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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Lee Kaplan</title>
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		<title>Backgrounder: The Students for Justice in Palestine</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lee-kaplan/backgrounder-the-students-for-justice-in-palestine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=backgrounder-the-students-for-justice-in-palestine</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 17 Jul 2014 04:35:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lee Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Berkeley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SJP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[students for justice in Palestine]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=236263</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Making Jew-hate fashionable on campuses.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sjp.png"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236463" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sjp.png" alt="sjp" width="228" height="195" /></a>The Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) today exists as a consortium of campus “clubs” throughout the American and Canadian college systems which work to oppose the existence of Israel and to promote Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Jewish state. There are at least 80 chapters of these clubs on campuses throughout the US and Canada. The SJP goes under other assorted names on some campuses. Names such as Palestine Solidarity Committee or Students for Palestinian Equal Rights are also common.  In Canada, some SJP chapters have adopted the name Students Against Israeli Apartheid (SAIA), or Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), while others use similar sounding names but advocate for the Palestinian “revolution”or resistance against the Israeli and US governments when they are perceived as allies together against “Palestinian” irredentist goals. The SJP could be said to operate on the campuses in a classic Rico Statute style of infiltration as a method of promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement throughout the USA and Canada via a “grass roots movement.”</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed1.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-236422" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed1.jpg" alt="unnamed" width="225" height="224" /></a>The SJP actually grew on these campuses, thanks to Hatem Bazian, out of another organization, the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) that was first founded on the San Francisco State University campus in 1973. The GUPS is actually an old pro-terrorist student organization officially begun in Egypt in 1959. It claimed at one point to have had as many as 150 chapters across Europe and the Middle East, and currently has a chapter in Gaza. Early GUPS members or leaders have included Yasser Arafat, Hanan Ashwari, Faisal Husseini and Saeb Erekat among several other well-known Palestinian politicians, writers, journalists and militants who ultimately were involved in terrorism or worldwide political influence from the Middle East. The GUPS is in existence today at San Francisco State University where it wields considerable political influence and has been accused of promoting an atmosphere of anti-Semitism on the Bay Area campus. The GUPS at SFSU could be said to be another differently named affiliate of the SJP, even though it predates the founding of the SJP.</p>
<div id="attachment_236424" style="width: 110px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed11.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236424 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed11.jpg" alt="unnamed1" width="100" height="141" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Hatem Bazian</p></div>
<p>The actual campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine was started at UC Berkeley in the year 2000 by a former undergraduate GUPS member at SFSU named Hatem Bazian, who founded the first UC Berkeley chapter of the GUPS, retitled Students for Justice in Palestine, as he pursued his graduate studies toward a PhD. Bazian was head of the Muslim Students Association on the UC Berkeley campus at the time that openly supports Hamas, and he called for an Intifada in America at one rally, though he claimed he was speaking only figuratively. Nevertheless, he <a href="http://www.academia.org/berkeley-intifada/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">has</span><span style="color: #1e497d;"> </span><span style="color: #0170c0;">praised</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> terrorist groups</span></a> and <a href="http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/hatem-bazian/"><span style="color: #0170c0;">accused Jews </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">of running the University</span></a>.</p>
<div id="attachment_236425" style="width: 165px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed2.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236425" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed2.jpg" alt="Jess Ghannam" width="155" height="196" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Jess Ghannam</p></div>
<p>Both the SFSU and Berkeley campus organizations received support and guidance from Prof. Jess Ghannam, a Professor of Psychiatry at UC Medical Center in San Francisco. Ghannam is a leader of the American Arab-Anti-Discrimination Committee (<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6173"><span style="color: #0433ff;">ADC</span></a>) that he helped to co-found. Ghannam also co-founded <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/alawdaprof.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Al Awda, </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">the Palestine Right to Return Coalition</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> </span></a> which also played roles in organizing the GUPS and SJP and continues to provide logisitical support to the SJP. Al Awda advocates for the unconditional return of all Arabs inside Israel whose ancestors allegedly lost property there in 1948 and endorses violence to do so. Ghannam , in association with the ADC, helped to found the International Solidarity Movement (<a href="http://www.stoptheism.com/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">ISM</span></a>) in Northern California also, which SJP is an integral part of, recruiting Arab students and American radicals to go to the Occupied Territories in the Middle East to act as human shields for Palestinian terrorist groups. Ghannam worked his way onto the faculty at SFSU as an adjunct professor of Ethnic Studies where he promoted the Palestinian narrative. The ADC provided the early pro-revolutionary reading material for potential ISM volunteers to read during “training” and the SJP helped recruit volunteers and engage in anti-Israel propaganda on campus at Berkeley. Early demonstrations on both campuses, according to the University of California Berkeley campus police department, entailed busloads of demonstrators being brought from the two campuses  to each other to increase their numbers at demonstrations.</p>
<div id="attachment_236444" style="width: 227px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed3.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236444" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed3.jpg" alt="unnamed3" width="217" height="150" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Manzar Foroohar</p></div>
<p>Ghannam was also a co-founding member of the Palestinian Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel along with <a href="http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/hist_foroohar.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Professor Manzar Foroohar</span></a> of <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/12755"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Cal Poly</span></a> San Luis Obispo <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2924/manzar-foroohar-california-faculty-association"><span style="color: #0433ff;">to promote divestment in colleges and libraries worldwide.</span></a><span style="color: #0433ff;"> </span>Foroohar  is a frequent <span style="color: #0433ff;">guest </span>of SJP <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/12755"><span style="color: #0433ff;">clubs</span></a> on other campuses as a speaker or to bring roadshows to attack Israel that are dubbed as “conferences”</p>
<p>It should be noted that the Muslim Students Association was also operating on American college campuses longer than the GUPS, but today also interchanges its members with SJP on the campuses as occurred with Hatem Bazian’s graduate activities.  The principal difference is that MSA students are primarily solely Muslim in their outlook and reasons for opposing Israel, whereas the earlier SJP/ISM members were mostly Christian  Arabs who were Marxist in outlook. mostly pan-Arabists who rejected a Jewish presence in the Middle East for nationalistic reasons. Being pro-Marxist, they followed Stalin’s edict that “Zionism is racism” and found unity with their Muslim counterparts since both factions had an abiding hatred of Jews and Israel. A key difference is that being Marxists, the ISM could also recruit any disaffected Jews who were Marxist in their outlooks to oppose Israel to convince audiences that the SJP is not really anti-Semitic, just critical of Israel.  This method was actually in use already by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) which claims to want a secular democratic state dominated by Arabs in place of Israel which will be communist. Today, to expand their ranks, the SJP is a conglomeration of ISM activist types, former or secular Jews, mostly Muslim Arabs, but some Christians and radically socialist communists. The MSA still operates separately but works in a close alliance with the SJP for demonstrations and anti-Israel activities on campuses, at times completely interchangeably.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed5.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-236445" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed5.jpg" alt="unnamed5" width="170" height="248" /></a>At UC Berkeley, a large number of SJP members were Mexican-American radicals from La Raza with affiliations to La Voz De Aztlan. This group is highly anti-Semitic and believes the Western United States should be given back to Mexico <a href="http://archive.adl.org/learn/aztlan/anti_sz.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">or even a separate nation, </span><span style="color: #0170c0;">Aztlan</span></a>, be made from it. These people like to call themselves America’s Palestinians. According to interviews with intelligence officers in the UC Berkeley campus and city police, keffiyah-clad demonstrators on the UC Berkeley campus are in many cases Chicanos posing as Palestinians.</p>
