crossed the line into anti-Semitism, this discussion misses the larger and far more sinister truth that SJP is not just the leading promoter of Jew hatred on American college campuses, nor does it content itself to spread anti-Semitic lies and propaganda defaming Israel, the only liberal democracy in the Middle East as an “apartheid state”—though assuredly it does these things. The media posturing misses the truth that SJP is a full-fledged arm of the anti-Israel terror group Hamas, which is using American campuses as a launching pad to gain more widespread support for its goal of eliminating the Jewish state.

SJP receives substantial funding and organizational support from Hamas, through a network of Islamic “charities” and front groups. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian—a cofounder of SJP and a professor at the University of California-Berkeley—and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. Hamas is a State Department-designated terrorist organization whose explicit goals, as stated in its charter, are the destruction of the Jewish state, and the extermination of its Jews.

In testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Jonathan Schanzer, an expert who previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst for the United States Department of the Treasury, described how Hamas funnels large sums of money and provides material assistance to Students for Justice in Palestine through AMP for the purpose of promoting BDS campaigns and disseminating Hamas propaganda on American campuses.

Schanzer explained, “At its 2014 annual conference, AMP invited participants to ‘come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.’”  He proceeded to describe AMP as “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States.”  He revealed that AMP “provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and grants to SJP activists” and “even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups across the country.”  Furthermore, “according to an email it sent to subscribers, AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone.”

Another recent study presented by Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Gilad Erdan at the recent Global Coalition 4 Israel Forum (GC4I) exposed a “Network of Hate” connecting the most prominent BDS organizations worldwide with the terrorist organizations Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Minister Erdan described how BDS organizations disseminate false propaganda provided by Hamas and the Palestinian authority and stated, “The relationship between terrorist organizations and the BDS movement has never been closer, ideologically or operationally.”

SJP uses the funding and support provided by Hamas to push Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) resolutions in student governments at campuses across the nation and also to organize “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks featuring mock die-ins of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces and so-called “Israeli Apartheid Walls” plastered with Hamas propaganda meant to simulate the border fence between Israel and the West Bank that has saved countless lives from Hamas terrorism. Most disturbing of all is SJP’s support for Hamas’s campaign of terror against Israel and the Jewish people including the recent border attacks Hamas has orchestrated against Israel under the guise of the “Great Return March.”

Despite its ancillary support for Hamas’s terror war against Israel, SJP continues to occupy a privileged niche on American college campuses.  SJP receives university funding and institutional support from America’s preeminent universities. It derives credibility from this collegiate sponsorship, and it is common for university departments and academic centers to co-sponsor its events and speakers and for college professors to participate in its programs. Even when SJP chapters repeatedly violate campus rules prohibiting the disruption of campus events (usually pro-Israel events) or when its members chant genocidal slogans, use hateful slurs, and commit violence against Jewish students on campus, university presidents and administrations repeatedly ignore or forgive these hostile, discriminatory, and unlawful acts.

The following report exposes ten presidents and chancellors of prominent American universities who have renounced their duty to protect the welfare of all students on their campus by allowing the hateful, pro-terrorist rhetoric and actions of Students for Justice in Palestine to proceed unchecked. While we have singled out these authorities and institutions as the worst, SJP has spread its pro-terrorist agenda far beyond the walls of these few campuses to hundreds across North America. It is only by recognizing SJP’s true role as an integral component of the Hamas terror apparatus that we can convince others of the vital importance of removing the campus supports that allow it to operate unchecked.

The Top Ten University Leaders Who Are Supporters of Terror:

[The top ten are listed in alphabetical order by university]

Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University

Angel Cabrera, President, George Mason University

Beverly Warren, President, Kent State University

Leslie Wong, President, San Francisco State University

Anthony Monaco, President, Tufts University

Carol T. Christ, Chancellor, University of California-Berkeley

Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California-Irvine

Gene Block, Chancellor, University of California Los Angeles

Robert Zimmer, President, University of Chicago

Renu Khator, President, University of Houston

Lee Bollinger, President, Columbia University

Lee Bollinger has the distinction of being the longest-serving university president on this list. He began his tenure as president of Columbia University in 2002, and during that time has taken little to no action against the campus’s several extremist anti-Israel groups, including the Hamas-funded organization Students for Justice in Palestine, which have openly harassed Jewish students on campus, distributed Hamas propaganda, torn down fliers posted by pro-Israel groups and interrupted pro-Israel speakers and events. Several Columbia professors have also repeatedly been accused of anti-Semitism, including star professor Joseph Massad, yet they continue to teach on campus. President Bollinger also invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus, resulting in a speech during which Ahmadinejad denied the Holocaust and urged the audience to investigate “who was truly involved” in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Columbia is also home to the Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), a blatantly political organization embedded in the campus educational structure which has brought BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti to campus and has included a series of Hamas maps falsely showing the Jewish infiltration and colonization of Arab “Palestine” on its event posters. The Center was founded in 2010, during Bollinger’s tenure.

Supporting Evidence:

On April 10, 2018, Columbia Students Supporting Israel (SSI) released a statement concerning anti-Semitic actions and attacks on Jewish students on campus and the administration’s failure to address these violations of campus policy. The statement clarified the role of several anti-Israel campus organizations, including the Hamas-supported and funded Students for Justice in Palestine, in promoting a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus:

“In interrupting, silencing, harassing and intimidating Jewish and pro-Israel students at Columbia, the behavior of SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine], JVP [Jewish Voice for Peace] and CUAD [Columbia University Apartheid Divest] contributes to an unacceptably hostile environment for those who wish to exercise their constitutionally protected rights in ways that differ from the narratives of these groups… Since SSI [Students Supporting Israel] has started its activities on campus, SJP has continuously attacked SSI’s right to freedom of speech, expression and association in different ways and using a variety of inappropriate methods, as outlined below.”

Actions taken by these anti-Israel groups as documented in SSI’s statement include tearing down SSI’s event flyers, surrounding Jewish students in a threatening manner and chanting pro-Palestine slogans when randomly encountering them on campus, and interrupting or shouting-down pro-Israel speakers and events.

In April 2018, Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia together with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a group supporting the Hamas-funded and supported BDS movement against Israel, held a “Gaza Solidarity Rally”  on campus. Their rally was located opposite a booth sponsored by a pro-Israel organization for Holocaust Remembrance Day. The SJP members chanted slogans promoting the destruction of Israel and the terrorist Intifada against the Jewish state, including, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and, “From Gaza to the plaza, globalize the Intifada!”

In April 2018, Barnard, a sister college to Columbia, passed a resolution in support of divestment from Israel, part of the Hamas-supported and funded BDS campaign against the Jewish state. Columbia’s pro-Israel student group, Aryeh, put out a statement explaining all the ways in which supporters of Israel who opposed the resolution were not treated fairly during the political process:

“From the very beginning, this process was dishonest and opaque. The decision to initiate a referendum was made behind closed doors without hearing formally from any pro-Israel students—and in contradiction to repeated assurances that no decision or vote would be made during that session. There are measures in place to protect students from divisive and marginalizing referenda like this one; shockingly, however, SGA failed to invoke those measures by deciding that this referendum was not “contentious.” When Aryeh was finally able to speak at SGA, our one request—for a fair and unbiased referendum—was ignored, as SGA elected to put forward an unsourced text that included CUAD’s arguments and propaganda, in many cases word-for-word. This ensured that students voting with no prior knowledge of the conflict would be informed only by material specifically written to ensure one outcome. Finally, after securing CUAD an overwhelming advantage in the wording of the referendum, SGA Executive Board unilaterally imposed campaign rules on Aryeh, guaranteeing an unequal playing field.”

On March 29, 2018, the campus anti-Israel groups Columbia University Apartheid Divest, SJP and JVP held an event titled “Resisting Settler-Colonialism: A Talk by Steven Salaita.” During his address, Salaita stated that “racist violence is based into the ideology [of Zionism]” and promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the extent of Zionist power.

On March 26, 2018, as part of “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus, three campus anti-Israel organizations, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia/Barnard JVP and Columbia SJP held an event titled “I is for Intifada.”  The previous Palestinian Intifadas have signified violent terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. The event purported to include “a presentation on the political history of the Palestinian intifadas and their lasting significance.”

In December 2017, SJP initiated a petition to boycott a local bookstore, Book Culture, because the store denounced the genocidal and Hamas-supported BDS movement against Israel and refused to use a book titled “P is for Palestine” which contains a page endorsing Intifada, or violent uprising, against Israel, in an event for children.

In November 2017, Columbia and Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a pro-BDS group that is aligned with SJP, put out a statement falsely accusing Students Supporting Israel of racism and “brownwashing”:

“SSI’s blatant racism and utter ignorance of history should not be welcome on our campus. They consistently present twisted and misleading views of history, and do unforgivable violence to the sacred struggles of Native Americans and indigenous peoples. Their brown-washing and appropriation of indigeneity speak loudly for the racist political values they hold. SSI does not stand for anyone’s liberation. They stand for the occupation and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people in support of an ethno-nationalist state which has little to do with a just future for anyone.”

In September 2017, a swastika and the letters “WP” which stand for “White Power” were found written in black ink in a stairwell on campus.

On April 24, 2017, Columbia University Apartheid Divest held an event featuring Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the Hamas-supported and funded BDS movement against Israel, along with BDS supporters Rebecca Vilkomerson and Premilla Nadasen. The event was titled “The Road to Freedom: The BDS Movement for Palestinian Rights and the Struggle Against Apartheid.” A large banner stating “Boycott Israel” was hung across the table where the panelists were sitting.

During his address, Barghouti called for the “return of refugees to their homes,” a policy which would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. The event was supported and co-sponsored by numerous departments and organizations at Columbia including the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department, Anthropology Department, Middle East Institute, Columbia Queer Alliance, Divest Barnard for a Just Transition, Student-Worker Solidarity, Mobilized African Diaspora, CU Turath: The Arab Students Association, No Red Tape, Barnard Columbia Socialists, Columbia University South Asian Feminisms Alliance, African Students Association, Columbia University, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network.

In February 2017, Columbia’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) held an event with Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador and representative to the United Nations. Columbia’s chapter of Apartheid Divest responded with a protest demonizing Israel, and interrupted Danon at least seven times with genocidal chants such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free.”  Signs at the protest contained similar slogans accusing Israel of occupation and racism and calling for the Palestinian right of return which would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.

In December 2016, anti-Israel protestors held a walkout protest of a Students Supporting Israel (SSI) event just as a Jew was describing his feeling of connection to Israel. Signs held by protestors at the event demonized Israel and falsely accused it of “racism” and “land theft, displacement and ethnic cleansing.”

In December 2016, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-BDS campus organization, put out a statement vilifying the pro-Israel campus group Students Supporting Israel which demonized Israel and echoed Hamas propaganda lies claiming that Israel stole Palestinian land.  The statement was co-signed by 24 additional Columbia campus organizations. It read in part:

“SSI supports Israel’s expansion of internationally-condemned settlements, demolition of Palestinian homes, and theft of Palestinian resources such as water and agriculture, all in direct contradiction to indigenous rights. For SSI to claim that it uplifts indigenous struggles is not only ironic, but also deeply damaging. This event masks the catastrophic impact that the state of Israel, with its theft of Palestinian land and lives, has had and continues to have on the indigenous people of Palestine since 1948.”

In June 2015, Columbia hosted a workshop on “Readings on Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine: Structures of Identity, Difference and Democracy.” Among the suggested discussion questions for the workshop are, “In what ways might principles of democracy be undermined by a legal system that includes/recognizes its minority civilly but not nationally?” and “Is there a point at which the uniquely Jewish character of the state of Israel undermines its identity as a democratic state? “

On June 20, 2015, the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University in conjunction with the Middle East Institute hold a “Teachers’ Workshop” on “Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine.” The poster for the event displays the false and genocidal Hamas map which depicts the invasion and colonization of Arab “Palestine” by the Jews beginning in 1947.

On May 11, 2015, Columbia SJP hosted a panel titled “Existing and Resisting: Palestinian Women Tell Their Stories” which includes convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, now an associate director of the American-Arab Action Network, who was convicted by an Israeli military court in 1970 for her involvement in two fatal terrorist bombings. An article in the Columbia Chronicle stated that the event focused on “The struggles and tribulations Palestinian women face during the occupation of the Palestinian territories.” Odeh commented, “Yes, I am an American citizen, but also I am a Palestinian. I can’t close my eyes about my roots, about my pain that all my people go through. It’s part of my life. It’s part of my personality.”

During Israel Apartheid Week 2015, university administrators denied a request by the pro-Israel Columbia student organization Aryeh to reserve space opposite the mock “apartheid wall” constructed by SJP, where they have traditionally held a counter-protest against this event. Instead, an anti-Israel group, Jewish Voices for Peace, which promotes the BDS movement against Israel, is allowed to reserve the spot. Pro-Israel student Talia Lefkowitz writes in an op-ed in The Times of Israel: “Until now, Hillel’s pro-Israel groups have gathered together… in a counter-demonstration to stress the importance of conversation over confrontation. But without a place to park themselves this year, the pro-Israel groups are effectively being silenced.”

On its Facebook page for Israeli Apartheid Week 2015, Columbia SJP draws a direct connection between the “apartheid week” and the BDS Movement: “We are beyond ecstatic this year for the 10th annual International Israeli Apartheid Week. Since its establishment in 2005, IAW has sought to raise awareness about the unjust apartheid policies of Israel and to bolster support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.”

During March 23-27, 2015, Columbia SJP held Israeli Apartheid Week 2015 on campus. Events for the week include the erection of a mock “apartheid wall,” in front of Columbia’s famous Lowe Library, which displays the words “End Israeli Apartheid” in huge letters along with other anti-Israel propaganda including the claim that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is “separate and unequal.” SJP also hosts a panel on “Media, Solidarity, and Palestine” featuring a number of anti-Israel activists and writers including Hanine Hassan, a Columbia Ph.D. candidate whose work is described as examining “the long-term effects of humiliation as a tool of oppression by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” The claims that Israel is an apartheid state illegally occupying Arab Palestine are taken directly from Hamas propaganda.

On December 2, 2014, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement founder Omar Barghouti spoke to an “enormous and enthusiastic” crowd at Columbia University. Responding to a question about whether Jews have the right of self-determination, Barghouti responds, “One thing I do know– not at my expense… [They do not have] the right to expel us or to take our land.” An article about the event posted on the website Mondoweiss.net reports that “the audience broke into applause, the first time that any speaker had been interrupted by applause in two hours.” The talk was sponsored by the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia.

On November 20, 2014, 1960s icon Angela Davis, a longtime leader of the American Communist Party and now a professor at UC Santa Cruz, spoke at Columbia on “Quotidian Carceralities [sic] in the U.S. and Occupied Palestine.” An online description of the lecture explained that it will discuss “the physical structures of incarceration, and the myriad connections between militarized policing of everyday life in the US—disproportionately affecting low-income African Americans, women, and trans populations—and Occupied Palestine today.”  Davis is known for her extreme anti-Israel views and support of the BDS movement. She has said that the Palestinians “are transformed into immigrants, into undocumented immigrants, on their own land” and tells students that if they “support BDS, finally, Palestine will be free.”

