Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
Overview
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is the primary student organization engaging in anti-Israel activism on American campuses.
The organization describes itself on its website as against racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, classism, bigotry, and anti-Semitism. The group's focus however is almost entirely on it's anti-Israel campaigns, including Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolutions, Israel-Apartheid initiatives, drives comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, mock check-points, "die-ins" as well asrallies and protests.
SJP is supported by American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an organization that has a number of board members who are former employees of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a group convicted of funneling funds to the terrorist organization Hamas.
Campus disruption and violent incidents
SJP members frequently intimidate and harass pro-Israel supporters. Members have been responsible for physically assaulting Jewish students, vandalizing communal property and violently disrupting pro Israel speakers and events. Protests organized by SJP chapters regularly include hate-speech and chants such as "From the River to the Sea Palestine will be Free" - calling for the destruction of the Jewish State.
San Francisco State University, December 2013: Mohammad Hammad, president of San Francisco State University’s General Union of Palestinian Students—the chapter kept its original name from 1973—posted a picture of himself wielding a knife on his Tumblr page. “I seriously cannot get over how much I love this blade,” he wrote in the caption. “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.” According to CBS News, Hammad has come under investigation by anti-terrorism officials and the FBI.
UC Berkeley, March 2010: Husam Zakharia, while serving as president of the SJP chapter on campus, rammed a female pro-Israel student activist with a shopping cart. She was holding a sign reading “Israel Wants Peace.”
Temple University, August 2014: A Jewish student was hit in the face by someone who was with a group of students, many of whom were confirmed as SJP members. Two witnesses heard members of SJP call him a “kike” after the attack. “Before this, I just thought Students for Justice in Palestine was crazy”, the victim said after the incident, “but I didn’t know it would lead to violence.”
Loyola University, September 2014: Members of SJP at Loyola University Chicago verbally assaulted Jewish students affiliated with Hillel who were staffing a table with literature for a Birthright Israel trip. SJP members reportedly surrounded the table, blocking the movement of the Hillel students and preventing others from approaching. One student witness told The College Fix, a news website that covers campus issues, that SJP members ambushed the Jewish students.
Northeastern University, 2013: The entire SJP was suspended from campus for the school year for intimidating students on campus. In 2011 the chapter chose to interrupt an on-campus Holocaust remembrance event by whipping out anti-Israel signs and yelling insults at the audience and speakers before storming out.
Northeastern University, 2013: The entire SJP was suspended from campus for the school year for intimidating students on campus. In 2011 the chapter chose to interrupt an on-campus Holocaust remembrance event by whipping out anti-Israel signs and yelling insults at the audience and speakers before storming out.
Florida Atlantic University, April 2012: SJP members postedeviction notices on the dorm room doors of 200 students, most of them Jewish. The tactic has been repeated at various campuses. As one NYU student said, “this made me feel targeted and unsafe in my own dorm room and I know others feel exactly the same as myself.”
SJP is rapidly creating a hostile and unsafe environment on US campuses for all who do not share their radical anti-Israel views. For this reason, they have even been labeled by some as “Hamas on Campus.”
SJP is rapidly creating a hostile and unsafe environment on US campuses for all who do not share their radical anti-Israel views. For this reason, they have even been labeled by some as “Hamas on Campus.”
In August, 2014, a document was leaked to the public entitled"Declaration of Principles and Strategies of Binghamton University Students for Justice in Palestine." It outlined the tactics and organizational details for the Binghamton University branch of SJP, and gave insight into the guiding principals of SJP. The guide ensures that the SJP takes no stance on the "one state vs. two state solution", so as not to alienate any possible allies. The document also shuts down any possibility of dialogue with pro- Israel students, as it "prohibit (s) the leadership of SJP from engaging in any form of official collaboration, cooperation, or event co-sponsorship with the following student organizations and groups, due to their unyielding support for the Apartheid State of Israel." The article then lists groups such as Hillel, CAMERA and AEPi, and clarifies that this includes collaborations on publications, discussions, or events. Most worryingly, it gives it's members directives on how to disrupt any pro-Israel activity with the maximum impact while staying "within the bounds of what is not widely considered to be legally reprehensible." In other words, ruining the free speech of the pro-Israel camp while avoiding being arrested. Tactics mentioned include flyering and writing articles, political theater, non-violent disruption of speakers and essentially any other tactic that "doesn't include violence."
Radical Speakers
SJP chapters regularly host speakers who engage in language considered anti-Semitic by the U.S. State Department. Chapter events routinely include individuals andorganizations who are linked to terrorist activity and call for violence against Jews.
Ali Abunimah: Abunimah rejects a two-state solution and regularly employs radical, inflammatory rhetoric. In August 2014, Abunimah was so appalled by a campaign for the UN to recognize Judaism’s holiest day (alongside 10 other holidays already recognized) that he tweeted, “Making Yom Kippur a UN holiday to honor the genocidal ‘state’ of Israel would be sure way to increase global anti-Jewish sentiment.”
Max Blumenthal: Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz called Blumenthal “an extremist bigot whose greatest appeal is to anti-Semites…. No decent person should ever support the views expressed by Max Blumenthal.” Blumenthal's recently published book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel was dubbed “The Israel Hater’s Handbook” and described as worthy of the “Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club” by Eric Alterman of progressive magazine The Nation.
Amir Abdel Malik Ali: An Imam who calls repeatedly for jihad and the destruction of Israel. In a 2006 speech at UC Irvine during “Israel Apartheid Week,” he said of Israel, “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered. We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.” In an equally chilling statement in 2010, Malik Ali asserted his support for terrorism, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.
Khader Adnan: A former member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) headlined an SJP-sponsored event at American University. Adnan is an open supporter of suicide bombings and has accused the Palestinian Authority of collaborating with Israel.
Amir Abdel Malik Ali: An Imam who calls repeatedly for jihad and the destruction of Israel. In a 2006 speech at UC Irvine during “Israel Apartheid Week,” he said of Israel, “The truth of the matter is your days are numbered. We will fight you. We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious.” In an equally chilling statement in 2010, Malik Ali asserted his support for terrorism, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad.
Khader Adnan: A former member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) headlined an SJP-sponsored event at American University. Adnan is an open supporter of suicide bombings and has accused the Palestinian Authority of collaborating with Israel.
The SJP chapter of University of South Florida opened the 2014 school year by scheduling an event titled “The Hidden Genocide: The Story of Palestine.” The keynote speaker was Monzer Taleb, who has come under investigation by the U.S. government for funneling funds to Hamas.
Background
SJP is an outgrowth of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), originally founded in Egypt in the 1950s, and established at San Francisco State University in 1973.
In 2001, after graduating from San Francisco State, UC Berkeley graduate student—now professor—Hatem Bazian co-founded his own chapter of GUPS called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) refashioned in his own image.
As a member of the Muslim Students Association (MSA), Bazian grew to believe that the organization's open identification as a Muslim entity hampered its efforts to inspire widespread student interest and involvement. Thus in 2001 he co-founded SJP to shed the explicit Islamic colors of the MSA and add a degree of separation from the Muslim Brotherhood. This new group was intended to appear as a secular social justice movement whose agenda however still aligned with that of the Brotherhood.
אין תגובות:
הוסף רשומת תגובה