<p>Several events were staged on campus by the SJP at UC Berkeley, such as trying to <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/02/my-disrupted-talk-at-uc-berkeley"><span style="color: #0433ff;">disrupt </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">a speech</span></a> given by Middle East Scholar Daniel Pipes that was led by Ehud Appel, former SJP leader, and a violent demonstration to stop Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from speaking nearby off campus at a private theater that conjoined SJP with several off-campus anti-Israel organizations. Additional coordination between SJP chapters elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada prevented Netanyahu from speaking at those venues also.</p>
<div id="attachment_236446" style="width: 202px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed6.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236446" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed6.jpg" alt="Abdul Malik Ali" width="192" height="192" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Abdul Malik Ali</p></div>
<p>The GUPS at SFSU also came to power on the coattails of another ethnic radical group, the Black Panthers, that through months of  rioting on the campus forced the University to create an <a href="http://docstalk.blogspot.com/2013/08/identity-politics-pursuit-of-social.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ethnic Studies Department</span></a> that was more attuned to activism than academia. The Palestinian movement on the SFSU campus became a part of the Ethnic Studies Department passing themselves off as victims of white oppression. A Black Muslim leader, Abdul Malik Ali, former student body president at SFSU and virulently anti-Semitic, who lectures frequently at SJP functions on California campuses, led that movement at SFSU. The GUPS eventually took over control of the Student Union Building and wielded the most influence on campus, even attacking Jewish students at a pro-Israel rally requiring the San Francisco city police to be brought in from off campus to escort the Jewish students safely off campus. Malik Ali is a frequent guest lecturer of SJP chapters on California campuses where <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35204"><span style="color: #0433ff;">he rails against the Jews</span></a>.</p>
<p>The ISM relies on revolutionary tactics and in particular those used by <a href="http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1060898.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Lech Walesa</span></a> and his Solidarity Movement in Poland as well as by anti-French revolutionaries in Algeria. These tactics include creating cells sometimes of various different names in an “octopus” fashion. If one arm of the octopus is cut off by the government or shown to be doing something illegal, the other arms can claim that cell does not speak for them and can continue on. The myriad chapters of the SJP across the US are many of the arms of the octopus.</p>
<p>Hatem Bazian, after leaving SFSU as an undergrad, started the UC Berkeley SJP chapter in year 2000 while pursuing his PhD at UC Berkeley. He later became a lecturer in the Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) at the Berkeley campus.  CMES was originally set up by the Saudis through Prince Bandar and promoted the Palestinian narrative. A Jewish philanthropist, Sanford Diller, did not like the one-sided approach of the department and donated $5 million dollars to set up a Jewish Studies department at CMES but the pro-Saudi head of the department, an Arab professor, took the money and hired and promoted only anti-Zionist Jews to run it. Today many of these anti-Zionist Jews have clear connections to Israel and/or Judaism (one, Daniel Boyarin is a Talmudic scholar; another, <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20UC%20Berkeley%20-%20Rutie%20Adler%20-%20urges%20boycott.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Rutie Adler</span></a><span style="color: #0433ff;">,</span> a Hebrew instructor; another, <a href="http://www.isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Anne%20Horowitz%20-%20Disloyalty%20Pledge.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Oren Yfchatel</span></a>, a visiting professor from Israel), so all provide a point of view that enables the SJP to increase its “Jewish” ranks among the membership on campus.  <a href="http://isracampus.org.il/third%20level%20pages/Editorial%20-%20Lee%20Kaplan%20-%20Daniel%20Boyarin.htm"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Daniel Boyarin</span></a> led a demonstration against Ehud Barak speaking on campus which had many SJP members involved since he served as their advisor once , even defending an Arab professor who told his students the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Printable.aspx?ArtId=16885"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion</span></a> were real.</p>
<div id="attachment_236460" style="width: 220px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamedb.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236460" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamedb.jpg" alt="Tom Pessah" width="210" height="157" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Tom Pessah</p></div>
<p>SJP Jewish student leaders have included Ehud Appel, Tom Pessah, Emiliano Huet-Vaughan and Yaman Salahi. Pessah appears to be a professional student from Israel who is very active with the SJP and works with Bazian frequently even to this day. He never graduates and coordinates SJP activities as “proof” the SJP are not anti-Semitic.  Huet-Vaughan, an American whose mother was a well-known socialist radical, has been under scrutiny by law enforcement because he worked as a recruiter and trainer for the ISM in Israel, then left for the London School of Economics where his function was to get that school to boycott and divest from Israel. Once that was accomplished, he transferred to UC Berkeley and was instrumental in getting the student body government there to divest from Israel too. Arab student activists also populated the SJP at Berkeley such as Shireen Qaru who would go to the occupied territories every summer and receive training to conduct anti-Israel propaganda on campus. Salahi and Qaru have since graduated to practicing law but still keep contact with Berkeley SJP.</p>
<div id="attachment_236462" style="width: 140px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamedc.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236462 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamedc.jpg" alt="unnamedc" width="130" height="168" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Shireen Qaru</p></div>
<p>SJP was responsible for staging continuous demonstrations against Israel, accusing the Jewish state of racism and genocide on Sproul Plaza in the center of campus with student activists frequently brought in from other local campuses. The PR firm Hill and Knowlton, which did PR for Saudi Arabia in Washington, D.C. by attacking Jewish “settlements” in the West Bank and Gaza, lent aid from its San Francisco office by providing large displays and professional staff to promote the events.</p>
<p>The SJP at UC Berkeley at first garnered major media attention through two actions:  It co-sponsored with other pro-Palestinian groups like Al Awda the first <a href="https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2002/02/10/1159281.php"><span style="color: #0433ff;">National Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM)</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">conference </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">ever held in the USA on the SF Bay campus February 16-18, 2002</span></a>. The purpose of the event was to train attendees in how to boycott Israel and arrange protests on their respective campuses against the Jewish state. The event modeled its purpose in line with the first conference in Durban, South Africa against racism held by the UN which promoted the idea that Israel was an apartheid state along the lines of South Africa in the 1980’s and should be boycotted because “Zionism is racism.” Regarding terrorism, the organizers stated after adopting a resolution expressing  an unreserved support for the Intifada that &#8220;We, the national student movement for solidarity with Palestine, declare our solidarity with the popular resistance to Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid,&#8221; then, on the issue of Palestinian violence, the resolution also stated that &#8220;As a solidarity movement, it is not our place to dictate the strategies or tactics adopted by the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation.&#8221; The Boycott was actually an extension of the Arab League Boycott restarted in 1950 by the Arab League. The conference held revolving seminars and meetings where strategies were discussed on how to reach the goal of de-legitimizing Israel in the family of nations to hasten the right of return. The right of return held that any Arab who had relatives who resided in pre-1948 Palestine, but left or was driven out by the Jews, had the unconditional right to return to the very same spot where his ancestors had previously lived, classifying such individuals as “refugees.” This is the position of Al Awda that held considerable sway at the event and it was <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/psm.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">sponsored</span></a> by Jess Ghannam and his American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. The local Jewish Federation that attended the event mentioned that anti-Semitic remarks and accusation of genocide by Jews against the Palestinian people were common during the event.</p>