On November 19, 2014, former U. Illinois professor Steven Salaita, who was fired by the University of Illinois for his bigoted tweets on Jews and Israelis, spoke at Columbia in an appearance sponsored by several university institutes including the Center for Palestine Studies, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, and the Center for the Study of Law and Culture. The tweets that led to his dismissal at Illinois included claims such as: “By eagerly conflating Jewishness and Israel, Zionists are partly responsible when people say anti-Semitic shit in response to Israeli terror” and “Never has the courage of Palestinians and the cowardice of their occupiers been so obvious for the world to see. #48March #Gaza.”

On September 25, 2013, SJP at Columbia held a forum titled “Occupation 101.” The online banner for the forum includes the false series of maps circulated by Hamas portraying Arab “Palestine” being infiltrated by the Jews.

On March 10, 2014, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) hung a banner reading “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” on Barnard Hall as part of its Israeli Apartheid Week. The banner, an advertisement for Israeli Apartheid Week, depicted Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip without any internal borders, buttressing SJP’s goal of destroying the Jewish state. After Jewish student groups complained about the banner, charging that its content was intrinsically anti-Semitic and that its placement directly in front of Barnard Hall implied university endorsement, it was ordered removed and a new banner policy for all groups was instituted.

During October 2010, Columbia officially opened the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, the first American university to dedicate an institute to the study of Palestinian Arabs. Specifying that its mission is “supporting and defending the academic freedom of students, faculty and schools in the Occupied Territories,” the Center makes no pretense of intellectual objectivity and makes clear through its events and the faculty it hires that it supports the BDS movement which was designed to further the goals of terrorist groups like Hamas to delegitimize, weaken and destroy the Jewish State.

The co-directors of the Center are Columbia professor Rashid Khalidi and Barnard College professor Nadia Abu El-Haj. Khalidi is known for his extreme hostility to Israel which he has called “racist” and “basically an apartheid system in creation.”  El Haj has condemned academic researchers in Israel, claiming that the work of archaeology in Palestine/Israel is a screen for the “ongoing practice of colonial nationhood” and that the assumption that ancient Israelite kingdoms were once located in the land that constitutes modern-day Israel is a “pure political fabrication.”

The official Center website states that it was created to honor “the specific scholarly legacy of Professor Edward Said at the university where he taught for forty years.” The late Edward Said was a Columbia professor who preached in his academic writing and his extra-academic activities that Israel was both illegitimate and also a colonialist state. He was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Palestinian National Council until 1991 when he resigned because he thought Yasser Arafat’s policies were too moderate towards Israel.

Events hosted by the Center include a speech from BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, on “Palestine’s South Africa Moment?” and a Teacher’s Workshop on “Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine” which included the false Hamas map—a form of cartographic genocide—which depicts the invasion and colonization of Arab “Palestine” by the Jews on its event poster.

On September 24, 2007, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction and said that the Jewish homeland will be “wiped off the map,” spoke at Columbia at the invitation of Columbia University President Lee Bollinger. During his talk, Ahmadinejad claimed that there are no homosexuals in Iran, raised questions about the factuality of the Holocaust, and urged the audience to investigate “who was truly involved” in the September 11 terrorist attacks, implying that Jews were responsible

During 2004-2005, Columbia Professor Joseph Massad, who teaches in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MEALAC), was accused by several Jewish students of making anti-Semitic remarks and treating them unfairly because they refused to criticize Israel. One Israeli student who had previously served in the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) stated that Massad asked him in class how many Palestinians he had killed. Massad reportedly told another student, “If you’re going to deny the atrocities being committed against Palestinians, then you can get out of my classroom.”

Massad has described Israel as a “Jewish supremacist and racist state” and stated that “[e]very racist state should be destroyed.” He has also said that “it is only by making the costs of Jewish supremacy too high that Israeli Jews will give it [Israel] up.”

Angel Cabrera, President, George Mason University

George Mason University is the largest public research university in the state of Virginia, but unlike most of the other campuses included in this report, it is not widely known for its extremist politics. That changed in the fall of 2016 when GMU agreed to host the 3-day National Students for Justice in Palestine conference on campus, an event known for extremist speakers who condone terrorism against Israel and for its vehement anti-Semitism and secrecy.

In recognition of SJP’s role in promoting Jew hatred and terrorism, several members of the Virginia General Assembly along with numerous other individuals and non-profit organizations signed a letter urging GMU to cancel the event, calling SJP “A group that incites hate, fuels violent behavior and places citizens’ lives at great risk.” GMU President Angel Cabrera and his administration did not heed their call, but proceeded with the event.

Delegate Dave LaRock (R-33) of the Virginia General Assembly was one of the signatories of that letter.  “SJP is an organization that incites violence and should not be allowed to use publicly funded facilities,” LaRock said, explaining his decision to sign the letter. “I am a staunch supporter of the right to free speech, which is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. However, free speech is rightly limited to exclude incitement of violence. Exchange of viewpoints on controversial issues is important, and I have no problem with public discourse on any issue. The problem this letter addresses is when individuals or organizations choose to incite violence rather than engage in civil debate.”

LaRock further noted that although he had spent more than two months corresponding with GMU President Cabrera and his government relations team, he did not receive an official response to his concerns from the GMU administration, proving in his mind that GMU’s administrators “demonstrate an unwillingness to differentiate between appropriate free speech and incitement of violence, even though the latter clearly violates their Code of Student Conduct and possibly Virginia law.”

Cabrera’s failure to respond to legislators’ legitimate concerns about the 3-day national SJP conference on campus provides a stark contrast with the administration’s behavior when anti-terror activists dared to hang posters on campus criticizing SJP.

Oleg Atbashian, an artist and former Soviet dissident who was working in conjunction with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, was arrested and charged with felony “destruction of property worth at least $1,300” charges for hanging posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement against Israel in public places on GMU’s campus. A friend who was assisting Atbashian in hanging the posters was also arrested and charged.

The anti-SJP posters distributed by Atbashian were a direct response to the National SJP conference, which is an opportunity for SJP to school its members and affiliates in the latest tactics for disseminating anti-Israel propaganda, disrupting pro-Israel events, and promulgating Jew hatred on campus. Since attempts to persuade the administration to cancel the event had failed, Atbashian and the Freedom Center responded in the only way still available to them—by exercising their First Amendment rights to provide a differing point of view by hanging posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement on campus. But while the administration turned a blind eye to SJP’s links to terrorism and habit of inciting violence against Jews, they acted immediately to thwart Atbashian’s dissenting views.

The two activists were held in a cramped prison cell in the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center for 14 hours, and were threatened with a five-year jail term for the exercise of their First Amendment rights. Bail was set at $8,000 for each defendant, for a total of $16,000.

The arrest of Atbashian and his fellow activist constitutes false imprisonment on non-existent grounds. No property was damaged by their activism, and certainly not $1,300 worth; the posters they distributed were affixed to university property with a simple paste that can be removed with water.

George Mason’s extreme overreach in this incident and vindictive pursuit of bogus charges—and its failure to respond to increasingly extreme and disturbing rhetoric from new campus anti-Israel group Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA)— reveals President Cabrera’s hostility toward permitting free speech on campus—particularly speech that challenges the entrenched special interests of groups like SAIA. It also puts on display the GMU administration’s hypocrisy in allowing a three-day conference by a group with known ties to terrorists to proceed on campus while immediately tearing down posters critical of that conference and organization—and then arresting the activists who dared hang those posters on trumped-up charges. In setting the tone for the entire GMU administration, George Mason’s president, Dr. Ángel Cabrera, deserves to be named to the list of college presidents who support terror.

Supporting Evidence:

George Mason is home to an SJP-surrogate group calling itself “Students Against Israeli Apartheid.” In a May 2016 speech, one of the group’s founding members, Tareq Radi, described how SAIA was established on campus because the previously established SJP chapter was not radical enough in its beliefs and practices: “While an SJP chapter already existed on our campus, they were ardently anti-BDS, and thought protests to be too radical.”

Radi also described how he and other members of SAIA were facilitated by the administration in being able to hold a protest walkout of their own graduation—the reason being that Israeli businesswoman Shari Arison was the commencement speaker and would be receiving an honorary degree—but still return to receive their degrees as part of the ceremony. He attributed this to the university’s fear at standing up to the protestors.

Radi stated:

…we were able to do the walkout on graduation. The university actually facilitated it. And so I walked out of the commencement speech with 30 friends and 100 or more so in the crowd, and then we walked back in and received our diplomas. So it wasn’t that we were punished, which was really nice. Again, that wasn’t the university being nice. That was them being more afraid of what we would do if that didn’t happen. So I think there’s something to be said about having rad[ical] politics on campus and not making appeals to authority and constantly trying to appease the administration in negotiations.

In June 2018, George Mason SAIA shared a post from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, part of the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS campaign against the Jewish state, celebrating the refusal of various artists and sports teams to perform in Israel.

In April 2018, SAIA at George Mason shared a post with various “statistics” on the “distribution of martyrs and casualties by area” from what it termed “The Peaceful Great Return March.”  In reality, those participating in the “Great Return March” are primarily Hamas militants who are openly attacking Israel’s border and whom Hamas compensates monetarily for their martyrdom or injury.  SAIA’s sharing of this post and use of terms such as “martyrs” demonstrates the group’s allegiance to Hamas.

In February 2018, SAIA shared a notice about an upcoming “National Rally to Support Palestine and Protest AIPAC” which was dedicated to ensuring the “Right of Return,” a call for the cessation of Israel as a Jewish state, one of the key goals of Hamas as stated in its charter. SAIA stated “We better see you there!”

In November 2017, SAIA held an event titled “A Century After Balfour: 100 Years of a False Premise.” The Balfour Declaration was a statement issued by the British government during World War I which supported the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Attacking the Balfour declaration means attacking the establishment of Israel as a Jewish homeland.

During November 4-6, 2016, George Mason University hosted the 3-day National Students for Justice in Palestine conference on campus, an event dedicated to extreme pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic propaganda and to refining tactics to shut down pro-Israel speech on campus. Events held during the conference called for the “right of return” of all Palestinians, a genocidal call to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state, and also delegitimized Israel by falsely accusing it of “apartheid” practices. In addition, the conference program promoted the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement against Israel.

A media report described how one SJP conference-goer referred to students protesting the conference as “Zionist terrorists” and others stated “Zionists are so ugly.” An SJP member also tweeted a threat that she would “f—k up a Zionist.”

When Oleg Atbashian, an artist and former Soviet dissident, attempted to hang posters critical of SJP and the BDS movement against Israel in public places on GMU’s campus to disrupt the narrative created by the SJP conference, he was arrested and charged with felony “destruction of property worth at least $1,300” charges for exercising his free speech rights. A friend who assisted Atbashian in hanging the posters was also arrested and charged.

In April 2015, the GMU Fourth Estate published an opinion piece by SAIA founding member Mohammad Abou-Ghazala titled “BDS is the Only Peace Process for Israel and Palestine” in which he lauded the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS campaign against Israel and declared that “BDS then represents an opportunity for the world to stand on the right side of history. Its momentum is undeniable, and its effects are disastrous to Zionist apartheid.”

Beverly Warren, President, Kent State University

Kent State President Beverly Warren has occupied the university’s top seat since 2014. During her years in office, Kent State’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become increasingly radicalized, with members and officers on record as sharing pro-terrorist sentiments and anti-Semitic tropes on social media. The former president of Kent State SJP tweeted “Long live the Intifada, long live the resistance and long like Palestine. #HandsOffJerusalem.” Kent State SJP also holds annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate weeks featuring a mock “apartheid wall” that promotes anti-Israel terrorism and the Hamas-supported BDS movement against Israel and has repeatedly stated its support for the “Great Return March,” a Hamas attack on Israel’s borders.

Kent State was until very recently the academic home of infamous Historian Julio Pino who has been investigated by the FBI for his connection to and possible recruitment for ISIS. Pino is known for shouting “Death to Israel!” at a university lecture in 2011 and for an open letter to academic supporters of Israel in which he stated that he held these academics responsible for “the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians over the past month” and concluded with the statement, “Jihad until Victory!” Despite Pino’s explicit support for anti-Israel terrorism, it was only in April 2018, after Pino pled guilty to lying to the FBI and was sentenced to five months in jail, that Kent State suspended him and banned him from campus.

Supporting Evidence:

Several officers and members of the Kent State chapter of SJP have taken to social media to spread hatred of Israel, incitements to terrorism, and to repeat anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and tropes. The 2018 KSU SJP President Chance Zurub tweeted “Long live the Intifada, long live the resistance and long like Palestine. #HandsOffJerusalem.” He also tweeted, “The only Israeli food that they [Israelis] eat is the blood of the Palestinian people.”

Kent State SJP activist Subhi Husien tweeted: “BDS is important for weakening the Zionist entity but violent revolution will be the only solution to gain liberation.” He has also publicly expressed his support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an anti-Israel terror group, on Twitter.

Kent State SJP activist Lama Abu Amara also voiced her support for terror on social media, writing in her Twitter profile: “Globalize the Intifada Decolonize Palestine.”

In September 2018, Kent State SJP hosted an event with anti-Israel history professor Ilan Pappe on “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.” Pappe has defined Zionism as “a racist and quite evil philosophy of morality and life.”

On April 11, 2018, Kent State SJP hosted speaker Josh Reubner from the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Reubner is a supporter of the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel and has claimed that an “Israel lobby” controls U.S. policy and that the Israeli government examined Hitler’s tactics in the Warsaw Ghetto to inform them how to “attack and kill Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

In the spring of 2018, Kent State SJP posted numerous articles and videos on its Facebook page accusing Israel of conducting a “massacre” against those Palestinians participating in the so-called “Great Return March.” In fact, the marchers at the Gaza border were composed primarily of Hamas militants who were openly attacking Israel’s border.

In March 2018, KentWired.com, an independent news site for Kent State University, published a student column supporting SJP’s “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus and demonizing Israel as an “apartheid state,” stating that “If being an apartheid state means systematic oppression, committing inhumane acts and racial domination over one group, the United Nations has ruled that Israel is guilty.”

In February 2018, SJP co-hosted an event with the Black United Students titled, “When I see them, I see us.” A student speaker at the event stated, “there’s three pillars to the BDS movement. They are not B D and S. They are end the occupation, end the apartheid, and the right of return.”  The BDS movement is funded and supported by anti-Israel terror group Hamas and the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians would mean the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state.

In May 2017, Kent State SJP posted a notice on their Facebook page that they would henceforth be refusing to conduct relations with pro-Israel groups: “After much deliberation, we have decided long ago that it is incumbent to follow the anti-normalization stance outlined by PACBI & USACBI. SJP will not participate in any event that morally or politically equates the oppressor and oppressed, and presents the relationship between Palestinians and Israelis as symmetrical. Such events should be boycotted because it normalizes Israel’s colonial domination over Palestinians and ignores the power structures and relations embedded in the oppression.”  This anti-normalization policy amounts to a refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and is supported by Hamas.

In March 2017, SJP at Kent State held an event titled “IAW Speaker Event: From South Africa to Palestine” featuring speaker Dr. John Trimble. During his address, Trimble mocked the experience of Jewish students who face anti-Semitism on social media, declaring, “On the one hand the Jewish student union is telling the president of the university, you need to get rid of this person…because he put something on his Facebook admiring Hitler and any time you say something about Hitler that’s like [laughs] you’re ex-communicated whatever so this was interesting experience and I raise this with some of the activists and they say yes it’s really a reality in terms of the Zionist power.” Trimble also promoted the Hamas lie that Israel was built on land stolen from Palestine: “the construction of Israel was based on injustice and apartheid. They took the land from Arabs, from Palestinians…”

As part of Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2017, SJP at Kent State erected a mock “apartheid wall” promoting Hamas propaganda including the Hamas supported and funded BDS movement against Israel and including the pro-terrorist sentiment “To exist is to resist” (resistance is often used as a euphemism by Hamas and its supporters for terrorist aggression against Israel).