<p>The second action by the SJP was a demonstration to memorialize the Deir Yassin “Massacre” which was purposely timed to take place the same day that the Hillel and Jewish students on campus were to hold an event memorializing the Holocaust, also in 2001. Deir Yassin had been a village that was lost by the Arab side in the 1948 War of Independence. Although history has proven no massacre occurred there, the SJP event claimed there was one and a noisy demonstration with signs and radical speakers was held in front of Sproul Plaza on campus. Large loud speakers were brought in to purposely drown out the Yahrtzeit service (reading of the names of the dead from the Holocaust) that was being held just a few feet away and was originally scheduled to be in the same location. Later that same day, students from the SJP <a href="https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2002/04/09/1215081.php"><span style="color: #0433ff;">stormed nearby Wheeler Hall</span></a> on campus in order to disrupt when they learned Jewish students were also meeting there as part of the Holocaust Memorial Day event. The building was also being used by nonrelated courses so students could take final examinations, but the SJP invaded and took over the entire building threatening violence “against the Jews,” even attacking UC Berkeley campus police officers who had told them to leave when one officer was bitten on the hand. The police ultimately prevailed in clearing the building, and the administration banned SJP for one year for their action. The suspension was lifted in less than a year however as the Arab and Muslim communities on campus continually protested that they were being unfairly treated.</p>
<p>Other chapters of the SJP sprung up quickly within the UC college system, organized by Arab-American students or faculty sympathetic to a campaign against Israel. Campus chapters were started at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, San Diego State as well as private colleges such as USC.  In the eastern United States similar campus clubs sprang up at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, Ohio State, New York University and Columbia University and associated colleges, UPenn, Florida State and Atlantic and many others. These were done through promotions from the International Solidarity Movement led by Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro.</p>
<div id="attachment_236447" style="width: 223px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed7.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236447 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed7.jpg" alt="unnamed7" width="213" height="153" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro</p></div>
<p><span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12370">Huwaida Arraf and Adam Shapiro</a></span> frequently guest lecture at SJP events. Arraf also is involved with the SJP chapter at Bard College in New York, known as Bard ISM. She was very active in recruiting among SJP chapters for people to go on the Gaza flotilla boats.</p>
<p><b>State Department Connections?</b></p>
<p>Arraf and Shapiro were both low-level state department employees &#8212; camp counselors for a State Department sponsored camp called Seeds for Peace in New England and in Jerusalem.  In 2002, when Ariel Sharon had Yasser Arafat and 200 terrorists trapped in the Mukata after the Passover Massacre, Arraf and Shapiro showed up at the gates of the compound asking to be admitted with an ambulance. The IDF refused and some nebulous phone calls were made. Then after four hours the two were let inside with Arafat. Arafat allegedly gave one million dollars to Shapiro to start the ISM. Arraf and Shapiro then embarked on a cross-country U.S. campaign speaking at SJP and MSU events against Israel and helping to set up what today is the SJP network via Palestinian Solidarity conferences. Besides being co-sponsored by SJP chapters, these events also were used to promote BDS. National conferences held with the SJP listed as part of the movement were extremely sophisticated and done along the lines of Fortune 500 companies training conferences. Sometimes guest speakers with connections to terrorist groups were brought in to lecture. Was the State Department involved in this to try and promote a pro-Palestinian mindset in the U.S. to hasten a Palestinian state? We may never know. Paul LaRudee, the man who started the ISM in Northern California in partnership with Jess Ghannam, also had been a state department employee at one time. and was recruiting people at local colleges along with Jess Ghannam when he first started.</p>
<div id="attachment_236461" style="width: 165px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/appel.png"><img class="wp-image-236461 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/appel.png" alt="appel" width="155" height="150" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Ehud Appel</p></div>
<p>Jess Ghannam organized with the GUPS at <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=3187"><span style="color: #0433ff;">an Al Awda conference </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">at San Francisco State</span></a><b> </b>that took place in the Student Union building on campus and featured speakers from the local Arab and Muslim community along with Al Awda leadership. Again, courses  were  presented in a rotating hourly seminar series where training and propaganda methods were discussed. Presenters tried to screen a video in support of Hamas and against Jews, but stopped it when they were notified there were some “Zionist” Jews present. Other activists such as Greta Berlin of the organization Women in Black and the ISM from Los Angeles also attended. The campus student seminar was attended by only Arab-American students but was led by Ehud Appel, from UC Berkeley SJP, a Jewish student allegedly with family in Israel. Appel directed the proceeding. The guest of honor at this seminar was Professor Abu Sitta, a Palestinian intellectual from London who explained to those in attendance that the Right of Return was non-negotiable. That is, even if an individual Palestinian rejected it or was paid money as compensation, he had no right to do so allowing the war on Israel to go on. Ehud Appel also discussed “actions” that could be taken to promote the boycott and divestment from Israel.</p>
<div id="attachment_236448" style="width: 211px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed8.png"><img class="wp-image-236448 " src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed8.png" alt="unnamed8" width="201" height="198" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Fadi Kiblawi</p></div>
<p>A year after the first National Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at UC Berkeley, another was held at the University of Michigan in 2002. Again, seminars and discussion groups from across the country met to devise strategy on how to de-legitimize and boycott the Jewish state. Chants of “Death to the Jews” were shouted during the event. Francis Boyle, a law professor at the University of Chicago who had been the PLO’s lawyer in the United States, had formulated a strategy of boycott and divestment that was to be followed on all the college campuses and the SJP would play a role in implementing it along with other anti-Israel groups. Controversy developed about the Michigan event because openly anti-Semitic remarks had been voiced, something the organizers repeatedly denied, citing their Jewish members of SJP partly as “proof” they were not anti-Semitic. However, a legal affidavit was provided by one member of the Jewish community attesting to the anti-Semitic slurs calling for violence, Fadi Kiblawi, one of the SJP student leaders at Michigan, voiced a wish in writing that he could strap on a suicide bomb belt to kill some Jews.  Other radical groups such as the American Indian Movement, La Raza and the International Socialist Organization all joined with the SJP to strategize and aid a campaign to destroy Israel, all of these movements advocating revolutionary violence to meet their goals.</p>
<div id="attachment_236449" style="width: 160px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/charlotte150.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236449 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/charlotte150.jpg" alt="charlotte150" width="150" height="150" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Charlotte Kates</p></div>
<p>A year later, in November of 2003, the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15272"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Third National Palestine Solidarity Conference</span></a> was held at Ohio State University. It was originally scheduled to be at Rutgers University but a rift developed between certain members with New Jersey Solidarity (The SJP’s name) and the general membership over an endorsement of terrorism. Charlotte Kates, an SJP leader, had called Israeli children killed by terrorism “fair game” and not worthy of criticism. the Rutgers community did not encourage the event which was then moved to Ohio State. Of note, when some attendees at Ohio State tried to get a resolution passed rejecting terrorism, it was voted down and this news was greeted with a standing ovation on the final day of the event. At Ohio State,  drawing on experiences with the previous two conferences, airport style metal detectors were placed at every entrance to prevent cameras and recorders from being brought into the building where the revolving seminars were held. Organizers claimed it was to not give away their strategy to the public-at-large rather than conceal anti-Semitic remarks and pro-terrorist messages.</p>
<p>Alison Weir of If Americans Knew, an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel one woman non-profit, handed out literature claiming that the Jews did the Holocaust to themselves to justify stealing Israel. Weir testifies frequently at SJP events across the country, accusing Israel of genocide and murdering children where she cites frequently made up statistics. Other seminars at Ohio State included a Skill Share Workshop where students were taught how to counter negative publicity from suicide bombings which were epidemic in Israel at that time and lectures discussed on how to infiltrate Hillel and take over student governments. There was no condemnation of terrorism that was termed as “legitimate resistance.” One Palestinian speaker was Mohammed Abed from the University of Wisconsin who spoke to students about how to deconstruct the Israeli narrative in the United States and how to “take over” their campuses to control the discussion. Although the campus group at Wisconsin was another chapter of the SJP like the GUPS at SFSU, the Wisconsin group called itself the Alternative Palestinian Agenda (<a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2088"><span style="color: #0433ff;">APA</span></a>).</p>
<div id="attachment_236450" style="width: 245px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed4.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236450" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed4.jpg" alt="unnamed4" width="235" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Mohammed Abed</p></div>
<p>Today Abed is a dean at the University of Wisconsin where he oversees the Palestinian groups on campus. At Ohio State, He taught that since America was deemed the support system for Israel against overwhelming odds in the Middle East, and since the Jewish community also was solidly behind Israel, he reasoned it would become necessary to find a way to drive a wedge between American Jews and Israel. SJP chapters were encouraged to involve themselves with Hillel student centers on their campuses by suggesting mutual cooperation but to stage events against Israel  particularly against the settlements in the West bank and Gaza. The main leader and organizer at the Ohio State event was also a member of the Wisconsin SJP contingent, Fayyad Sbhaiat, a sophomore student back then who Israeli intelligence said his entire family were PFLP members back in the West Bank.</p>
<div id="attachment_236451" style="width: 186px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed9.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236451 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed9.jpg" alt="unnamed9" width="176" height="147" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Fayyad Sbhaiat</p></div>
<p>One year later, the <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=10792"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Fourth National Palestine Solidarity Conference</span></a> was held at Duke University in North Carolina. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DukeSJP"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Duke SJP activists</span></a> were there in full force along with assorted other racial leftist groups such as the International Socialist Organization that calls for the violent overthrow of the US government. Once again, airport style metal detectors were set up to prevent cameras and recorders from being brought inside and the press was restricted from attending the training seminars. Abe Greenhouse, an affiliate of the Rutgers SJP at the time (known as NJ Solidarity) held a seminar where he identified every Jewish organization and Jewish leader in the United States with instructions on volunteering to work for them to get inside and change the message to be against Israel. Greenhouse also taught a seminar on anarchism where he explained the rioting carried out every week in the West Bank is training for anarchists so they can eventually bring the same tactics to the U.S.- Mexican</p>
<div id="attachment_236453" style="width: 103px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed111.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236453 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed111.jpg" alt="Rann Bar-On" width="93" height="80" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Rann Bar-On</p></div>
<p>border. Greenhouse rose to fame in the SJP/ISM movement by smashing a pie in the face of Natan Sharansky when he spoke at the Rutgers campus. Rann Bar-On, an Israeli anarchist leftist also attended the event. A news reporter at Duke asked Bar-On if he condemned terrorism to which Bar-On replied, “As a solidarity movement it is not our right to tell the Palestinian people how to resist.” In short, he would not condemn terrorism.</p>
<div id="attachment_236452" style="width: 174px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed10.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236452" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed10-350x350.jpg" alt="Abe Greenhouse" width="164" height="164" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Abe Greenhouse</p></div>
<p>A year after that came the National Divestment Conference, this time held at <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=5159"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Georgetown University</span></a> that was hosted by that campus’s equivalent of the SJP. SJP and other students against Israel were openly recruited to go to the West Bank and participate in the rioting and briefed on tactics they could use to promote BDS against Israel on their campuses. Huwaida Arraf led the recruiting and a Fatah handler named <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ali.a.omar"><span style="color: #0433ff;">Ali Omar</span></a> supervised.  Omar <a href="http://kaplanwatch.blogspot.com/2007/10/terrorist-amongst-us.html"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was studying US security procedures </span></a>at Tufts University where he was a leader of the SJP group there.</p>
<div id="attachment_236454" style="width: 170px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed12.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236454 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnamed12.jpg" alt="unnamed12" width="160" height="160" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Ali Omar</p></div>
<p>It should be noted that Hatem Bazian also established in about 2005 at UC Berkeley the Law Students for Justice in Palestine (<a href="http://calsjp.org/?page_id=483"><span style="color: #0433ff;">LSJP</span></a>) at Boalt Law School, though he was not even a full professor. The mission statement and purpose of the LSJP was two-fold: 1) To provide free legal help to the SJP undergrad club whenever it developed legal problems with the campus such as the Wheeler Hall riots and 2) To have an office set up in the law school at California taxpayer expense that was totally dedicated to proving that Israel was an illegal state and had no legal right to exist by international law (despite its  having been set up by international law through the UN in 1948). Bazian also managed by 2005 to have himself appointed an adjunct professor of Islamic Law to lecture in the law school, a position he held until 2007. His position was eliminated after that without explanation, possibly it was through budget cuts or the fact that Bazian was not an imam and lacked any proof of any expertise in Islamic law. Nevertheless, Bazian has held considerable sway with the law school, hosting most anti-Israel events for the SJP at the law school on campus including two conferences on “Islamophobia.” Law School chapters of the SJP are now at all major campuses in the U.S.</p>
<p>After dwindling numbers of attendees at Georgetown, in 2011 a new revived National Palestine Solidarity Conference <a href="http://columbiasjp.org/2011/08/29/2011-national-students-for-justice-in-palestine-conference/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was held at Columbia</span></a> and City College New York. Stanford also hosted an <span style="color: #0433ff;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/1411064189107457/">SJP National Planning Conference</a> </span>over the last two years where some Jews were discriminated against and not allowed admission. The Stanford administration saw nothing wrong with such discrimination, despite objections from the Jewish community that the campus should be an open forum.</p>
<p><b>Violence and Intimidation</b></p>
<p>Although almost from its inception at UC Berkeley, the SJP has been involved in promoting anti-Semitism and in some cases direct violence on US campuses. Despite some Jewish members claiming they are not anti-Semitic, SJP chapters usually promote anti-Semitic media or tell students tales of blood libels against Jews. A film, “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land” is frequently screened on campuses by SJP chapters and their faculty advisors. The film suggests that Jews are not loyal Americans and the “Israel lobby” is controlling America.  Atrocities are alleged in the film and most of the spokespeople are “Jewish” radicals who support ending the Jewish state.  Support for terrorist groups (as designated by the US State Department) such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the PFLP and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades has been common at SJP chapters across the country and some chapters repeat commemorations every year for Hassan Al-Bannah, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and precursor to Hamas.</p>
<div id="attachment_236455" style="width: 197px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MAXGELLER.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236455" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/MAXGELLER.jpg" alt="Max Geller" width="187" height="222" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Max Geller</p></div>