In November 2016, the president of SJP at Kent State, Yousof Mousa, wrote an oped for the student run news website arguing that a portrait and quote from former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir should be removed from the wall of a campus building where it accompanies other inspirational quotes from various public figures. The quote does not mention Israel or Palestine. He declared that “Meir had policies and statements that were expressly racist against Africans.”

In January 2016 it was revealed that Kent State Associate Professor of History Julio Pino was under investigation by the FBI for possible involvement with the ISIS and for possibly recruiting students to join the Islamic terrorist group.

In August 2014, Kent State Associate Professor of History Julio Pino published an open letter to “Academic Friends of Israel” in which he declared “I hold you directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians over the past month… May your names become a curse word on the lips of every justice-loving person on earth, along with ‘Obama’ and ‘Netanyahu.’”

Pino also invoked anti-Semitic tropes of blood libel, stating, “I curse you more than the Israelis, for while The Chosen drain the blood of innocents without apologies you hide behind the mask of academic objectivity, nobility of research and the reward of teaching to foreign youth—-in a segregated university, of course.”  He concluded his letter with the epithet, “Jihad until victory!”

The university responded with a statement which declared “We condemn the professor’s statement as reprehensible and irresponsible.  At Kent State, we value collegiality and mutual respect. Assailing the public with broad statements of culpability violates these principles.” Kent state did not take further disciplinary action against Pino.

In 2011, while attending a speech by Ishmael Khalidi, the former deputy consul general at the Israeli Consulate in San Francisco, Kent State Associate Professor of History Julio Pino shouted “Death to Israel!”

Leslie Wong, President, San Francisco State University

During Leslie Wong’s tenure as president of San Francisco State University (SFSU), which began in 2012, SFSU has earned the distinction of being singled out by Jewish students and community members with a lawsuit in U.S. district court charging that “it has systematically supported these departments and student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education.”

Indeed, under Wong’s leadership, SFSU has a lengthy record of ignoring if not outright enabling campus support for terrorism and threats against Jewish speakers and students. SFSU is home to the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), an SJP surrogate group which takes every opportunity to make Jewish students feel unwelcome on campus. GUPS was previously led by a student who wrote dozens of social media posts praising terrorists and threatening violence against Jews and Israel. GUPS interrupted a speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, shouting exhortations to terrorist violence and forcing him to curtail his address. At Barkat’s speech, demonstrators shouted “Intifada,” a call for terrorism against Israel, and chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” a call for the destruction of the Jewish state and the genocide of its people.

SFSU President Leslie Wong infamously gave an interview with a Jewish news organization in which he refused to categorically state that Zionists are welcome on SFSU’s campus. After receiving much negative feedback, he issued a public statement apologizing and declaring “Let me be clear: Zionists are welcome on our campus.”  In response, many SFSU campus organizations and entities including Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, Director of Arab Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) at SFSU and SFSU’s Woman and Gender Studies Department issued their own statements lambasting Wong for welcoming “racists” on campus.

Supporting Evidence:

On April 19, 2018, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at SFSU, an SJP surrogate group, held an event titled “The Global Resistance Against Zionism: How Israel Affects All Our Communities.” The event description called for the “right of return of millions of stateless Palestinian refugees,” which would destroy Israel as a Jewish state, and also chastised “Zionists” for celebrating Israel’s founding, declaring that “Al-Nakba marks a destructive and horrific time in history as Palestinians faced death, expulsion, and full out violence from Zionist European militias. The Zionists, however, commemorate this day through dancing and celebrations, proving their continuous dehumanization of Palestinian people and history. There is nothing to celebrate about May 15th, 1948.”

In April 2018, a video was posted on the official Facebook page for Arab Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) at SFSU which featured a radio interview with AMED Director Professor Rabab Abdulhadi in which she equated Zionists with the KKK and other hate groups. Referring to SFSU President Wong’s statement that Zionists are welcome on campus, she said, “I’m waiting for him to say, white supremacists is welcome, KKK is welcome, David Horowitz is welcome, Richard Spenser is welcome, Neo-Nazis are welcome, homophobes are welcome, misogynists are welcome, why stop only at Zionists? Welcome them all. I mean bring the…whole club. Bring everybody who is right wing and racist, bring them to campus, why only stop at Zionists.”

On March 26, 2018, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) held an “open dialogue in Malcolm X Plaza” as part of “Palestine Awareness Week.”   A large sign at the protest read “Zionism is not welcome here; The support of genocide is not welcome,” and a small mock “apartheid wall” declared “To exist is to resist.” “Resistance” is a euphemism used by Hamas and their allies to describe terrorist acts against Israel.

In February 2018, SFSU President Leslie Wong sent out a campus-wide email and made a public statement apologizing for a previous interview with a Jewish news organization in which he refused to categorically state that Zionists are welcome on SFSU’s campus. “Thus, I want to sincerely apologize for the hurt feelings and anguish my words have caused.  Let me be clear: Zionists are welcome on our campus,” Wong declared.

Wong’s apology was met with outrage by many individuals and even academic departments on SFSU’s campus. Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, Director of Arab Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) at SFSU, wrote in response: “I consider the statement from … President Wong, welcoming Zionists to campus, equating Jewishness with Zionism, and giving Hillel ownership of campus Jewishness, to be a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians and all those who are committed to and indivisible sense of social justice on and off campus.” She also charged on Facebook that Wong’s statement was “racist, Islamophobic and colonialist” and claimed that the administration was bowing to “donor pressures and the Israeli lobby.”

The Women and Gender Studies Department at SFSU released a statement condemning Wong’s apology. It read in part: “On February 23rd, President Wong of San Francisco State University sent an email to the entire campus community… The Women and Gender Studies Department is deeply concerned about the motivation, tenor, and potential effects of this statement… Wong’s statement fails to express concern or support for Palestinian, Arab, and Middle Eastern students and their allies that are harmed by Zionism… In sum, the Department of Women and Gender Studies unequivocally rejects the equation of Zionism with Judaism, and stands by all of our SFSU students and their right to a university committed to intellectual inquiry and social justice.”

GUPS declared in a Facebook post that “Wong does not have the right to speak on behalf of an entire community while welcoming racist and colonial ideology on a college campus that is meant to educate students. Zionism is not welcome at SFSU or in any space where justice, freedom, and liberation are our goals. We stand united on the front lines of achieving liberation and justice in and for Palestine, academic freedom, and a campus free of hate, Zionism, and White supremacy.”

A combined statement released by the Black Student Union, African Studies Association, Black Residents United in Housing, and Black Business Student Association stated, “To support Palestine is to combat tyranny, totalitarianism, racism, xenophobia, terrorism, colonialism, and state sanctioned violence….Leslie Wong has welcomed terrorism to our campus and has remained an ally to Zionist groups long before releasing a statement that boldly stated that Zionists are welcome on our campus…”

Chalkings in the main campus quad in response to Wong’s apology stated “Zionists Not Welcome” and “Zionism = Racism.”

In June 2017, Jewish students at SFSU together with members of the local community filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against SFSU and the trustees of California State University charging that SFSU has fostered a hostile environment for Jewish students on campus who are “often afraid to wear Stars of David or yarmulkes on campus, and regularly text their friends to describe potential safety issues.” The lawsuit was prompted in part by an incident in April 2016 when a speech by the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, was disrupted by anti-Israel protestors who chanted “Intifada” (a call for violence and terrorism against Israel) and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (a statement urging the genocide of Israel’s Jews). During this incident, university administrators told campus police to “stand down” and allowed the protest to continue.

The suit filed against the University claims, “SFSU has not merely fostered and embraced anti-Jewish hostility — it has systematically supported these departments and student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education.” The suit also specifically names SFSU professor Rabab Abdulhadi, the director of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Initiative (AMED) and the faculty advisor for SFSU’s Hamas-supporting GUPS chapter, who has a long history of supporting terrorists and their allies.

In April 2017, GUPS held a commemoration of the “Nakba,” a term used by Hamas and its allies to describe the creation of Israel as a “catastrophe.” Signs and advertisements for the event stated “Never Forget, Never Forgive,” and called for the Palestinian’s “Right of Return” which would mean the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, one of Hamas’s chief aims.

In March 2017, GUPS again brought the anti-Israel hatefest “Israeli Apartheid Week” to campus. This year’s festivities featured a mock checkpoint and a “political discussion and film screening” at which a large banner was featured stating the Hamas libel that “Zionism is racism.”

SFSU GUPS held a March 2017 event on “Israeli Policies in Relation to the Trump Era” at which they attempted to smear both the Trump administration and the Jewish state. The event description claimed “Since the settler colonial project of Israel was established as a state in 1948, the Israel government has used ‘security’ as a pretext to further oppressive and racist policies and practices against the Palestinians. This include[s]… building an Apartheid Wall…a racist ID system… and torture, resulting in the policing, and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” Israel’s “apartheid wall” is actually a security fence that has saved thousands of Jewish lives by preventing Palestinian terrorists from entering.

GUPS deliberately and maliciously excluded SFSU Hillel from a February 2017 campus fair on the topic of human rights which they helped to organize by changing the registration dates after they had been announced to the public and then claiming the fair was at capacity when in reality many empty tables remained.

In September 2016, GUPS held a campus event to commemorate “one of the hundreds of massacres committed on the Palestinian people: Sabra and Shatila.” A Facebook post about the event claimed that “we hold the United States and Israel for the continue repressions among our communities from police killing black and brown men and women to the Assad regime slaughtering Syrians. If we were to commemorate every massacre in Palestinian history, having an event every single day of the year would still not be enough.” Large signs displayed at the event falsely accused Israel of “settler colonialism” and “ethnic cleansing.” The Sabra and Shatila massacres were carried out by the Lebanese Christian Phalange party as a retaliation for the murder of the president of Lebanon, Bashir Gemayel, by Palestinian terrorists.

In April 2016, SFSU hosted a tour created by National SJP called “Right 2 Education,” featuring two speakers from Birzeit University in Palestine.  Birzeit is well known for hosting Hamas rallies and Hamas recently beat out rival party Fatah in student elections there. During the event, the student speakers defended terrorism claiming that acts such as knife attacks on unarmed civilians were merely efforts to “bring attention” to the alleged plight of Palestinians. The speakers praised the genocidal BDS campaign against Israel, and attempted to delegitimize the Israeli state by falsely claiming that Jews “fabricate our history to make it look like they have a right to exist in our country” and that “Israel was built to be a racist state.”

The SFSU General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) disrupted an April 2016 speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, NirBarkat, by shouting exhortations to terrorist violence and succeeded in curtailing his address. SFSU students involved in the protest entered the auditorium carrying Palestinian flags and wearing checkered kaffiyehs which are associated with anti-Israel terrorism. The demonstrators then proceeded to shout “Intifada,” and chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” a slogan falsely claiming that Israel is Palestine (Israel is bounded by the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea) and should be destroyed.

When SFSU President Wong called for an investigation into the protestors who shut down Barkat’s speech, GUPS responded by calling Wong’s request an “attack on pro-Palestine protestors” that “criminalize[s] anti-racist speech on campus.”

In Februry 2016, GUPS at SFSU held a rally in solidarity with Mohammed Al-Qeeq, a Palestinian journalist who was arrested and detained by Israel.  According to the Associated Press, “Israel’s Shin Bet security service says al-Qeeq is involved in terrorism activities linked to the militant Hamas movement.”

In October 2015, GUPS at SFSU promoted a community protest on its Facebook page supporting terrorism and the Hamas goal of destroying Israel. GUPS’s endorsement stated in part: “The General Union of Palestine Students – GUPS-SFSU supports the uprisings in Palestine! We Stand with our Brothers and Sisters in the streets, and we will find victory! …  End to the Zionist State! End to the killings of our Men, Women and Children in cold blood! End to the colonist empire! We will not be silenced!”

In September 2015, GUPS at SFSU held a protest and die-in called “From Sabra to Syria: My Homeland is not a Suitcase.” One student lay on the ground holding a mock Israeli flag with “Stop Settler Colonialism” scrawled across it, an echo of the Hamas claim that the Jews have “colonized” Palestine, a blatant historical falsehood, since the land on which Israel was created belonged to the Turks (who are neither Arabs nor Palestinians) for 400 years previously.

GUPS at SFSU held an event in May 2015 to commemorate the “Nakba,” an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that Hamas and its supporters use to describe the creation of Israel. A poster for the event stated “67 years later al-nakba continues. Join GUPS in honoring Palestinian resilience.”

In April 2015, GUPS at SFSU held “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus. The poster for the event stated, “Together we rise against colonialism,” repeating Hamas’s propaganda lie that the (non-existent) Arab nation of “Palestine” was colonized by Jews. The event included the display of a mock “apartheid wall” painted with anti-Israel propaganda.

In the Fall of 2014, SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, faculty advisor to GUPS, who had previously taken a university-sponsored trip to the Middle East where she met with terrorists Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah, posted on her Facebook page, “Today San Francisco State University’s All University Committee on International Programs unanimously voted to recommend that SF State formally collaborate with An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine. This is the first time that SFSU will collaborate with any university in a Palestinian, Arab or Muslim community.” The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has writtenof An-Najah University, “Today the student council of An-Najah is known for its advocacy of anti-Israel violence and its recruitment of Palestinian college students into terrorist groups. The council, almost completely controlled by factions loyal to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, glorifies suicide bombings and propagandizes for jihad against Israel. Hamas has described An-Najah as a ‘greenhouse for martyrs.’”

In November 2014, GUPS at SFSU held the 7^th Annual Edward Said Mural Celebration. Among the event’s speakers was UC Berkeley professor and Hamas agent, Hatem Bazian, former leader of GUPS, and co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine. Bazian, during a speech at an anti-war rally in San Francisco in 2004, called for an “Intifada” in America: “Well, we’ve been watching [an] Intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq [against the United States], and the question is what are we doing? How come we don’t have an Intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream … giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, Carlyle Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an Intifada in this country that changes fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know … they’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical. Well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet!”

In February 2014, SFSU General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) President Mohammad G. Hammad was exposed as having written a number of threatening social media posts describing his wish to attack students, teachers and Israeli soldiers and to ally himself with anti-Israel terrorists including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Hammad’s posts include: A photo of himself holding a large knife with the caption: “I seriously cannot get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…” “I think about killing a lot.  And some of you are usually the targets of my daydreams J.” “You know what?  Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it. And you know what else?  My heroes have always killed colonizers. I literally see nothing wrong with this. And my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed.”

In response to a poster that asked “how can I help actively support Palestine,” Hammad responded “Buy a keffieyh. Learn to tie it around your head…get in touch with some PFLP militants or arms dealers in the West Bank. Learn IDF patrol routes…BOOM.” “Let’s play a game. Objective: Kill U.S. Soldiers. Goal: world peace.” “The number of times I have legitimately considered flying back to the Middle East and joining the armed wing of the PFLP or something is surprisingly high.” “I think about the time I tried to be – moderate – and advocate for non-violence and honestly I just want to go back in time and slit my own throat/and then the throats of all my enemies before they grow up into the shits they are today.” “Oh/And tomorrow is [hopefully] the day that I find out if I will be the President of the General Union of Palestine at my school/…Hopefully I’ll be able to radicalize half of our population and bring them back with me as fighters.”

After Jewish groups and the media exposed his postings, Hammad eventually left campus and was placed under investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI.

During a December 2013 “emergency rally” held by GUPS at SFSU, the phrase “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers” was written with chalk on the concrete stage at Malcolm X Plaza. The same phrase, referring to the Hamas assertion that Jews have colonized Arab Palestine and must be exterminated, was also written on a sign at a display table during the “Edward Said Mural Celebration.” Said was a Columbia professor who was a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Palestinian National Council until 1991 when he resigned because he thought the terrorist Yasser Arafat’s policies were too moderate towards Israel.

Anthony Monaco, President, Tufts University

While led by President Anthony Monaco, Tufts University has ignored rules violations committed by the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine while immediately tearing down posters exposing SJP’s links to the anti-Israel terror group Hamas.  Under Monaco’s charge, Tufts University hosted the SJP National Conference in 2014 at which students were instructed how and when to take “direct action” against supporters of Israel.

Tufts SJP has condoned anti-Israel terrorism on numerous occasion in public statements and events and holds an annual “Israeli Apartheid” hate week during which the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel is promoted and Hamas propaganda spreading falsehoods about Israel is displayed. Tufts SJP also attempted to delegitimize supporters of Israel by labeling the pro-Israel campus group Students Supporting Israel “literally a hate group.” Monaco and his administration have done little to show their support for Jewish students in the wake of SJP’s onslaught of lies and offered only a tepid defense to a petition signed by faculty and students criticizing the decision to send a Tufts security officer to a counterterrorism conference in Israel.

Supporting Evidence:

In April 2018, SJP at Tufts hosted its annual “Israeli Apartheid Week,” a series of events dedicated to spreading Hamas propaganda about Israel and false claims that demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. The week included events promoting the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel and the display of a mock border wall plastered with Hamas-derived propaganda such as defining the First Intifada—a series of violent terrorist attacks against Israel—as a “Palestinian uprising against the occupation” and a condemnation of U.S. aid to Israel accompanied by an image of money bags turning into rockets which destroy a presumed Palestinian home.

In March 2018, a letter drafted by Tufts Associate Professor of Anthropology Amahl Bishara which strongly criticized the decision to send Tufts’ director of public and environmental safety to Israel for a training seminar on counter-terrorism was circulated among faculty and students. The letter was signed by 39 faculty and staff members, 111 students and 47 alumni. The letter demonized Israel claiming: “Adoption of Israeli approaches to security would endanger our students, staff, and faculty…it is not the time for Tufts Police to be taught by institutions like these that routinely disregard civil and human rights. Furthermore, these joint trainings lend ideological and financial support for Israel’s repression of Palestinians.” The University responded, not to defend Israel from these false charges, but to defend the seminar itself as “a valuable source of information that will enhance the university’s readiness to address emergency situations.”

In August 2017, as the school  year was starting, leftist student activists at Tufts shared a handbook titled the “Tufts University Disorientation Guide” on two official class Facebook pages which delegitimized Israel and defamed the campus Jewish organization, Hillel, by describing it as “an organization that supports a white supremacist state” which “exploit[s] black voices for their own pro-Israel agenda.” University officials ultimately removed the handbook from the official class pages, but not before it was seen and read by many incoming Jewish students. No action other than removing the handbook was taken against the students who posted it without authorization.

In April 2017, the Tufts student government ignored requests from over 50 individuals belonging to the Jewish community on campus and went forward with a vote promoting the Hamas-supported and funded BDS movement against Israel on the night before Passover started. The resolution—which falsely demonized Israel as “an apartheid regime” and issued a call for the right of return of Palestinians, effectively destroying Israel as a Jewish state—passed by a vote of 17-6-8.

In November 2016, large stickers demonizing Israel and Israeli and Jewish leaders were placed on the Tufts campus as part of a Palestinian Advocacy Project campaign. The stickers recounted purported quotes from Israeli and Jewish leaders which were taken drastically out of context to infer Jewish attacks on the Palestinians. For instance, one stickers depicted Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan with the text “Palestinians ‘are beasts, they are not human.’” Another sticker depicted Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu alongside the quote, “beat them up not once, but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable. – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on how to deal with Palestinians.”

In October 2016, the Tufts administration responded to posters placed on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center which exposed SJP’s links to Hamas and anti-Israel terrorism by emailing a statement to the entire student body claiming that the posters violated the University’s community standards. The Tufts community standards explicitly state “Freedom of expression and inquiry are fundamental to the academic enterprise”–nothing in the Freedom Center’s posters violated those standards. In this instance, the Tufts administration displayed rampant hypocrisy for immediately tearing down posters exposing SJP’s ties to terrorism while allowing SJP to disregard campus regulations to attack Jewish students and Israel.

In June 2016, Tufts SJP added its name to a letter from SJP National protesting a decision by the San Francisco State University administration to investigate the actions of a pro-Palestinian group known as the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) who disrupted a speech by the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, on April 6^th by shouting exhortations to terrorist violence. SFSU students involved in the protest entered the auditorium carrying Palestinian flags and wearing checkered kaffiyehs which are associated with anti-Israel terrorism. The demonstrators then proceeded to shout “Intifada,” a call for terrorism against Israel, and chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” a slogan advocating for the destruction of Israel.

The letter signed by Tufts SJP stated: “We condemn SFSU President’s pledge to open a ‘full investigation’ into the protest and condemn the President’s pledge to prevent peaceful student dissent in the future. Such actions create a chilling effect undermining activism and freedom of speech for students advocating for justice and freedom in Palestine.”

In April 2016, Tufts SJP praised Columbia University SJP for disrupting a talk by the Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barakat. According to an account posted by Columbia SJP, “We organized an action to shed light on his promotion of VIOLENCE, APARTHEID and ETHNIC CLEANSING of Palestinians.”

In March 2016, Tufts SJP held “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus. During a demonstration, students distributed a publication called “Zintifada,” labeled on its website as “an independent publication of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine,” which supported Palestinian terrorism and violence against Israel, stating that “violence is acted upon by the powerless by the powerful. Let us not only recognize the right of the oppressed to defy, but let us also stand as allies in their struggle.”

In March 2016, Tufts SJP attempted to delegitimize supporters of Israel by labeling the pro-Israel campus group Students Supporting Israel “literally a hate group.” Such behavior is consistent with Hamas’s dictate to reject the “normalization” of relations with Israel and its supporters.

On December 07, 2015, Tufts SJP held an event called “Palestinian Human Rights Now.” The Facebook graphic for the event featured an image of rockets with dollar signs dropping off a conveyer belt and the captions “US Taxpayers funded 670 million weapons for Israel between 2000 and 2009” and “During these years the Israeli military killed at least 2,960 unarmed Palestinians.” The poster made no mention of the numerous unprovoked rocket attacks by the Palestinians on Israel. There have been no unprovoked rocket attacks by Israel against Palestinians.

On October 28, 2015, SJP members disrupted a “Taste of Israel” event held by the campus organization Friends of Israel by distributing flyers attacking Israel and labeling it an “apartheid” state. One flyer read: “Taste of Israeli Occupation” while another stated “Don’t dip into Israel apartheid.”

In August 2015, two student organizations at Tufts, the Spoken Word Alliance at Tufts and Tufts Pan-African Alliance, added their signatures and support to the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine. The statement endorses the Hamas-inspired BDS movement, demonizes and delegitimizes Israel, uses Hamas language to refer to the Israeli defensive action Operation Protective Edge as “last summer’s Gaza massacre,” and supports Hamas terrorism against Israel claiming that “US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray violence against us as ‘isolated incidents,’ and call our resistance ‘illegitimate’ or ‘terrorism.’”

During March 1-6, 2015, Tufts held Israeli Apartheid Week 2015 on campus. Events for the week included a panel on the “History, Tactics and Future of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions,” and a “Conversation with Tufts Professors on Palestine” during which activists accused Israel of “apartheid,” “colonialism” and “racism” – accusations meant to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state.

During March 2015, Tufts SJP hung a banner promoting the film “The Lab” in the main campus dining hall with the caption “Israeli weapons tried and tested on Palestinians.” This statement and film support the “blood libel” propagated by Hamas that Israel deliberately murders Palestinians, when it is in fact responding to a seventy year unprovoked aggression by Arabs on the Jewish state.

On April 27, 2014, Tufts SJP staged a “die-in” on campus to protest an “Israeli Independence BBQ” which they claimed was held “on Nakba Day when hundreds of thousands were expelled or murdered 66 years ago.” The “Nakba” is an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe” which Hamas and its allies use to refer to the day of Israel’s founding. These are lies. Israel was attacked by five Arab states on the day of its creation, and the Arabs who fled did so at the behest of the Arab armies who promised them they could return when Israel was destroyed. Tufts SJP neglected to mention that on the day of Israel’s founding it was attacked by five Arab nations and that resulting deaths occurred in self-defense of the fledgling nation.

During October 24-26, 2014, Tufts SJP hosted the Students for Justice in Palestine National Conference on campus. Panels held as part of the conference were designed to teach SJP activists how to take “direct action” to counter pro-Israel groups on campus. The conference program stated, “Presently, SJPs throughout the nation are pushing the limits of Palestine Solidarity, and understanding how civil disobedience works can strengthen any campaign’s pressure and salience… Understanding this tactic is crucial to a stronger and more versatile SJP that seeks to publicly challenge university administrations and student governments.”

A member of the national SJP steering committee which organized the conference, Ahmad Aburas, has publicly declared his support for Hamas on social media. One of the conference’s keynote speakers, Mohammad Desai, is the National Coordinator of BDS South Africa, and has defended South African BDS activists who chanted “shoot the Jew” at a pro-BDS protest.

On March 05, 2014, as part of Israeli Apartheid Week demonstrations held on campus, Tufts SJP distributed mock eviction notices to student dorms which stated that “Eviction and demolition notices are routinely given to Palestinian families living under oppressive Israeli occupation for no reason other than their ethnic background.” In fact eviction notices are given to the families and supporters of terrorists who have actually carried out attacks on innocent civilians. Tufts SJP also constructed a mock apartheid wall and staged a mock eviction during which students were held blindfolded at gunpoint.

Carol T. Christ, Chancellor, University of California-Berkeley

Carol T. Christ became chancellor of UC-Berkeley in March 2017, thereby assuming leadership for a university that has a long and well-deserved reputation for radicalism and support for Israel’s terrorist adversaries. To cite only one recent indication, in the fall of 2016, Berkeley offered an academic course titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis.” The course syllabus explained that the course would explore “the possibility of decolonization,” meaning the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. The course was briefly suspended by the campus administration but it was reinstated after only minor changes to the syllabus.

Since taking over Berkeley’s top post, Chancellor Christ has done nothing substantial to change the institutional culture of anti-Semitism and terrorist sympathizing. Berkeley remains the academic home of Hamas supporter and SJP co-founder Hatem Bazian, who has repeatedly demonized and delegitimized Israel and supported a new intifada or violent uprising against the Jewish state.

Two academic centers at Berkeley recently hosted the “9th Annual Islamophobia Conference” during which speakers, including Bazian, repeatedly promoted the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel. Berkeley is home to a highly active SJP chapter that holds frequent events featuring pro-Hamas and pro-BDS speakers and which has repeatedly demonized Israel for repelling a Hamas attack on its borders. During a recent campus rally, students supporting the BDS movement chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – calls to kill Jews in Israel and destroy the Jewish state.

Supporting Evidence:

UC-Berkeley is the academic home of Professor Hatem Bazian, a co-founder of the Hamas-linked campus hate group Students for Justice in Palestine. Bazian is a lecturer in Berkeley’s Ethnic Studies Department and he founded the Center for the Study of Documentation of Islamophobia at the University. Bazian has repeatedly made public statements showcasing his hatred for the Jews and for Israel, including stating that Jews control Congress, and tweeting an anti-Semitic meme featuring a caricature of an Orthodox Jew. He has called for a new intifada (violent uprising) against Israel, defended an anti-Semitic mural, accused Jewish students of being ‘Zionist’ spies, and spoken at a fundraiser for a Hamas front group which was later dissolved after it was discovered funneling money to Hamas. Bazian has also demonstrated a penchant for revisionist history, tweeting that “Israel provoked the Six-Day War in 1967, and it was not fighting for survival” and that “Historical evidence does not support Zionist claims re the Western Wall.”

In June 2018, Berkeley SJP shared an article about the Great Return March on its Facebook page with the comment “Rest in Power… Israel continues to slaughter.” The Great Return March was composed primarily of Hamas militants who were openly attacking Israel’s border.

During April 2018, two academic centers at Berkeley, the Center for Race and Gender and the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project, together with other academic entities, co-sponsored the “9th Annual Islamophobia Conference.” The conference included a panel on “Foreign Policy, Israel and Islamophobia, a Strategic Orientation.” Featured speakers included Paul Larudee, Richard Silverstein and Hatem Bazian. The speakers repeatedly promoted the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel and demonized and delegitimized the Jewish state. Larudee condemned Israel for “weaponizing Islamophobia as a strategic tool to legitimize and justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians” and Bazian alleged that “the shift to Islamophobia is part of Israel’s foreign policy shift…[to] keep balance of power… [and to] test & develop weapons.”

On April 16, 2018, Berkeley SJP held a “Candlelight Vigil in Solidarity with Gaza and Douma.”  The event notice stated in part: “For the past two weeks, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have marched to the Israeli border demanding an end to the inhumane siege and the right of Palestinians to return to the lands from which they were violently dispossessed. In response Israeli snipers opened fire on thousands of unarmed protesters, killing at least 35 people…”   In fact, the so-called Great Return March was a Hamas attack on Israel’s border, necessitating a military response.

During March 2018, Berkeley SJP held its annual “Palestine Solidarity Week” on campus. The week featured a mock-checkpoint and a mock “apartheid wall” meant to mimic the security barrier along Israel’s West Bank.

In February 2018, a Jewish professor at Berkeley was targeted with an anonymous anti-Semitic death threat. Benjamin Brinner, faculty director for the Center for Jewish studies, reported that the message was “posted outside of the office of a Jewish professor” and that it “mentioned Hitler and called for killing the professor, using an extremely racist epithet for ‘Jew.’”

On November 2, 2017, The Center for Race & Gender at UC-Berkeley together with Law Students for Justice in Palestine co-sponsored an event titled, “Colonial Legalism, 100 Years Since Balfour w/ Dr. Hatem Bazian.” The Balfour Declaration was a statement made in a letter written by British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour in 1917 supporting “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” During his address, Bazian delegitimized Israel by claiming that this declaration was made “for the sole purpose to provide a cover for the outright civilized thievery of Palestine.” He also claimed that Israel “built itself on acts of ethnic cleansing and confiscation of land and property” and that the Jewish state has conducted “hundreds of massacres.” Bazian also expressed his support for the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel in which he included a boycott of Israel’s academic institutions.

On October 13, 2017, UC-Berkeley’s student-run paper published an anti-Semitic cartoon of Jewish Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz which also demonized Israel. The Amcha Initiative reports that the cartoon “depicted Alan Dershowitz’s head inside a cut-out of his book, ‘The Liberal Case for Israel’ with him smiling, a rainbow, and children. The cartoon depicted his body behind the cut-out stepping on a person who had been carrying a Palestinian flag, flattening the person, and his hand was holding up an IDF soldier with a large gun standing over a dead person with blood around the body and blood dripping off his hand.”