<p>Other violent or intimidating events have occurred across the country: At UC Berkeley, Nonie Darwish, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity, was hounded off the stage before she could finish speaking by members of the SJP. When Middle East Professor Daniel Pipes came to Berkeley, SJP students led by Ehud Appel nearly rioted to prevent his speaking. At SFSU, and later at UC Irvine, Michael Oren was disrupted continually in planned attacks coordinated through social media by SJP chapters.  At SFSU, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren was actually physically assaulted by a GUPS woman from the crowd while on the dais causing police to cancel the event. At Northeastern University, one of the leaders of the SJP, Max Geller, who is of Jewish descent, was shown to have been photographed with a machine gun as he visited terrorists in the West Bank and was spotted wearing a T-Shirt supporting Hezbollah.</p>
<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Husam-Zakharia.jpg"><img class="alignright  wp-image-236456" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Husam-Zakharia.jpg" alt="Husam Zakharia" width="139" height="174" /></a>Again at UC Berkeley, Jessica Felber, a Jewish student with the pro-Israel group on campus <a href="http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/03/07/jewish-student-sues-uc-berkeley-over-assault-by-palestine-supporter/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">was physically struck </span><span style="color: #0433ff;">with a shopping cart and injured</span></a> by the head of the SJP, Husam Zakharia, who came from Gaza. Although Zakharia was only technically a UC Berkeley student because he took just one extension course, he was on campus demonstrating against Israel almost every day that included his trampling an Israeli flag underfoot. Seemingly a professional agitator, he only had to take the one extension course off campus to “qualify” as leader of the SJP at Berkeley.  Questions arose later if he wasn’t sent to UC Berkeley by Hamas for such activities since he left the University after legal proceedings were taken against him. Unfortunately, the judge threw the case out and Zakharia ran back to Gaza afterwards.</p>
<div id="attachment_236459" style="width: 179px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnameda.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236459" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/unnameda.jpg" alt="Yaman Salahi" width="169" height="168" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Yaman Salahi</p></div>
<p>In another incident, in 2008, SJP students physically attacked Jewish students in the Eshelman Hall Student Union building that resulted in a fistfight and arrests. Zakharia was involved in that incident also before he left the University for good. Jewish students were physically attacked when they sought to remove a Palestinian flag draped over a balcony behind a band playing music at a pro-Israel campus event. Yaman Salahi, the new SJP leader sought to blame the Jewish students for the brawl.  Salahi was sued by this writer in 2008 for launching a website on the Internet using social media for defamation that included placing this writer’s head on bodies in pictures of homosexual porn and getting SJP members to do the same thing all over the Internet.  This was done along with Ehud Appel. <a href="http://www.dmlp.org/threats/kaplan-v-salahi"><span style="color: #0433ff;">A judgment</span></a> was rendered against Salahi for $8,000 for defamation that he had to pay and the website was taken down. The University refused to intervene in all the above incidents to stop the harassment or violence. Salahi has an uncle or cousin who is the head  of the Muslim Brotherhood, or <i>Ikwhan</i>, in London.</p>
<p>Other tactics have included setting up mock checkpoints not just at UC Berkeley, but on all campuses where students are harassed, then told this practice is common in Israel for non-Jews, and the staging of street theater where students dressed as Israeli soldiers rape or kill pregnant women. At Florida State University, Columbia, and Northeastern  the SJP passed out fake eviction notices on the doors of Jewish students with the campus’s official student activities stamp on them. “Apartheid” wall displays are frequently trucked in that contain images and stories claiming genocide against innocent Arabs by Israeli Jews.</p>
<p>In a nationally coordinated effort, SJP chapters in the U.S. and Canada stage an Israeli Apartheid Week every year where they set up mock walls and combine many of the tactics above. Another yearly event is Deir Yassin Remembered where a memorial is created for the village of Deir Yassin in 1948, lost in a battle with Israel where it is falsely claimed a massacre and genocide of innocent Arabs occurred. Other events include Nakba commemorations, Nakba being the word for catastrophe in Arabic and referring to the founding of the state of Israel by Jews. A week does not go by without at least one campus in the U.S promoting divestment from Israel. Other events are created to justify new events such as “Palestine Liberation Week” “Palestine Awareness Week,” etc.</p>
<p>More and more coordination exists for these SJP activities on an intercampus basis. Taking a practice from the MSA that created an MSA-West where various groups from western US campuses could compare notes and actions, the SJP started an <a href="http://sjpwest.org/2012/11/23/press-release-uc-irvine-students-pass-histori/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">SJP-West</span></a> in California and subsequently a National SJP group. This came about in part after the disruption  of  the speech by Michael Oren at UC Irvine. While that action was done by the MSU at Irvine, SJP members from surrounding campuses were said to have participated or at least supported it.  SJP activists from San Diego State and other campuses like Cal State Northridge  <a href="http://www.pacbi.com/cms/rougesgallery.php?pid=22&amp;id=159"><span style="color: #0433ff;">met together to plan strategy</span></a> to make it impossible for any pro-Israel speakers to speak on behalf of Israel on any University of California campus and, hopefully later, the entire U.S. Jess Ghannam , co-founder of Al Awda, spoke at the event and read with joy about how Michael Oren’s speech at UC Irvine was ruined. This program was led and further promoted by Lina Othman of the San Diego State SJP chapter who <a href="http://www.stanforddaily.com/2010/05/07/petition-potential-assu-bill-spark-divestment-debate/"><span style="color: #0433ff;">has appeared at other SJP chapters around the state</span></a>. When word of this <a href="http://www.pacbi.com/cms/rougesgallery.php?pid=22&amp;id=159"><span style="color: #0433ff;">leaked out</span></a>, the Orange County district attorney <a href="http://omdurman.org/ISM/complaint_msu.pdf"><span style="color: #0433ff;">prosecuted the SJP students</span></a> at Irvine for conspiracy and got a conviction. Such violence and intimidation has been growing worse and worse on U.S. campuses and administrators are reluctant to take action to stop it. At the La Mesa, California event, Othman spoke of SJP and MSU chapters plotting actions like the Irvine 11 and taking over student governments to promote divestment on all the campuses. “I’m not sure we should be discussing our plans here in public as we’ve been doing,” she said.</p>
<p><b>The Strange Case of Emiliano Huet-Vaughn</b></p>
<div id="attachment_236457" style="width: 234px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/VaughanCafe.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-236457" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/VaughanCafe.jpg" alt="Emiliano Huet-Vaughan (left) at a café in Israel." width="224" height="148" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Emiliano Huet-Vaughan (left) at a café in Israel.</p></div>
<p>Huet-Vaughn led the divestment charge at UC Berkeley that ultimately got divestment passed by the student government. Huet-Vaughan is the son a woman very involved in radical socialist activities such as practiced by the International Socialist Organization that call for violent overthrow of the U.S. government. Vaughan has come under the radar of law enforcement because he was working as a recruiter for the ISM in Israel and linked to ISM trainers over there who were caught dressing as Jewish settlers and waving machine guns in the presence of an Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade terrorist.  After being exposed in the article The <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=2601"><span style="color: #0433ff;">ISM Terror Connection</span></a>, Huet-Vaughan went to the London School of Economics where he devoted full time to getting the school’s student government there to divest from Israel. Once he was successful he <a href="http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/news/berkeley-slammed-bigoted-illegal-vote-divestment"><span style="color: #0433ff;">then showed up at UC Berkeley</span><span style="color: #0433ff;"> doing the same</span></a> thing. Huet-Vaughan is still an active member of the SJP at Berkeley and would appear also to be a professional agitator.</p>
<div id="attachment_236458" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Vaughancolleagues.jpg"><img class="wp-image-236458 size-full" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Vaughancolleagues.jpg" alt="Vaughancolleagues" width="400" height="235" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Huet-Vaughan’s colleagues and roommates in Israel.</p></div>
<p><b>Funding Sources of SJP and Outside Connections </b></p>