On October 11, 2017, a flyer for an event with Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz which had been posted on a campus bulletin board, was defaced by a swastika inked over Dershowitz’s face.

In July 2017, Hamas-supporting UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian retweeted an anti-Semitic meme which was originally tweeted by infamous anti-Semite Ron Hughes, whose twitter account Bazian follows. The meme features a photo of a man presumed to be Jewish, with Hasidic style curls, with the quoted statement:  “MOM LOOK! I IS CHOSEN! I CAN NOW KILL, RAPE, SMUGGLE ORGANS & AND STEAL THE LAND OF PALESTINIANS *YAY* ASHKE-NAZI.”  Another meme retweeted by Bazian pictured North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un with a yarmulke photoshopped on top of his head and the captions  “God chose me,” “101 Judaism we teach it,” and “I just converted all of North Korea to Judaism. Donald Tlump (sic): Now my nukes are legal and I can annex South Korea and you need to start paying me 34 billion a year in welfare.”  Berkeley’s administration labeled Bazian’s tweets “unacceptable anti-Semitism” that “clearly crossed the line” but did not take any disciplinary action against the professor.

During March 2017, Berkeley SJP held “Palestine Solidarity Week” on campus featuring the display of a mock apartheid wall, meant to symbolize Israel’s security fence which has saved thousands of Jewish lives by keeping Palestinian terrorists out. The Week also featured a “die-in” designed to showcase the Hamas propaganda lie that Israel commits indiscriminate violence against Palestinians, and a mock checkpoint on campus. At the die-in, students held signs proclaiming “Zionism is racism” and “Stop Israeli Occupation Forces From Killing Palestinian Children in Cold Blood.”

During November 2016, the Berkeley Law chapter of SJP posted an open letter on social media asking students to pledge not to participate in trips to Israel sponsored by “Israel & Co.” The open letter repeated Hamas propaganda lies, claiming that “This trip is part of a broader effort to normalize the occupation of Palestinian people by drawing attention away from a settler-colonial state’s systemic violations of human rights.” The chapter also tabled on campus in an effort to encourage students to sign the pledge. One student held a sign stating, “I pledge not to go on the Israel trip because: white supremacy here looks a lot like white supremacy there.” The Facebook page of the Berkeley Law chapter of SJP carries a banner which compares illegal immigrants in America to Palestinians with the slogan “we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.”

On October 27, 2016, SJP at Berkeley held the “3rd Annual International Day of Action on University Campuses for Palestine.” Speakers at the event which promoted the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement against Israel included Hatem Bazian and SFSU professor Rabab Abdulhadi who has used university funds to meet with anti-Israel terrorists.  Social media promotions for the event stated, “Make this call of action part of campus education by holding teach-ins, rallies, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and push for BDS activities. No to Academic Complicity with Israeli Occupation, No to Study Abroad Programs in Israel, No Investments in Apartheid and Occupation Supporting Companies, No to University Presidents’ Visits to Israel, No Campus Police Training or Cooperation with Israeli Security, No Joint Research or Conferences with Israeli Institutions, No Cooperation with Hasbara Networks on College Campuses, No to Targeting Faculty for Speaking Against Israeli Crimes, No to Administrative Limits on Free Speech Rights of Palestine Activists, No to University Coordination and Strategizing with the ADL, JCRC, AJC, Stand With US, ZOA, Israeli Consulate to Limit Students Pro-Palestine Constitutionally Protected Activities.”

On September 22, 2016, anti-Semitic posters appeared on Berkeley’s campus which stated, “Jewish bullies smash free speech at Cal and are pledged $58 billion. Attention Non-Jews: PAY UP AND SHUT UP!”

A course offered at Berkeley during the fall 2016 semester was titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis.” The course facilitator was Paul Hadweh and the faculty sponsor was Hatem Bazian.  The course syllabus included generous doses of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic literature and claimed that the course would be “exploring the possibility of decolonization,” meaning the elimination of Israel as a Jewish state. The course was briefly suspended by the campus administration but it was reinstated after only minor and cosmetic changes to the course syllabus.  Course facilitator Hadweh promoted the course on social media by stating that it would explore “the history and present of Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine” and by posting a series of infamous Hamas propaganda maps that falsely show Israel colonizing Arab Palestine. Of course the actual Arab colonization of the Middle East outside the Arabian peninsula – a historical fact – was absent from the syllabus which focused solely on the fictional colonization of an entity – Palestine – which has never existed.n June 2016, UC Berkeley’s Center for Race & Gender offered a “Palestine De-Colonial Summer School” in Istanbul, Turkey. The program reinforced the Hamas narrative that Jews colonized a non-existent state called Palestine. Among the themes examined in the program were “Colonialism: settler colonialism and the meaning of de-colonization,” “Understanding Zionism, as a colonial, racial and Euro-centric Project,” and “The Palestinian Nakba and the dispossession.” A compendium of Hamas libels against the Jews.

During May 2016, UC Berkeley SJP shared several posts on Facebook commemorating the “Nakba,” an Arabic term meaning catastrophe that Hamas and its supporters use to refer to the creation of Israel and to commemorate the unprovoked aggressive war five Arab dictatorships launched against the tiny state on that day and have continued ever since.

On March 31, 2016, Berkeley SJP held a “Die-in, March, and Speakout for Palestine” on campus. The Facebook notice for the event read, “We are dying-in and marching in solidarity with all Palestinians subjected to Israeli violence. Our action seeks to represent visually the people who have shed blood and tears at Israel’s hands in the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, and worldwide.” The rally included the display of a large mock “apartheid wall” which featured anti-Israel slogans and pro-terrorist propaganda. One panel of the “apartheid wall” depicted all of Israel replaced with a Palestinian flag, implying that Israel should be replaced by an Arab state of Palestine and should no longer exist.

On March 29, 2016, Berkeley SJP created a “mock checkpoint” on campus to demonize Israel and intimidate students as they attempted to cross the campus. The actual checkpoints have cut the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian terrorists to near zero – a fact suppressed by SJP. During the demonstration, students impersonating Israeli soldiers with “IDF” written on the backs of their shirts, and armed with mock assault rifles, arrested those representing Palestinians, as though the IDF’s efforts were about oppressing Palestinians instead of defending innocent civilians.

Over March 8-10, 2016, UC Berkeley SJP held “Palestine Awareness Week” on campus, although events actually continued throughout the month of March. This week featured all the key propaganda points Hamas uses to justify its war of extermination against Israel’s Jews.

In March 2015, three Berkeley professors–Rutie Adler, Hatem Bazian, and Samera Esmeir–were among the signatories to an op-ed printed in the Daily Californian supporting BDS resolutions on UC campuses and the Hamas-inspired effort to destroy the Jewish state.

On February 19, 2016, Berkeley SJP shared an article on its Facebook page defending Palestinian terrorism against Israel. The article focused on a Fatah activist who spent 23 years in prison for killing an Israeli. The activist is quoted as saying “Call Me a Terrorist, but I’m No Different From Israeli Troops Defending Their Homeland.” The inability to distinguish between a defender and an aggressor is characteristic of Hamas-SJP propaganda.

On February 18, 2016, UC Berkeley hosted Dr. Jeff Halper for a talk on “War Against the People: Israel, the Palestinians, and Global Pacification.” The Facebook notice for the event repeated the Hamas libel that Israelis are using the “occupied territories” to test their experimental weapons: “Drawing on firsthand research, the author shows how the integration of militarized systems – databases, tracking civilian activity, automated targeting systems and unmanned drones – is perfected to sustain fear among the populace and how the Occupied Territories are used by Israel as a veritable weapon laboratory.” No mention was made by Halper of the fact that every time Israel withdraws its forces, as in Gaza, the vacuum is filled with Hamas terrorists firing rockets into Israeli schoolyards and digging multimillion dollar terror tunnels to carry out attacks in Israel.

On November 16, 2015, Berkeley SJP hosted anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi on campus. Kanazi has called Israel “a racist state built on stolen Palestinian land” that is “maintained through ethnic cleansing, occupation, bombing campaigns, draconian laws, settlements, outposts, colonizer roads, siege, blockade, chemical warfare, an apartheid wall, home demolitions, control of borders/imports/exports/water aquifers/air/sea/taxes/currency, the denial of family reunification, jailing of children, night raids, administrative detention, uprooting olive groves, restriction on movement, denying refugees the ability to return, and much more.”

On October 14, 2015, UC Berkeley’s SJP chapter held a rally to support the “International Day of Action” for Palestine and the BDS movement against Israel at Sproul Plaza on campus. The Muslim Students Association co-sponsored the event. Featured speakers included SJP co-founder, Berkeley professor and Hamas-supporter Hatem Bazian. Speakers and participants at the event chanted pro-terrorist slogans including “Let it be known that we here at Berkeley support the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The Intifada refers to unprovoked attacks on Jews, and “from the river to the sea” means the obliteration of the Jewish state and its replacement by an Islamic totalitarian regime identical to the one that now exists in Gaza. A mock “apartheid wall” plastered with anti-Israel propaganda was displayed at the event, including the malicious and false accusation that “Israel massacred over 500 kids in Gaza.”

On September 18, 2015, Omar Barghouti, the founder of the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement against Israel, spoke at Berkeley. His talk was co-sponsored by SJP and by eight university departments including the Cen­ter for Race and Gen­der, Asian Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Native Amer­i­can Stud­ies, Eth­nic Stud­ies, Eng­lish, Chi­cano Stud­ies, Near East­ern Stud­ies, and African Amer­i­can Studies. Barghouti’s speech was titled, “BDS: Academia’s Role in the Struggle for Freedom and Justice in Palestine,” and promoted the academic boycott of Israel.

On February 4, 2015, a swastika was found on a “university-owned building on University Avenue.”

On March 2, 2015, genocidal graffiti was found in a campus restroom reading: “Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber.”

On February 22, 2015, Berkeley SJP violated campus rules by distributing over 600 fake eviction notices to students in campus housing. SJP made clear that the campaign was in support of the Hamas-inspired BDS movement against Israel, stating in a press release that “With this action, we are calling on the UC Regents to honor the consensus in favor of divestment.”

On January 30, 2015, UC Berkeley’s office for Equity, Inclusion and Diversity posted an article on its website titled “Rhetoric of racism, from Ferguson to Palestine” that defended Hamas terrorism, claiming that “Hamas is a political party that has been under siege, along with the entirety of the Gaza Strip, for the last seven years and under Israeli military occupation since 1967.” The article, which ignored the 7 years of unprovoked Gaza aggression against Israel, the three aggressive wars conducted by the Arab states against Israel from its birth, and the 70 years of unprovoked terror attacks by Arabs and Palestinians against Jewish civilians, condemned Israel claiming that it “was founded after a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian population that continues until today.” Thus it merely repeated the genocidal lie created by Arab dictators and terrorists to justify their aggressive war against the Jews. The only ethnic cleansing proposed in the Middle East is the Arab plan to purge the region of Jews – and in so many words.

Howard Gillman, Chancellor of the University of California-Irvine

Howard Gillman was appointed as chancellor of the University of California-Irvine on September 18, 2014. He inherited a campus already notorious for allowing anti-Israel extremists and Hamas supporters to trample the rights of Jews and other students on campus. In the years preceding Gillman’s appointment, UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union disrupted a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren on campus, which resulted in the arrest of nine of its members. The MSU members refused to cease their disruption, even after an administrator repeatedly begged for civility. For this heinous attack on free speech, Irvine MSU received only a one-year suspension, which was ultimately shortened to one semester after the organization and its lawyer appealed.

During his years in office, Gillman has done little to change Irvine’s reputation as a haven for anti-Semites and supporters of anti-Israel terrorism. UC-Irvine’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has twice been sanctioned and put on probation for disrupting pro-Israel events—a small step in the right direction—but it has yet to face more serious consequences. In spite of the sanctions on SJP, anti-Israel activists—claiming to be outsiders but likely in coordination with Irvine SJP—continue to disrupt events supporting Israel, and the university has yet to investigate this possible coordination or even to take down the names of disruptors.

For three years in a row, anti-Israel protestors have significantly disrupted pro-Israel events in violation of campus regulations, chanting slogans promoting terrorism such as “Intifada, Intifada/long live the Intifada” and “when people are occupied/resistance is justified.” Irvine hosts an annual Israeli Apartheid Week which includes the display of a mock “apartheid wall” papered with pro-terrorist propaganda. One section of a recent apartheid wall glorified convicted hijacker Leila Khaled a member of the murderous terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and also depicted a map of Israel with the entire nation labeled as “occupied territory.” Another section contained incitements to terrorism such as the statement “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.”

Supporting Evidence:

A May 2018 event hosted by the UCI College Republicans with Reservists on Duty (a pro-Israel group of IDF reservists) was disrupted by an organized group of anti-Israel protestors who brought a bullhorn (a violation of campus rules without a permit) and screamed genocidal and pro-terrorist chants such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free” and leveled blood libel accusations at the ADF by chanting “IDF, What do you say? How many kids have you killed today?” Despite the presence of UCI’s Dean of Students and at least three police officers at the event, the chanting continued for at least three minutes, temporarily shutting down the event, until at last the protestors were removed. After their removal, the protestors continued chanting pro-terrorist slogans from outside the room including “Long live the intifada,” a reference the Hamas campaign of terrorist violence against Israel. After the event, the speakers and organizers left under a police escort.

UC Irvine declined to conduct a student disciplinary hearing, stating, “to our knowledge, the protestors were not UCI students, so there will not be a student conduct review.” The campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was still on probation at this time for their disruption of a similar pro-Israel event the previous year, and so it is thought that outside protestors were brought to the campus in their place so as not to further risk the organization’s status on campus. So far, the University has not investigated whether the campus chapter of SJP coordinated with the outside protestors to disrupt the event, although pro-Israel students on the campus consider this coordination likely. And it appears that the protestors, after being escorted out of the event, were not even asked for their names, and did not face arrest or any other negative consequences, facts that seem like gross oversights given the likelihood that the protestors were openly cooperating with UCI’s SJP chapter.

In May 2018, UCI SJP posted a link to a Lebanese singer’s hymn “honouring victims of Israeli massacres in Gaza” in response to deaths resulting from the Hamas led attack on the Gaza border known as the “Great Return March.” In doing so, UCI SJP was taking the Hamas propaganda position that Israel is at fault for deaths resulting from this Hamas attack on its borders.

In early May 2018, UCI SJP once again held “Anti-Zionism Week” on campus. The poster for the week depicted Israel with the words “We Will Return” in large letters over the whole of the nation, an image meant as a genocidal statement toward Israel’s Jews. The featured speaker for the week, Anis Zubi, was described as a “Nakba survivor.”  “Nakba” is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that is used by Israel’s enemies and terrorist adversaries to describe Israel’s creation in 1948.

An event hosted by UCI’s chapter of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) featuring a panel of Israeli Defense Reservists in May 2017 was disrupted by a contingent of approximately 40 protestors from UCI SJP—some clothed in t-shirts stating “UC Intifada,” a call to terrorist violence—who shouted slogans urging violence and the destruction of the Jewish state. SJP’s chants included: “Israel, Israel what do you say, how many kids have you killed today?” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” A woman identified as a former president of SJP yelled, “These people are occupiers, they’re colonizers; you should not be allowed on our f–ing campus!” The head of SSI also reported that assistance from campus police was inadequate. Despite every expectation that SJP would attempt to disrupt the event, campus police showed up late and then proceeded to lead the Israel supporters out through a crowd of protestors, increasing the risk of attack against them. The next day, one of SJP’s student leaders bragged that the organization had gone “to disrupt the event” in order “to let them (the panelists) know that we refuse to allow the normalization of their presence here.”