<p>Most colleges have student activities offices that are run by deans or campus administrators. To avoid conflicts of interest, outside money for student clubs is prohibited. Almost all colleges charge student activity fees that are then disbursed usually through the student government via a mock congress or committee. At larger campuses like UC Berkeley or UCLA, this means clubs like the SJP can be funded as much as $30,000 for events they wish to produce. SJP chapters usually run student members or sympathizers for the campus governing boards and once they get in, they rubber stamp approval to fund SJP “events.” Most of the student bodies do not take an interest in such elections, so a minority of students can easily take an election if they devote a lot of energy to one.  Once elected to the student Senate or governing board, they push for funds to promote divestment and anti-Israel events. At Concordia University in Canada, the SJP at one point got $50,000 for divestment and other anti-Israel actions on campus. This was part of the strategy behind Mohammed Abed‘s teaching at the Ohio State conference since now as a dean he has power to override denials of funding.</p>
<p>Since openly outside funding is not allowed, other means of funding SJP activities exist which may not be traceable. For example, when Hill and Knowlton in the early 2000s was handling wall displays from San Francisco (and they may still do so) it was doubtful the campus administration counted the cost of those efforts as “funding.” Likewise, printing costs and PR can be “donated.” As mentioned, Al Awda and the ADC, at least in California, provide reading and printing materials that are fungible for goods like flyers. Wealthy Arab-Americans who belong to the ADC also may provide for expenses that cannot be seen such as cash donations under the table. The ADC and the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) pay to bring anti-Israel and boycott promoting speakers like Jeff Halper or Ilan Pappe to campuses for the SJP who sponsor these events. This becomes another fungible method of funding and some SJP chapters may even charge an admittance fee to such events.</p>
<p>Hatem Bazian started another anti-Israel group that terrorism experts have claimed is another front for Hamas called American Muslims for Palestine (<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3313/sjp-dialogue-goes-nowhere"><span style="color: #0433ff;">AMP</span></a>). AMP is a connection for SJP to work more closely with Hamas’s goals while AMP is seeming to work as a strictly American NGO. AMP has sent letters to college administrators and law enforcement excusing any violent actions by the SJP. For example, <a href="http://www.ampalestine.org/index.php/newsroom/statements/411-amp-others-send-letter-to-university-of-california-president-mark-yudoffamp-others-send-letter-to-university-of-california-president-advising-him-of-need-to-protect-pro-palestinian-speech-on-campus"><span style="color: #0433ff;">AMP sent letters</span></a><span style="color: #0433ff;"> t</span>o government officials calling for the release of the Irvine 11 and for SJP groups that were suspended for fake eviction notices. AMP wrote administrators calling for the students to not be punished. and complaining about “free speech” of Palestinian students being denied.</p>
<p>The SJP (like the Muslim Students Association) is enjoying a Rico Statute-like system of invading American society through US colleges and enjoying its funding from the unaware US taxpayer. While Rico has been used to curb gambling, liquor and prostitution, the same tactic is employed by the SJP as such illicit “businesses” use to serve the interests of overseas Palestinian irredentist terrorist groups. The Ba’ath Party and Muslim Brotherhood all had their starts in the colleges in the Middle East. The US and Canadian college system provides a huge market of a young upcoming generation to indoctrinate toward their goals, as well as the financial assistance to do so. Today’s SJP member goes on to  graduate and become a newspaper editor, a congressman, a principal, a teacher or even a professor like Hatem Bazian, any one of whom wields influence in our society, possibly even one day being the President of the United States. The Ba’athists and Muslim Brotherhood later expanded their Middle East control through trade unions and more and more SJP/ISM events are inviting trade unionists to attend and join them in their anti-Israel crusade. SJP is also doing outreach in churches, and some former SJP leaders lecture for CAIR on graduation or promote anti-Semitism to Christian audiences through an ISM arm called Sabeel Ecumenical Society. The Sierra Club and environmental movement have allied with the Palestinian cause by finding common ground of fighting “oppression,” and even taxi drivers in Boston support the Boycott of Israel as a sign of “unity” against “oppression” of workers.  The SJP already has done long reaching damage in our educational system, but stands to do much more damage in the future.</p>
<p><em>This report was commissioned by the Middle East Forum. </em></p>
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		<title>UC Berkeley &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; Conference: Pseudo-Scholarship at Taxpayer Expense</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/lee-kaplan/uc-berkeley-islamophobia-conference-pseudo-scholarship-at-taxpayer-expense-2/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=uc-berkeley-islamophobia-conference-pseudo-scholarship-at-taxpayer-expense-2</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2014 04:16:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lee Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=224889</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Activism taught to excuse Islamic abuses and thwart homeland security.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/islam.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-225052" alt="islam" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/islam.jpg" width="297" height="207" /></a><strong>[To order David Horowitz and Robert Spencer&#8217;s pamphlet, &#8220;<em>Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future</em>,&#8221; <a href="https://secure.donationreport.com/productlist.html?key=OGTAUUU8UWRC">click here</a>.]</strong></p>
<p>At taxpayer expense, one of the most prominent universities in America, UC Berkeley, recently hosted an Islamic propaganda-fest promoting Sharia Law and ways to use the educational sphere to obstruct national security by blaming “Islamophobia” and “white racism.” Participants hailed their “research” as the cause of the cancellation of the NYPD’s counterterrorism intelligence program and called for “Islamophobia Studies” to be a college major worldwide.</p>
<p>A peculiar theme was repeatedly advanced throughout the three-day <a href="http://diversity.berkeley.edu/april-17-19-fifth-annual-international-conference-islamophobia-studies">Fifth Annual Conference on Islamophobia</a>, held at UC Berkeley’s prestigious Boalt Law School in Berkeley, California, April 17-19. Almost all presenters who spoke about the 34 or more “academic” papers that were discussed continually asserted that white racism and colonialism were the causes of &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; throughout America and Europe. In their view, this &#8220;Islamophobia&#8221; is driven by the media, while racism against people of color is the main cause overall behind the (supposed) persecution of Muslims. Fear of terrorism was of no legitimate concern.</p>
<p>Discussions also centered on discrimination against women and gays, a practice deemed not to be a widespread problem in Islamic practices, but the result of “Islamophobia.”</p>
<p>Hatem Bazian was <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9732">the main organizer</a> of the event. A <a href="http://www.hatembazian.com/bio.html">Senior Lecturer in the Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies</a> at UC Berkeley, Bazian was an adjunct Professor of Islamic Law at Boalt Law School from 2002-2007. As an undergrad, he was a student leader among <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=10445">the General Union of Palestinian Students at San Francisco State,</a> where he ultimately earned an M.A. in International Relations. He then went through UC Berkeley’s PhD program while serving as a Palestinian activist on that campus with the Students for Justice in Palestine. He is one of the founders of <a href="http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7250/pub_detail.asp">Zaytuna College</a> in Berkeley, the nation’s first “Islamic college” that is graduating its first class this month. Bazian was a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine that has been featured in the news <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3346/american-muslims-for-palestine-web-of-hamas">as a Hamas front</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://counterjihadreport.com/tag/hatem-bazian/">Bazian kicked off the conference</a> with an introduction that discussed Islamophobia as an irrational fear of Islam and a major issue for Muslims worldwide. He cast much of the blame for this (supposed) situation on Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project.</p>
<p>Bazian stated that the conference would deal with deciphering the causes and activities of latent and manifested Islamophobia and that similar conferences were already in the works to take place in Paris, France and Salzberg, Austria next year to reach European audiences. He also discussed a similar conference to take place in Turkey because, as he explained, “Islamophobia takes place in the Middle East and Muslim countries also.” He concluded by saying that he hoped to see “Islamophobia” as a major studies course in universities and colleges across America and the entire world.</p>
<p>As the conference ensued, the speakers blamed the news media for Islamophobia and complained of so-called “experts” on Islam who allegedly “had no knowledge” and were supposedly inflaming public opinion against Muslims. These individuals included Pamela Geller, Ann Coulter and Robert Spencer, who, like Steve Emerson, were all accused of making “false accusations” against Muslims. Photos were displayed of the controversial bus ads placed by Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s American Freedom Defense Initiative condemning jihad in Boston, with examples of how the organizers had managed to get the bus companies to change the wording on the ads to make them less “anti-Islamic.”</p>