In September 2017, UC Irvine’s Office of Academic Integrity and Student Conduct released a statement explaining that SJP would be sanctioned “with disciplinary probation for two academic years, ending June 16, 2019” for disrupting the SSI event. Although this decision did result in some limited consequences to SJP, it did not prevent the disruption of pro-Israel events over the following year.  And SJP successfully appealed some terms of the sanctions.

In May 2017, UCI SJP held “Anti-Zionism Week 2017: On This Land.”  The week included the erection of a mock “apartheid wall” threatening terrorist violence against Israel. Panels included in the wall declared “When people are occupied, resistance is justified” and the quote “The colonizer brings pure violence in the homes and minds of the colonized.” Other panels advocated for the Hamas-backed BDS movement against Israel and accused Israel of genocide.

An anti-Trump rally held on campus in January 2017 morphed into a denial of Jewish self-determination when a student speaker declared to the crowd, “I want you guys to be about anti-Islamophobia; I want you guys to be anti-Zionism; and I want you guys to be anti-Israel because Trump didn’t come up with these things on his own, he got the idea of the wall from Israel.” The student then led the crowd in a chant of, “from Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go.”

On May 18, 2016, Irvine SJP succeeded in disrupting a pro-Israel film screening that was co-sponsored by the campus chapters of Students Supporting Israel (SSI) and Hillel. SSI reported on its Facebook page that, “Tonight one of our events was disrupted by certain student organizations. They were in violation of UC Regents Hate Speech policy and were shouting various anti-Semitic statements. The police had to escort attendees out of the event for their own safety.” Video of the event reveals students shouting their support for anti-Israel terrorism, screaming “Intifada, Intifada/long live the Intifada,” “displacing people since ‘48/there’s nothing here to celebrate!” and “when people are occupied/resistance is justified.” Following this event, UCI SJP was put on probation until March 2017.

During May 2-5, 2016, Irvine’s chapters of SJP and the Muslim Students Association (MSA) collaborated with other student groups to hold an “Anti-Zionist Week” on campus. The week featured a huge mock “apartheid wall” which celebrated anti-Israel terrorism in multiple panels. One panel depicted an image of convicted hijacker Leila Khaled holding a gun with the slogan “Women Leading Resistance” below it. “Resistance” is a euphemism for anti-Israel terrorism. Another segment of the wall repeats the slogan, “Resistance is justified when people are occupied.” Another segment depicted a map of Israel with the entire nation labeled as “occupied territory,” an allusion to Hamas’s genocidal goal to rid Israel of its Jews. The wall also endorsed the Hamas-inspired Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel.

In addition to the apartheid wall, Irvine’s anti-Zionist week featured a mock funeral procession for a Palestinian “martyr.” One of the students participating in the funeral procession held a sign proclaiming “Long Live the Intifada.” Another event featured a speech by anti-Israel Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss who comes from a fringe Jewish sect. During his address, Weiss resorted to anti-Semitic caricatures, claiming that Zionism is “a Madoff scheme” and Zionists use their “billions and billions of dollars” to intimidate “the media” and “any politician who dares …to show too much sympathy for the Palestinian cause.” He also claimed that “newspapers are conglomerates that are owned or controlled by Zionist organizations.”

On February 19, 2016, SJP held an event titled “Unlearning Zionism: A Workshop and Discussion” with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network. The Facebook page for the event featured side-by-side photos labeled “Warsaw 1944” (an image of the Warsaw ghetto) with “Gaza 2009,” implying an equivalence between the Holocaust and the treatment of Palestinians.

On October 12, 2015, an event featuring former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak at Irvine was interrupted by 20-30 anti-Israel protestors, forcing police to interrupt the event and escort Barak and the other attendees out of the event.

During May 4-7, 2015, UC Irvine’s Muslim Student Union staged an “Anti-Zionism Week” on campus. As part of the week’s activities, SJP and MSU sold T-shirts emblazoned with “UC Intifada,” openly stating their allegiance to Jew-killing terrorists. The back of the T-shirt read “End Settler Colonialism” (a core Hamas fiction) and depicted a genocidal Hamas map which falsely alleged that an Arab nation called “Palestine” existed in 1947 and was over-run by Jews.

On April 23, 2015, a pro-Israel festival held by Anteaters for Israel (“Anteaters” is the school team name) was disrupted by anti-Israel protestors, who used their bodies and large signs to block a walkway and loudly chanted pro-terrorist slogans such as “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” an attempt to whitewash terrorism.

In March 2015, UC-Irvine professor Rei Terada was among the signatories of an op-ed appearing in the Daily Californian urging the administrators of the UC system to support the Hamas-sponsored BDS Movement boycott of Israel.

In December 2014, UC Irvine SJP held an event in defense of terrorist Rasmeah Odeh, with law professor Marjorie Cohn, calling Odeh “our comrade and sister.” Odeh was convicted by an Israeli military court in 1970 for her involvement in a supermarket bombing which killed two Jewish students: “Join us as we host Marjorie Cohn, Professor of Law at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former President of the National Lawyer’s [sic] Guild and current Deputy Secretary of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers as she discusses the implications of the U.S.’s targeting of our comrade and sister, Rasmea Odeh. Ms. Cohn recently authored an article titled, “US Leaders Aid and Abet Israeli War Crimes, Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity.”

Gene Block, Chancellor, University of California Los Angeles

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block ascended to his current position on August 1, 2007. In the decade-plus that he has occupied the University’s top office, anti-Israel and pro-terrorist sentiment on the campus has grown rapidly, culminating in a protest last May during which anti-Israel protestors, including those belonging to the campus chapter of SJP, disrupted a pro-Israel event, even ripping the Israeli and Armenian flags off the wall and shouting pro-terrorist slogans such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a genocidal call to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. While administration officials condemned the protest, they claimed they could not take action unless a police report was filed—a step they had never suggested to the pro-Israel students whose event was disrupted. In response, over a dozen pro-Israel students filed official police complaints with campus police, but SJP has yet to face repercussions for the disruption of the event.

UCLA will host the annual SJP National Conference this November, an infamous event that typically bans media watchdogs and which has been known to feature Hamas supporters and proponents of anti-Israel terrorism as speakers.

Supporters of the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel are legion on the campus and forced the resignation of the university’s graduate student president, Milan Chatterjee, who reported in his resignation letter that he had been “relentlessly attacked, bullied and harassed by BDS-affiliated organizations and students.” Yet when the David Horowitz Freedom Center dared to put up posters on the campus exposing the links between SJP and Hamas, UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang sent an email to the 50,000 members of the UCLA community calling the posters “repulsive” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm” that “cannot be dismissed as over-sensitivity.”

UCLA’s student government passed a resolution supporting the Hamas-funded BDS movement in 2014. The campus has hosted Hamas-supporting and Jew-hating speakers who support the BDS movement, including BDS founder Omar Barghouti and Electronic Intifada founder Ali Abuminah. It sponsors an annual “Palestine Awareness Week” during which students promote BDS and display a mock “apartheid wall” and also an annual “Nakba Week” deriding the creation of Israel as a “catastrophe” – a term used by Hamas and its supporters to promote the lie Israel was built on stolen Arab land.

Supporting Evidence:

In August 2018, SJP at UCLA announced that the infamous annual SJP National conference would be held on the UCLA campus. The conference is titled, “Radical Hope: Resistance in the Face of Adversity.”  The term “resistance” is commonly used by Hamas supporters as a euphemism for terrorist aggression against Israel. Past SJP National conferences have featured speakers who promoted terrorist violence against Israel and the Hamas-funded BDS movement and instructed students in how to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events on campus. The conference announcement bragged about this disruption of pro-Israel events, stating “Other instances of our perseverance include disruptions of pro-war, Zionist, and racist guest speakers.” It also demonized Israel by claiming that “Zionism is ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid, and death.”

On May 17, 2018, SJP at UCLA disrupted an event held by Students Supporting Israel (SSI) titled “Indigenous Peoples Unite” with loud chants and demeaning actions and succeeded in shutting down the event for over 15 minutes.  While one of the panelists was speaking about surviving genocide in Armenia, a protestor walked over and tore the Armenian flag off the wall and threw the speaker’s notes away while shouting directly in his face. SJP protestors used horns and whistles to create a chaos of noise and chanted slogans including “We don’t want 2 states, we want ’48,” a genocidal statement to abolish Israel and return to a time before it existed. Other slogans included, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “No peace on stolen land, justice is our demand” “Protesting is not a crime, free free free Palestine,” and “Israel is a terrorist state!” UCLA administrators denounced the protest about a week later but claimed that they could not take action against the protestors because a police report had not been filed by SSI. After this announcement, over a dozen pro-Israel students filed complaints with the university police department. The protestors also tore the Israeli flag off the wall.

The Amcha Initiative, a group dedicated to tracking and combatting anti-Semitism, received a report that in May 2018, when a professor was late to class, a graduate student mocked Orthodox Jews and made anti-Semitic comments to his classmates. In particular, he made fun of the fact that religious Jews avoid doing work on Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, and claimed that they “can not even rip toilet paper on sabbath.”  He also said “Shalom” multiple times with an accent to mock how Orthodox Jews talk and called them “weird people” and complained about how “they are everywhere in L.A.” These comments and impressions were reportedly received with laughter by his classmates.

In May 2018, SJP at UCLA held an event titled “Teaching Palestine with Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi & Dr. Robin Kelley.”  During the event, Dr. Kelley, a history professor at UCLA, claimed that “the Nakba” (an Arabic term opponents of Israel use to describe Israel’s founding as a “catastrophe”) was “the ethnic cleansing operation that turned three-quarters of the Palestinians into refugees and transformed the top-ranked wealth and even the intellectual and cultural capital into the hands of Israelis. So it’s like a gangster operation. Armed robbery sanctioned by the world.”

In March 2018, UCLA SJP joined several other student groups in a protest outside of a UC Regents Meeting. The group chanted slogans including “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” a genocidal call to eliminate all of Israel as a Jewish state, and also promoted the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel.

In January 2018, a mezuzah, or Jewish prayer box, that had been hung outside the office door of UCLA’s Jewish student body president was torn down. This was the second time in two years that a mezuzah was stolen from this office.

In May 2017, UCLA SJP held a “Nakba Commemoration Week” to recognize the founding of Israel as “a catastrophe.”

In February 2017, SJP at UCLA held a “Palestine Awareness Week” featuring the display of a mock “apartheid wall” plastered in anti-Israel propaganda and a performance by the anti-Israel poet and supporter of the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel, Remi Kanazi.

On September 01, 2016, UCLA Graduate Student Association (GSA) President Milan Chatterjee announced in a lengthy letter that he is leaving his post and UCLA Law School as a result of the “hostile and unsafe campus climate” created by groups supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement on campus and the UCLA administration. Chatterjee described in his letter how he had “been relentlessly attacked, bullied and harassed by BDS-affiliated organizations and students” who objected to his attempts to distribute student fee monies in a “viewpoint neutral” manner with regard to the BDS movement.

On August 22, 2016, UCLA SJP announced on its Facebook page that it is endorsing the political platform of Black Lives Matter, which includes a section of the BLM platform that embraces the Hamas propaganda lies against Israel and its terrorist cause. UCLA SJP stated: “We are moved by the platform’s recognition of Israel’s apartheid laws, illegal settlements, segregated road systems and military checkpoints, punitive home demolitions, and prison system, through which Palestinians, including children, are routinely subject to harassment and torture. As campus organizers, we also welcome [Black Lives Matter’s] endorsement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), particularly given the current climate of anti-boycott legislation that we face, and we echo its acknowledgment of the US’s culpability in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, notably through military aid, diplomatic support, and investment in private prison companies.”

On May 16, 2016, in a piece published in the Daily Bruin, two UCLA students and one psychology department staff member mourned the “Nakba” – the catastrophe of Israel’s creation by the United Nations – and Israel’s alleged “massive campaign of ethnic cleansing.” They demanded “the full right of return” for Palestinians – representing a plan to flood Israel with Palestinians who had never lived in Israel and obliterate the Jewish state—one of the goals of Hamas.

On April 19, 2016, in response to anti-BDS posters created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, UCLA Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang sent an email to the 50,000 members of the UCLA community attacking Horowitz –calling the posters “repulsive” and “personalized intimidation” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm” that “cannot be dismissed as over-sensitivity.” Vice Chancellor Kang also pronounced them “hateful” and “thuggish” and claimed that they utilized the “tactic of guilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander, and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially tinged fear.”

On April 14, 2016, UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies sponsored an address by Noga Kadman on her book “Erased From Space and Consciousness: Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948.”  During the address, Kadman accused Israel of conducting a “massacre” of the Palestinians, a claim that is historically false and a staple of anti-Israel propaganda.

On February 09, 2016, SJP members published an op-ed in the Daily Bruin falsely claiming that Israel treats its Palestinians as “second class citizens” and arguing that the genocidal chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is not in fact a call for genocide: “A phrase used by pro-Palestinian activists is that ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ which was referenced in last week’s article. Palestine is the name many use to refer to the geographic region that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The call for the entire region to be free is not a call for annihilation, but rather a call for everyone living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, be they Palestinian or Israeli, to live with the same freedoms that currently only the Jewish Israelis are granted.” Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority has declared that no Jews will be allowed in a free Palestine, while the Hamas charter clearly states that Jews will be exterminated.

During January 25-28, 2016, UCLA-SJP held its annual “Palestine Awareness Week” on campus. The week featured numerous anti-Israel speakers who voiced their support for the genocidal BDS movement against Israel including Max Blumenthal, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, Miko Peled, and Sa’ed Atshan. The event also featured the display of a mock “apartheid wall” plastered with anti-Israel propaganda. It was billed on Facebook as “a week full of FREE events to raise awareness about the Palestinian struggle for justice and the Palestinian people’s resistance against the Israeli occupation.”

During his address, Blumenthal stated that suicide bombing against Jews is justified by “the occupation” and described Palestinian terrorists as “young men who took up arms to fight their occupier.” He also promoted the BDS movement and compared Israel to the Islamic state, calling it “‘JSIL,’ the Jewish State in Israel and the Levant” and stating his belief that Israel collaborates with ISIS “to collapse Jewish life in the diaspora.” Miko Peled also defended terrorism, stating that it is “a struggle for freedom and justice and equality,” and describing terrorists as “very brave Palestinians who are engaged in fighting this brutal occupation.” He also declared that “any resistance, even armed resistance is legally and morally justifiable and perfectly understandable.” Peled also described Jews as analogous to Hitler, calling Jewish soldiers “young little Jewish gestapos,” and further accused Israel of “massive, violent, brutal oppression,” “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and of being “a colonialist, apartheid, racist system.” He also endorsed the BDS movement.

On December 09, 2015, a UCLA student who was also employed at a UCLA-affiliated medical center posted a vicious, hate-filled, anti-Semitic rant on social media which stated in part: “Fucking Jews. GTFOH with all your Zionist bullshit. Crazy ass fucking troglodyte albino monsters of cultural destruction. Fucking Jews. GTFOH with your whiny bullshit. Give the Palestinians back their land, go back to Poland or whatever freezer-state you’re from, and realize that faith does not constitute race.”