<p>At no time during the conference was there a condemnation of terrorism or any other security threat to the United States, despite an agreement by all that 9/11 was a watershed moment for Muslims, particularly in America. Israel also was not mentioned, save for once when the word “occupation” was used. Any type of national security that scrutinized Muslims was deemed “Islamophobic,” as if actual terrorism does not exist and has never been carried out by Muslims &#8212; who are, according to the conference&#8217;s main theme, only falsely profiled or accused and are, therefore, victims.</p>
<p>Real scholarly research somehow eluded the presenters&#8217; papers. Of special interest was how a visiting French-Arab student had provided the “research” that had resulted in the recent decision of New York’s Mayor Bill De Blasio to close down an anti-terrorism intelligence unit of the NYPD.  A recent court case had found no wrongdoing by the NYPD in how it conducted surveillance to prevent a future terror attack, and the program was supposed to continue. Somehow this student got a hold of internal police training documents that revealed that undercover police were concentrated in neighborhoods and at mosques with heavy Muslim populations. The student complained that people who had done nothing wrong other than being Muslim were being scrutinized, and he affirmed that his &#8220;research&#8221; backed that up.</p>
<p>The reality, of course, is that the police were acting on their experience with the Blind Sheikh and his mosque that led to the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and other planned and executed attacks around New York. But the student suggested to the Police Commissioner and the Mayor that innocent Muslims were the victims of “Islamophobia” &#8212; so the program was closed down.</p>
<p>Shariah Law was defended as being an Islamic institution that gets a bum rap. One academic showed some newspaper articles from Turkey where a closing of a madrassa by the government to create a health clinic was opposed by the locals. The article contained a photo of a woman being beaten. The professor claimed this falsely represented Shariah Law. Another speaker claimed honor killings are not mandated in the Koran and serve as a false accusation against Shariah Law, when in fact they are the result of “tribal cultures.” Curiously enough, she never addressed why, if honor killings are so un-Islamic, Imams and Muslim leaders don’t condemn them as “tribal practices” in order to stop then in Islamic societies.</p>
<p>One of the guest lecturers was a Sikh. Despite the fact the Muslims have perpetrated genocide against Sikhs, at one point during a discussion on Islamophobia he turned to a colleague and said, “In Nebraska they wanted to pass a law to outlaw Shariah Law. Can you imagine?” Queried during a break, he insisted that the Muslim potentate who carried out the genocide against Sikhs “wasn’t a real Muslim.” The Sikh community <a href="http://www.faithfreedom.org/how-the-sikhs-countered-the-brutality-of-the-foreign-muslim-invaders-turned-rulers-in-india-part-8/">would beg to differ</a>.</p>
<p>Most presentations centered more on activism than on research. The sheer lack of academic responsibility in many of the presentations was palpable. One lecturer said one of her own studies was on the changing attitudes among Americans about Islam and the “rise of Islamophobia.” For her &#8220;research,&#8221; she said she had read over 300 comments on an Internet blog and used that as her source of information. Since anyone can write on a blog anonymously, and even one person can post multiple entries ad infinitum under false names, such research, one could argue, falls a bit short of being &#8220;scholarly.&#8221;</p>
<p>One of the worst cases was a “professor” from “Solomon College” who lectured about bias against Muslim males on a college campus in the U.S. On reaching the podium, she assured everyone that her story was true but that her real name was not the one on the program and that the Muslim student’s name in question was fictitious. She went on to tell a tale of a Muslim male student whom a female student on a liberal arts campus back east had complained to administrators about, saying that he had sexually intimidated her. This student was allegedly held captive for eight hours by campus administrators, who criticized Muslim male attitudes toward women. He was purportedly “imprisoned illegally overnight” in a campus basement by private campus security with no governmental authority. She stated she feared for her safety all the time in public because she intervened to help the student, even recounting the tale thousands of miles away at UC Berkeley. When queried by me from the audience about the “false imprisonment” details of the story, Hatem Bazian shouted me down and had the microphone removed from me. Curiously enough, a hijab-clad CAIR attorney on the stage made no comments about the alleged false imprisonment &#8212; other than to relate it to herself in regards to being abused as a child for wearing a hijab.</p>
<p>Surely CAIR had the resources to sue over the woman’s accusations of a “Muslim male” being imprisoned falsely for “Islamophobia”?</p>
<p>Only one academic during the three days commented on a need for Muslims to set examples of good behavior in their communities rather than to play the victim of “Islamophobia.” Oddly, he was a Georgetown acolyte of <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7462">John Esposito</a> and was funded by the Alwaleed Bin Talal interfaith program at the university. Talal has <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=1043&amp;x_context=2">provided</a> financial support to Hamas. Despite his benefactor’s backgrounds, this professor contradicted most of the speakers at the conference by saying that Muslims should behave well in America and abroad rather than cry victim, always setting good community examples, and to “look within.” But he was little more than a voice in the wilderness.</p>
<p>California and US taxpayers should be dismayed to learn that they funded this event through taxpayer-supported academic study groups at UC Berkeley, San Francisco State, Boalt Law School and elsewhere. Consequently, one of the most important facets of Bazian’s program on “Islamophobia Studies” to watch for in the future is how it affects taxpayers and the use of their money in promoting Islamic activism and propaganda over education.</p>
<p><b>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank"><b>Click here</b></a><b>.   </b></p>
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		<title>&#8216;Israel Lobby&#8217; Threatening Free Speech at Berkeley?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2013/lee-kaplan/israel-lobby-threatening-free-speech-at-berkeley/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-lobby-threatening-free-speech-at-berkeley</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Mar 2013 04:25:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lee Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hatem bazian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli Lobby]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[uc berkeley]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=183410</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Are sinister Jewish forces really silencing people from speaking about Palestine? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2013/lee-kaplan/israel-lobby-threatening-free-speech-at-berkeley/hatembazian/" rel="attachment wp-att-183417"><img class=" wp-image-183417 alignleft" title="HatemBazian" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/HatemBazian-330x350.jpg" alt="" width="264" height="280" /></a>The title of a recent <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/124345944412709/">panel discussion</a> at the University of California, Berkeley was ominous: “SHHHH! Don’t Talk About Palestine: Chuck Hagel, Judith Butler, and the Israel Lobby’s Threat to Free Speech on Our Campus.” Taking place in Boalt Hall at UC Berkeley’s <a href="http://ems.law.berkeley.edu/MasterCalendar/EventDetails.aspx?data=hHr80o3M7J6fTg02WkPISsY4VfUGe%2BNTFdPIIbKf7aGLLLjKT2Siw9YozqfotTFb">School of Law</a> and sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine, the event drew what appeared to be sixty hardcore anti-Israel activists—most in their early twenties—eager to embrace the notion that UC Berkeley is under siege by “pro-Israel advocates seek[ing] to silence debate about Palestinian human rights and divestment from Israel’s occupation.”</p>
<p>Although the event was billed as a discussion about the <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/12608/aipac-hagel">(nonexistent) efforts</a> by the “Israel Lobby” to delay the appointment of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense and its <a href="http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/brooklyn-college-bds-brouhaha">criticism</a> of the political science department at Brooklyn College for co-sponsoring a <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2013/02/15/response-to-judith-butler-at-brooklyn-college/">recent talk</a> on Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) by UC Berkeley rhetoric professor and anti-Israel activist Judith Butler, neither subject arose. Instead, the panel engaged in paranoid fantasies about being “silenced,” which, given that this was a well-publicized event at a prestigious law school on a campus where the Palestinian narrative is constantly promoted both <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/14">inside</a> and <a href="http://www.zombietime.com/palestinian_checkpoint_at_berkeley/">outside</a> the classroom, were patently and even hilariously false.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=hatem+bazian&amp;sa=Search">Hatem Bazian</a>, a senior lecturer in the departments of Near Eastern and ethnic studies, was introduced as the main speaker, one the “500 most influential Muslims in the world,” and, in a false claim, the originator of the term “Islamophobia.” While the latter is <a href="http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=777">untrue</a>, Bazian does have the <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/12786">dubious distinction</a> of directing UC Berkeley’s Islamophobia Research &amp; Documentation Project.</p>