On November 06, 2015, UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies held a conference on “Palestine and Pedagogy” during which speakers compared Israel to the Nazis, praised anti-Israel terrorism and supported the BDS movement against Israel. UC Irvine Professor and Director of the UC Institute for Humanities Research Theo Goldberg accused Israel of practicing “eliminationist racism” such as used by the Nazis and claimed Israelis view Palestinians as  “vermin, cockroaches, rats, snakes…that take boots on the ground to get rid of,” and of possessing “a commitment to purification.” Goldberg’s libels also included the false accusation that Israelis make “snuff films” featuring the deaths of innocent Palestinians which go viral resulting in “an orgasm of feeling” for Israelis. UC Riverside Professor David Lloyd called Israel “a colonial Zionist project that has become a…nightmare, ever more rigid and oppressive.” He endorsed the right of Palestinians to take up arms against Israel and also promoted the BDS movement.

On October 29, 2015, UCLA-SJP created a blog post listing the names of 44 Palestinians who were allegedly “killed by Israelis and the Israeli Defense Forces since Oct. 1, the beginning of the third Intifada.”  According to the Amcha Initiative, the list “included numerous terrorists who had murdered or injured Jews.”

On July 8, 2015, UCLA-SJP reposted an article on their Facebook page mourning the one-year anniversary of the Israeli response to thousands of unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks on civilian areas – “Operation Protective Edge.” SJP parroted Hamas claims that this was a “brutal military attack.” Students for Justice in Palestine have supported the Hamas terrorists in all their aggressions against the Jews during the Gaza conflicts. Israel withdrew its military forces from Gaza in 2005 as a gesture of peace. SJP: “One year ago today, Israel launched a brutal military attack on the Palestinian population of the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip. More than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 551 children, and more than 10,000 people were seriously injured and hundreds of thousands were made homeless, forcibly displaced and trapped inside Gaza. Deliberate attacks on Palestinian civilians of this kind are part and parcel of an Israeli policy that aims to force Palestinians into submission and to thwart the Palestinian people’s exercise of its right to self-determination.” Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 after being invaded by Egyptian armies three times through the strip. Israel’s military precautions were taken because of 7,000 unprovoked Hamas rocket attacks following the withdrawal.

Another SJP article posted on this date regurgitates preposterous Hamas propaganda about the Gaza conflict: “The war in the summer of 2014 was not about rocket fire, Israeli security or Hamas: it was about subduing and disabling Gaza, something Israel has consistently been trying to do ever since it occupied the territory together with the West Bank nearly fifty years ago.” In fact, Israel’s original occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was the result of unprovoked aggressive wars by five Arab states in 1948 and 1967 and the refusal of the Arab states to sign a peace treaty.

On May 21, 2015, UCLA-SJP designated the week of May 21 – the anniversary of Israel’s creation – “Nakba Week.” Events included a teach-in on “Refugees and the Right of Return,” so-called, and a panel titled “Hear Us Speak: Stories on the Nakba and Exile.” The word “Nakba” means “catastrophe” in Arabic and is used by Hamas and its supporters to describe the creation of Israel and to promote the lie that Israel was created on Arab land. It was not. It was created by the UN on land that had belonged to the Turks, who are not Arabs, for 400 years previously. Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Jordan were created in the same way.

On May 16, 2015, UCLA SJP posted a statement on its Facebook page mourning “al-Nakba,” and insisted that it be thought of as “a present reality rather than a past event.” The statement read in part: “Many of us don’t realize that every Palestinian we meet, regardless of where they are from, has had their life profoundly shaped by the ethnic cleansing of Palestine on May 15, 1948. This event, known as al-Nakba (“the catastrophe”), was not just a one-time event but is ongoing, as Palestinians are continuously displaced by illegal Israeli settlements, and by devastating attacks. The Palestinian diaspora is faced with ongoing exile and statelessness, and by an erasure of their histories. It is our hope that these photos will help shed some light on how our fellow students at UCLA find the Nakba to be a present reality rather than a past event.” In April 2015, UCLA’s Center for Jewish Studies invited vehement anti-Israel professor Cornel West to speak on a panel honoring the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

In March 2015, when the Stop Jew Hatred on Campus campaign (an action of the David Horowitz Freedom Center) conducted a postering campaign depicting SJP as “#JewHaters,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block called the posters “another example of intolerance” and compared them to swastikas found on Jewish fraternity buildings.

On March 06, 2015, four UCLA professors were among the signatories of an op-ed appearing in the Daily Californian urging the administrators of the UC system to support the BDS Movement against Israel. Those professors are Nouri Gana, Sondra Hale, Chris Tilly, and Marie Kennedy.

In February 2015, members of UCLA’s student government repeated age-old anti-Semitic accusations of “divided loyalties” to question whether judicial board candidate Rachel Beyda’s status as a Jew would affect her objectivity in disciplinary decisions.

On February 24, 2015, UCLA-SJP held an event to support the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS campaign to strangle the Jewish state – “BDS in Action.”

In November 2014, UCLA’s student government passed a BDS resolution by an 8-2-2 vote.

On May 14, 2014, UCLA SJP brought Communist party spokesperson and BDS proponent Angela Davis to campus. She told the crowd that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is worse than the treatment of blacks under apartheid in South Africa. Davis was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the East German police state during the Cold War.

In May 2014, SJP introduced an initiative that would require candidates for student government to sign a pledge to not take trips to Israel sponsored by the pro-Israel organizations, AIPAC, ADL, or Hasbara Fellowships. Candidates were not asked to refuse trips from other organizations to other countries.

In January 2014, SJP held a speaker event with the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti. Barghouti opposed the existence of a Jewish state and Jewish rights to self-determination in Israel, and slandered Israel repeatedly.

Robert Zimmer, President, University of Chicago

Robert Zimmer has served as the president of the University of Chicago since 2006. As head of a school known for its recent statement affirming freedom of speech and criticizing “trigger warnings” in academia, Zimmer has resolutely failed to support these values by allowing his administration to condemn posters placed on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center which exposed the links between SJP and Hamas as “defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies,” while allowing SJP an open license to distribute Hamas propaganda.

Under Zimmer’s leadership, Chicago’s SJP chapter has become increasingly radicalized, hosting both an Israeli Apartheid Week and a “Nakba Week” to commemorate the founding of Israel as a “catastrophe” each year. Chicago SJP has disrupted pro-Israel events and speakers and threatened Palestinian human rights activist Bassam Eid who spoke on campus about the oppression of Palestinians by the theocratic terrorist regimes in the West Bank and Gaza. The University of Chicago is also home to the U. of C Divest coalition which supports the Hamas-supported and funded BDS movement against Israel and succeeded in passing a BDS resolution in Chicago’s student government. An amendment to the BDS resolution supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was proposed and rejected by that same body.

Supporting Evidence:

In June 2018, U. Chicago SJP posted an invitation on social media for students to protest Israeli Ambassador Rod Dermer. The post demonized and delegitimized Israel by calling for an end to the “to the Blockade and Killings in Gaza, and the Occupation of the West Bank and Jerusalem” and also endorsed the Palestinian “right of return” which would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.

In May 2018, U. Chicago SJP held its annual “Nakba Week.”  The “nakba” is a term used by Hamas and its supporters to characterize Israel’s founding as a “catastrophe.” Advertisements for the week stated “Commemorating 70 years since the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.”

On April 25, 2018, U. Chicago SJP held a lecture titled “Gaza: From the Nakba to the Great Return March.” The individuals who participated in the “Great Return March” at the Gaza border were not peaceful protestors, as they were portrayed to be by SJP, but were composed primarily of Hamas militants who were openly attacking Israel’s border.

On February 8, 2018, Students for Justice in Palestine held a protest of a pro-Israel event on campus which featured soldiers from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Signs at the protest promoted the Hamas-supported and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel and falsely labeled Jewish citizens of Israel “colonizers.”  These signs included: “Occupiers NOT welcome! End racist occupation,” “Colonizers get OUT of Palestine,” and “Free Palestine! Boycott, Divest, Sanction.”

On February 7, 2018, an op-ed was published in the student-run campus newspaper that demonized Israel and its supporters and urged students to join the effort to “send a message that the Israeli military and its propagandists are not welcome on this campus.” This goal that was so proudly lauded in the campus paper is directly in conflict with Chicago’s Statement on Principles of Free Expression which states “For members of the University community, as for the University itself, the proper response to ideas they find offensive, unwarranted and dangerous is not interference, obstruction, or suppression. It is, instead, to engage in robust counter-speech that challenges the merits of those ideas and exposes them for what they are.”

In December 2017, in response to President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, U. Chicago SJP posted flyers on campus declaring “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine.”

In November 2017, Chicago SJP held “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus, a hate-filled Hamas propaganda fest to demonize the Jewish state. Features of the week included the display of an “Apartheid Wall” which falsely accused Israel’s Jewish citizens of being colonizers of Arab Palestine and demonized Israel by accusing it of participating in apartheid. The week also included an event titled “Palestine: 101.” The event poster demonized Israel by falsely accusing it of “forc[ing] 300,000 Palestinians off their land in a violent act of ethnic cleansing.”

In June 2017, the U. Of C. Divest coalition proudly announced that they had delivered 300 signed letters to the Investment Committee of the U. Chicago Board of Trustees that demanded that the university divest from “Israeli apartheid”—thus promoting the Hamas supported and funded BDS movement against Israel. The coalition also demanded that the Board create a “Socially Responsible Investment Committee.”

On May 18, 2017, the Chicago Maroon published an op-ed by a Ph.D. student urging the campus administration to take action against David Horowitz and the David Horowitz Freedom Center for placing posters on campus that exposed the links between SJP and the anti-Israel terror group Hamas. The op-ed urged the administration to silence Horowitz, stating “In comments to The Maroon last year, David Horowitz said that the University should hold him personally responsible for the posters. So why haven’t they?  In an era when mosques are being burned down across the United States week after week and where students who wear hijabs are spat on and yelled at every day across the city, shouldn’t confronting anti-Muslim bigotry be a priority? If the University is serious about protecting its students and employees, shouldn’t it address the David Horowitz Freedom Center and demand the group cease and desist from its repeated attacks on University students and employees?”

The op-ed did not consider the view that the Freedom Center’s posters presented important facts and information and that universities should be open to a diversity of viewpoints. Or that in America we are governed by a Bill of Rights that guarantees our right to express opinions that terrorist sympathizers and activists might not agree with.

During May 2017, UC SJP again celebrated “Nakba Week” on campus. “Nakba” is the Arabic word for “catastrophe” which Hamas and its allies use to refer to the creation of Israel. Social media advertisements for the Week stated, “The 1948 expulsion of over 700,000 natives from Palestine is referred to by Palestinians as “al-Nakba” (“the catastrophe”). Understanding the Nakba as an ongoing process inherent to settler colonialism is crucial in understanding everything from the illegal occupation to the refugee crisis to the fight for equal rights within modern-day Israel.” But the only actual “settler colonialism” in the Middle East is the historic conquest of the region by the Arabs.

In April 2017, the U. of C. Divest coalition held an event to promote the BDS boycott against Israel and to encourage university trustees to divest from Israeli companies titled “BDS 101: #TelltheTrustees.” The coalition also created and posted a “fact sheet” on social media that promotes Hamas propaganda and misinformation about Israel. One claim states, “In Gaza, Palestinians live with the threat of regular Israeli bombing and ground invasions, which often have civilian casualty rates as high as 70% according to the UN. In the West Bank, Palestinians are constantly harassed and attacked at checkpoints by the Israeli military, who face practical immunity for killing innocent Palestinians.”

The Chicago Maroon, the independent campus newspaper, published a letter to the editor in April 2017 promoting the genocidal and Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement against Israel.  The letter repeated Hamas propaganda lies, asserting that Israel is “a system of rule fully comparable to South African Apartheid” and accused Israel of “steal[ing] Palestinian land, bomb[ing] Palestinian homes, kidnap[ping] Palestinian children, deny[ing] Palestinians access to resources, harass[ing] Palestinians at checkpoints, and imprison[ing] Palestinians without charge.”

On January 25, 2017, SJP at the University of Chicago hosted an event titled BDS 101: Trump and Palestinian Human Rights. The event promoted the Hamas-supported BDS movement against Israel.

In October 2016, University of Chicago spokesperson Mariell Sainvilus condemned posters placed on campus by the David Horowitz Freedom Center which exposed the links between SJP and Hamas as “defamatory and inconsistent with our values and policies.” The University did not similarly condemn the false Hamas libels against Israel placed on campus by SJP and its allies.

On June 02, 2016, U. Chicago-SJP shared a post on its Facebook page from the Boycott Tel Aviv Pride campaign urging people to boycott gay pride events in Tel Aviv because “any cultural event organized with money from the Israeli state should be boycotted… Gay tourism financial revenues do not only stimulate Israel’s economy, they are considered a direct investment in Israel’s war machine.” No other Middle Eastern state tolerates gays let alone features gay pride parades. The SJP leftists are willing to subordinate their support for gay rights to serve Hamas and its terror campaign to destroy the Jewish state.

During May 23-28, 2016, SJP held “Palestinian Nakba Week” on campus. The “Nakba” is an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe” which Hamas uses to refer to the day of Israel’s founding and to spread the lie that Israel was created on land belonging to the Arabs. Israel was created by the United Nations on land that had belonged to the Turks – who are not Arabs – for 400 years previously. Events during the week included a talk on “Disrupting Israeli Apartheid: Civil Disobedience in Palestine” and “Nakba 101: A discussion.”

On May 15, 2016, U. Chicago SJP posted a video purporting to show facts about the creation of Israel on its Facebook page, while drawing the conclusion that Israel has no right to exist. The video repeats the Hamas propaganda lie that Israel colonized Palestine, displacing its existing citizens. In truth, there was no nation of Palestine at the time of Israel’s creation, and the land on which Israel was created belonged to the Turks who are not Arabs for 400 years previously. The video claims that Israel “occupied the rest of historic Palestine during the Six Day War,” but fails to mention that Israel was the victim of a war of unprovoked aggression by five Arab dictatorships whose expressed goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” It also fails to mention that for fifty years the Arabs have refused to sign a peace with Israel, recognizing its right to exist, which was Israel’s condition for withdrawal of its forces.

On May 12, 2016, U. Chicago SJP disrupted a celebration of Israeli Independence Day on campus by holding a protest of the “Palestinian Nakba,” a term meaning “catastrophe” that is used by Hamas to deplore the creation of Israel, and spread the lie that Israel was created on Arab land. SJP’s description of the event read: “SJP at the University of Chicago today marked the 68th anniversary of the beginning of the Palestinian Nakba by protesting Israeli Independence Day, which was organized by a Zionist student group with most of the free goodies passed out donated by Stand With Us and Birthright. Under the Israeli Independence tent, American students discussed their ‘Birthright’ to Israel while on the other side Palestinian students shared their families’ stories of being forced from their homes and turned into stateless refugees.” In point of fact, virtually all of the Arab refugees fled of their own free will, while nearly one million stayed. Moreover, the Palestinian refugees are stateless because no Arab state will grant them citizenship, while the terrorist regimes in the West Bank and Gaza refuse to re-settle them.

Protest signs displayed by SJP parroted Hamas war propaganda. One read “Come enjoy ‘Israeli’ food and settler colonialism,” and “Displacing lives since ’48, there’s nothing here to celebrate,” while another condemned Israel for “Ethnic cleansing” and “Cultural appropriation” – lies designed to delegitimize and destroy the Jewish state.

On April 12, 2016, the student government at the University of Chicago passed a resolution calling on the University to divest from companies which aid or profit from Israel’s “violation of human rights and international law in Palestine.” The motion passed by a vote of 8-4 with 3 abstentions and was supported by 20 leftwing student organizations on campus and organized by a coalition calling itself U of C Divest.  During the debate over the measure, an amendment supporting the continued self-determination of the Jewish people and the existence of Israel was proposed and rejected.

On April 07, 2016, in preparation for a vote on a BDS resolution, the U of Chicago Divest Coalition published an open letter in The Chicago Maroon, a campus newspaper, labeling Israel an apartheid state and urging the university community to endorse the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS campaign to strangle the Jewish state. The letter – a tissue of lies – claimed: “Palestinians today face a comprehensive system of occupation, dispossession, and segregation—in short, apartheid. Their cities are bombed, resources stolen, children kidnapped, and movement restricted…  Our resolution, while targeted, supports the full demands of the BDS call: an end to the occupation, equality for all people in Palestine/Israel, and the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.”

On March 28, 2016, the U of C Divest coalition held a large rally on campus featuring a 70 foot Palestinian flag with students displaying banners and chanting propaganda slogans to support the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS movement. The chants included: “Brick by brick, wall by wall, Israeli apartheid has to fall,” “Free free Palestine, viva viva Palestina,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Israeli apartheid’s got to go.” Banners displayed on campus read: “End Apartheid,” “Free Palestine,” and “Divest Now.” Israel is not only the most tolerant society in the Middle East. It is the only tolerant society in the Middle East.

On February 18, 2016, angry protestors interrupted and threatened a Palestinian human rights activist, Bassam Eid, who came to speak on U. Chicago’s campus about the oppression of Palestinians by the theocratic terrorist regimes in the West Bank and Gaza. SJP activists were upset that Eid’s remarks were critical of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and failed to condemn Israel for its alleged “occupation” of Palestine. In the video of Eid’s speech a young man can be seen screaming in Arabic: “I’m going to destroy this place!” and “I’m going to kill this motherf*****!” and “Wait until you go to your car!” Eid later declared himself to be “terrified” by the ordeal.

On October 29, 2015, UC-SJP hosted BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti for a speech on “BDS and the Ethical Obligation to End Complicity in Oppression.” During his address, Barghouti labeled Israel “a regime of oppression” and a “savage unrepairable society” that conducts “ethnic cleansing.” Barghouti also praised terrorism against Israel’s Jews, stating that “resistance” is a legitimate response to “the violence of an oppressive system.” Several UC organizations and departments co-sponsored Barghouti’s address including the Global Voices Program – University of Chicago International House, the Pozen Center for Human Rights, the Department of Political Science, and the Department of International Studies.

On October 28, 2015, UC-SJP held a panel titled “Jerusalem in Crisis: Insider Perspectives on the Violence in Palestine-Israel” as part of the “UChicago Israeli Apartheid Week.” Speakers at the event were two graduate student members of SJP. One of the speakers praised anti-Israel terrorism, stating: “Palestinian violent resistance against the violent Israeli military is always justified; it is the equivalent of biting the hand that is trying to choke you to death.”

On October 14, 2015, U. Chicago SJP held a Palestinian Day of Action, in concurrence with an international Day of Action to promote the Hamas-inspired and funded BDS campaign against Israel. The event included plastering the campus with posters falsely accusing the Israeli military of murdering Palestinian children.

On February 27, 2015, Anti-Semitic comments threatening the genocide of the Jews were posted on the social media site Yik Yak in the University of Chicago area. Some of the comments attacked individual students, while others threatened the Jewish people as a whole. One comment read, “Gas them, burn them and dismantle their power structure. Humanity cannot progress with the parasitic Jew.” This is Nazism, and all too characteristic of SJP propaganda.

Renu Khator, President, University of Houston

Renu Khator ascended to the presidency of the University of Houston in 2008. She also serves as the chancellor of the four-campus University of Houston System. During her tenure as UH president, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine has become increasingly radicalized and outspoken about its hatred of Jews, composed of a membership who flagrantly praise Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on social media, disseminate Hamas propaganda, defend Hamas’s recent terrorist attacks on Israel’s borders and chant the genocidal slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free,” a Hamas call to eliminate the entirety of Israel as a Jewish state, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. UH SJP and MSA co-hosted an event featuring Sheikh Omar Suleiman who has publicly supported a “3^rd Intifada” and SJP has also hosted anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi who promotes the Hamas-backed BDS movement against Israel, while disrupting speeches by pro-Israel author David Horowitz and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. Additionally, numerous articles and opinion pieces published in the campus paper, The Daily Cougar, promoted the false Hamas propaganda claim that Israel’s defense of its Gaza border against Hamas’s attempts to attack it under cover of the “Great Return March” constituted a “massacre.”

UH SJP’s increasing radicalism and allegiance to Hamas was rewarded by SJP National which decided to hold their 2017 National Conference at the University. This conference is a highly restricted event not open to the public or media that spreads hatred of the Jews and teaches Hamas propaganda techniques to SJP chapters who attend from across America. President Khator made no objection to the choice of her university as a venue for SJP’s terror-promoting symposium and has not attempted to contain SJP’s malevolent rhetoric and actions in any way.

Supporting evidence:

On May 22, 2018, SJP protestors at the University of Houston interrupted a speech by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley with anti-Israel chants and shouts that she is responsible for genocide. Students chanted, “Nikki, Nikki can’t you see? You are on a killing spree” and “Haley, Haley you can’t hide, you sign off on genocide.” The SJP members also chanted, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified,” a call to support anti-Israel terrorism, and “Killing children is a crime, free, free Palestine,” an accusation of blood libel against Israel. The protestors were escorted outside but were not otherwise disciplined.

On May 15, 2018, SJP activists from the University of Houston placed large protest signs stating “Free Palestine” and “Hands off Jerusalem” on bridges crossing U.S. Highway 59, which takes travelers through Houston. When asked by the media about the impetus for the signs, SJP member Mohammad Abdel-Aziz stated:  “Tuesday was the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, which translates to ‘catastrophe” …70 years ago in 1948, over 750,000 Palestinians were pushed out of their home, more than 500 villages were destroyed, including my hometown, Saffuriyya.” Hamas and other groups seeking the destruction of Israel use the term “Nakba” to refer to Israel’s founding.

In April 2018, the University of Houston’s campus paper, The Daily Cougar, published an opinion piece by a student history major who characterized Israel’s defense against Palestinian protestors who were marching along the Gaza border of Israel as part of a “Great Return March” as a “massacre.” In fact, the marchers at the Gaza border were composed primarily of Hamas militants who are openly attacking Israel’s border.  The author also stated that “In 1948, between 750,000 to one million Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by the Israeli military in what has been called al-Nakba — the catastrophe,” conveniently leaving out that these refugees left voluntarily, assuming that they would easily be able to return after five neighboring Arab countries attacked Israel on the day of its founding, intending to destroy the nascent Jewish state. Instead, Israel triumphed in its War of Independence.

On November 30, 2017, UH SJP together with the campus Palestine American Cultural Center hosted an event featuring Ilan Pappé who spoke on the “Centennial of the Balfour Declaration.” Pappé has authored several books which demonize Israel including “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” and “The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories.” He currently serves as the Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. During his address, Pappé expressed support for the genocidal BDS movement against Israel and delegitimized Israel by claiming that the Jewish settlers “regard[ed] themselves as indigenous” and attempted to “de-indigenize so to speak the native population.” He also labeled Zionism a “racist” ideology.

On March 30, 2018, UH SJP shared a post on social media characterizing the “Great Return March,” as resulting in:

6 Martyrs and more than 550 injuries with different injuries and inhaling tear gas.

The martyrs are:
1- Mohammed kamal Al-Najjar
2- Waheed Nasrallah Abu Sammour
3- Mahmoud Abu Mamar
4- Mohammed Abu Mamar
5-Ahmad Ibrahim Owda
6- Jehad Fareena

#GreatReturnMarch

In fact, the “Great Return March” was a terrorist attack by Hamas militant on Israel’s Gaza border. Hamas has openly stated that it will pay large sums to the families of “martyrs” and those who are injured in the attacks.

On November 2, 2017, a speech by conservative author David Horowitz on campus was interrupted for several minutes by protestors who chanted “Zionists off our campus” and “Free, Free, Free Palestine.” The protestors eventually left the room but continued to chant outside. One protester also shouted, “F*** Zionists, F*** all you Zionists.”

In October 2017, U. Houston SJP hosted the 2017 SJP National Conference—a highly secretive event that spreads hatred of Israel and teaches Hamas propaganda tactics to SJP members from campuses across the nation—on their campus. SJP National is part of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist network and receives funding from Hamas through an intermediary Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine.

One speaker at the conference, well-known anti-Israel poet Remi Kenazi, called for the “right of return” for Palestinians, a policy that would have the practical effect of destroying the state of Israel. Kanazi also demonized and delegitimized Israel, stating: “It’s not just the occupation, stupid. It’s the right of return, a calling for all Palestinians….It’s the transformation from a racist, exclusionist, supremacist state to a nation for all of its citizens…Israel you’re a proxy for empire…yes, your’e singled out..Did I hurt your feelings? You are either with oppression or against it….your system of oppression is coming to an end.”

A number of organizers and panelists for the National SJP (NSJP) conference have been discovered by the Canary Mission an organization dedicated to exposing hatred, to have shared genocidal, anti-Semitic, and pro-Nazi comments on social media. These include Samer Alhato, an NSJP Workshop Leader, who has shared “@BarackObama shut up about gay marriage and go kill all the Jews” and “I support Hamas and I send then money every month.” NSJP Organizer and Panelist Mohammed Nabulsi has openly endorsed terrorism and Hamas, stating “[W]e must look to and support Palestinian resistance groups and civil organizations…such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad.” And NSJP Organizer Brant Roberts has stated “F**k that sh*t! I support what the PFLP & PLO have done in their cause to free the Palestinians.” Similarly, NSJP Organizer Sarah Abdulmooti shared “Israel really needs to die and I pray it happens in my lifetime.”

During an “Israel Apartheid Week 2017” that was hosted on campus in March, Students for Justice in Palestine erected a mock “Israeli Apartheid Wall” plastered with Hamas propaganda denying the legitimacy of the Jewish state. One panel of the wall contained the slogan, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” a call for the total destruction of Israel—which lies between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This is the same goal which Hamas endorses in its charter. Another panel of the wall contains an image of the series of Hamas propaganda maps purporting to show the Jewish colonization of Arab Palestine, a nation that has never existed. A third panel states, “If you want to find a safe place in Gaza, do not stand near a child,” implying that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian children with its weapons. In fact it is Hamas that places its rocket launchers in civilian areas and uses Palestinian children as human shields for its terrorist activities. A fourth panel accuses Israel of targeting mosques, schools, and slums in an effort to kill civilians and declares “It is not war, it is murder.”  These declarations are Hamas propaganda lies. In fact, Hamas takes pains to use civilian dwellings and areas to launch rocket fire against Israel so that when Israel retaliates, they can point to the resulting civilian casualties as evidence of Israel’s inhumanity.

An event co-hosted by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and SJP during Israeli Apartheid Week 2017 featured UH African-American Studies Chair and Communist Party member Dr. Gerald Horne who spoke on “The Black Radical Tradition and Palestine.” Horne endorsed the genocidal and Hamas-promoted and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, stating “Just as we enlist more black organizations into the BDS movement, boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement…it would…give a direct boost to BDS if we had the Palestinian forces and their allies internationally speak out more on police terrorism.” When a group of Zionist students attempted to speak during the question-and-answer session, and to students outside the lecture hall, pro-Palestinian students surrounded them and chanted slogans such as “free, free, Palestine, occupation is a crime!” until they were forced to leave and abandon the attempt at dialogue. An article about the event proudly declared that “Zionists were driven away.”

In March 2017, UH SJP released a statement purportedly opposing anti-Semitism which in fact demonstrated several forms of anti-Semitism including denying Jews self-determination and delegitimizing the Jewish state. The statement declared, “We are committed to building a world that values justice and equality, not oppression and apartheid. That commitment also requires us to reject the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism: we oppose Zionism and Israel’s discriminatory policies, and we condemn anti-Semitism.”

During March 2017, UH SJP hosted “BDS 101,” an event dedicated to promoting the genocidal BDS movement against Israel.

In January 2017, UH SJP shared a video from Jewish Voice for Peace on its Facebook page on “What is Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” that purports to show a timeline of Israel’s occupation of Palestine which includes “ethnic cleansing” of 750,000 Palestinians and “conquest, destruction and expulsion which has continued to the present day.” It also accuses Israel of a “brutal military occupation” and a system of “racial discrimination” that amounts to “apartheid.”

In February 2016, UH SJP hosted the anti-Israel hatefest “Israeli Apartheid Week” on campus. Advertisements for the events endorsed the genocidal and Hamas-funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. The event also featured an event with BDS-supporting poet Remi Kanazi.

In March 2015, UH SJP co-hosted an event with BDS Houston featuring anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi. During the event, Kanazi promoted the Hamas-funded BDS movement against Israel, stating “F—k Zionists, Boycott Israel,” and claimed that Israel is carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinians.

In February 2015, UH SJP announced that they were launching a campaign to push for the passage of a BDS resolution against Israel on their campus. The BDS movement is supported financially and organizationally by Hamas.

UH SJP has shared several Facebook posts in support of convicted anti-Israel terrorist Rasmeah Odeh who was convicted by an Israeli military court in 1970 for her involvement in two fatal terrorist bombings.

In August 2014, UH SJP and MSA co-hosted an event featuring Sheikh Omar Suleiman who has publicly supported a “3^rd Intifada” to destroy Israel and has spread Hamas propaganda lies and blood libels about the Jewish state.

The Canary Mission, an organization dedicated to identifying Jew hatred at colleges and universities, found that 13 individuals who are either attending or are recent graduates of the University of Houston posted dozens of times on social media expressing support and praise for Hitler, mocking the Holocaust, threatening violence against Jews, and expressing Jew hatred. Several of these individuals were members of SJP or MSA at the University of Houston, while others were loosely affiliated with these chapters.

These tweets and social media postings included:

“Yahoodis [Jews] are just so disgusting.”

“Sooner of later the Yahood [Jews] wont exist.”

“FalasteenibladnawilYahoodiklabna [Palestine is our country and the Jews are our dog].”

“Palestine will be the 2nd place of the Holocaust for the Yahood [Jews].”

“Hitler loved Arabs specifically Palestinians, he even said ‘we need to get the Jews out of Palestine they don’t belong there’”

“Yall don’t understand I wanna beat a zionist bitch up so bad.”

“A Jewish rabbi has admitted to using human child meat as a filler in McDonalds meat. They allegedly drug teens and kill them, for their meat.” Radwan then doubled down, adding: “THE TRUTH ABOUT MCDONALDS & MISSING CHILDREN.”

“Baba: Jews have a big nose because breathing air is free Lmfaoooo”

“F**K THE JEWS F**K EM ALL KILL ALL THE JEWS ATTA BOY HITLER.”

“Teacher: hitler tried to exterminate the Jewish people Me: I wish he did Kid next to me: wtf is wrong with you… .”

“I am gonna throw rocks at yahood [Jews] this summer and no one is stopping me.”

“Holy crap man ma bedi a2oolha bas Hitler lazem a5ad kel el yahood [Hitler should have killed them all] when he had the chance shuklab [that dog].”

“‘@DictatorHitler: Versace Versace f**k bitches bake Jews that’s the life of a Nazi’”.