<p>Announcing that, “I come first to discuss this subject as a Palestinian and a Muslim,” Bazian launched into the usual accolades surrounding the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley during the 1960s. Far from being a free speech advocate facing censorship, Bazian is an activist who uses his academic position to advance an anti-Israel agenda. A <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/10385">promoter</a> of the BDS movement and executive director of the Holy Land Foundation-<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3346/american-muslims-for-palestine-web-of-hamas">linked</a> American Muslims for Palestine, he is infamous for having <a href="http://www.zombietime.com/sf_rally_april_10_2004/movies/">called</a> for an “Intifada in this country!” at a San Francisco anti-war rally in 2004.</p>
<p>In an attempt to conflate the unrelated issue of affirmative action with the “Palestinian narrative,” Bazian hailed a failed court challenge to <a href="http://vote96.sos.ca.gov/bp/209.htm">Proposition 209</a>, which put an end to race, gender, and ethnicity-based quotas in California universities in 1996, describing it melodramatically as having given a “voice to the voiceless against an attempt to erase people from history.”</p>
<p>Demonstrating <a href="https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/mesh/2008/06/the_myth_of_linkage/">the myopia</a> that afflicts Middle East studies academics who believe, against all evidence, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the central focus of the region, he continued:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Palestinian narrative also faces the euphemism in the university of the term, ‘Middle East studies’ [sic] that often erases the people and is inclusive by means of omission.</p></blockquote>
<p>He went on to maintain that, “In the 60s and 70s, anyone who spoke about Palestine were [sic] considered communists and harassed and not allowed to speak.” If such a claim were true, clearly it’s no longer the case, as Bazian himself establishes on a daily basis.</p>
<p>After praising the writings of the late Columbia University English professor and <em>Orientalism</em> author Edward Said and the late Kansas State University political science professor Michael Suleiman, both contributors to the politicization of Middle East studies, Bazian launched into an incoherent tirade against Middle East scholar and reformer <a href="http://www.martinkramer.org/">Martin Kramer</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>The future of Middle East studies always had Palestine surrounding it. Martin Kramer blasted academia for not predicting the [1979 Islamic] revolution in Iran as if academia was directing things. The academic discourse was always saying to support the Shah [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]. Martin Kramer and his ilk were always supporting the Shah, and Middle East studies [sic] was challenging Palestine by using non-governmental sources and U.S. sources.</p></blockquote>
<p>Given that Martin Kramer was a graduate student at Princeton University at the time of the Iranian revolution, he was hardly in a position to “support the Shah,” unless, by that, Bazian meant his opposition to the ascendance of Ayatollah Khomeini and the resulting theocratic and bellicose regime.</p>
<p>Bazian then turned to <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1103">Saudi funding</a> for UC Berkeley’s Center for Middle East Studies, accusing critics or, as he put it, “the Israel camp,” of labeling the donations “blood money.” Considering the despotic nature of the Saudi regime and the <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/85">apologist bent</a> of the Middle East studies academics <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/67">benefitting</a> from its <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2012/02/why-saudi-prince-bin-talal-funds-middle-east">agenda-driven</a> generosity, “blood money” is an apt description. Bazian, however, maintained that such opposition creates a “toxic” climate on campus by implying that Arab and Palestiniangoals are negative and, in a nonsensical claim given America’s military alliance with Saudi Arabia, discourages funding for the academy in order to promote national defense.</p>
<p>Intoning the need to “liberate people,” Bazian called for a transformation of the university grading system in order to counter what he called “colonial discourse.” He described the <a href="http://www.studentsforacademicfreedom.org/documents/1925/abor.html">Academic Bill of Rights</a>, which was created by the David Horowitz-initiated <a href="https://portfolio.du.edu/portfolio/getportfoliofile?uid=85881">Students for Academic Freedom</a> for the purpose of discouraging one-sided indoctrination, as “controlling the discourse intellectually” and eliminating “academic freedom in the classroom.”</p>
<p>He berated “agencies of the government,” and in particular the California State Assembly, for passing laws intended to combat anti-Semitism in state colleges such as <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/hr_35_cfa_20120821_164910_asm_comm.html">HR 35</a>. The result of these efforts, he claimed, was that graduates ended up seeking out a profession rather than becoming activists. As he put it:</p>
<blockquote><p>If you get a B.A., you get a cubicle for your job when you graduate. If you get a Master’s, you get a cubicle with a window.  And if you get a PhD, you get a cubicle with a window and a bathroom.</p></blockquote>
<p>Apparently, for Bazian, becoming a productive member of the work force is a worst-case scenario.</p>
<p>Another panelist, UC Berkeley Associate Professor of Rhetoric Samera Esmeir, after noting proudly that she was one of the first founding members of the national chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, explained that she wanted to take a different route in promoting the Palestinian cause:</p>
<blockquote><p>For my part, it was not a question of presenting criticism of Zionist or Israeli policies, but to utilize speech that addresses Palestinians. . . . My hope is to speak in Jeffersonian ways about Palestine. . . . What we need is empowerment.</p></blockquote>
<p>Accusing Palestinian campus groups of being equally problematic in their approach, Esmeir was opposed to framing the dispute as “between two entities: Israel-Palestine or Palestinians and Israelis.” She complained that the “rhetoric of the conflict” promoted the idea that two populations were competing over the same land and that it “gave credibility to Israel as a state that was born out of colonization and apartheid.” Employing garbled language to try and compare the Israeli perspective to that of a slave holder, she then posed the question,“Did we ask African [sic] slave-landholders to give white people’s takes on slavery?”</p>
<p>Esmeir favored using the concept of a struggle against oppression over that of Palestinian victimhood. She cited how <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=kOIePd-oToMC&amp;pg=PA175&amp;lpg=PA175&amp;dq=angela+davis+arafat+world+festival+youth+berlin&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=QtKNhNe89I&amp;sig=BNJJtGiihsR9eQm0kqtd4SnimsE&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ei=CnY6Ud7UH6uu2gWNwYDQDg&amp;ved=0CEUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;q=angela%20davis%20a">in 1973</a> at the World Festival of Youth and Students in East Berlin, the late Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yassir Arafat, radical activist Angela Davis, and representatives from various leftist movements met at the Berlin Wall where it was decided that “the PLO would take up the global struggle from the Vietnamese and the struggle for Palestine would change Palestinians from refugees to ‘freedom fighters.’”</p>
<p>She was indeed promoting a strategy that had already been implemented. According to terrorism expert Yosef Bodansky, Arafat <a href="http://www.acpr.org.il/publications/policy-papers/pp018-xs.html">sent lieutenants</a> to Vietnam in the 1970s to study how North Vietnamese intelligence reconstructed communist goals into a national liberation movement. Those lessons turned the tide for the PLO on the world stage by changing its image from that of a terrorist to a liberator. As early as the late 1960s, Arafat, as <a href="http://www.weizmann.ac.il/home/comartin/israel/pacepa-wsj.html">described</a> by Ion Pacepa, a director of the Romanian intelligence services who later defected from the Soviet bloc, was “being financed and manipulated by the KGB.”</p>
<p>Despite Esmeir’s prompting, the youthful audience likely remained either oblivious to or undeterred by the communist-inspired origins of the language of “liberation” against a “colonial occupier” they themselves employ in advocating for a Palestinian state.</p>
<p>Far from producing examples of anti-Israel academics, activists, and students at UC Berkeley who have been “silenced,” the panel discussion was nothing more than a workshop on how to promote the “Palestinian revolution” on campus—in part by using the field of Middle East studies as a vehicle. Tellingly, the concept of peace for two states living side-by-side never arose. If this is the extent of the “Israel Lobby’s” impact on how “Palestine” is discussed on campus, it poses no threat to the legions of anti-Israel advocates.</p>
<p><strong>Contact information for the office of UC-Berkeley&#8217;s chancellor, Robert J. Birgeneau:</strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Email:</em> <a href="mailto:chancellor@berkeley.edu" target="_blank">chancellor@berkeley.edu</a></strong><br />
<strong><em>Phone:</em> <a href="tel:510-642-7464" target="_blank">510-642-7464</a></strong><br />
<strong> <em>Fax:</em> <a href="tel:510-643-5499" target="_blank">510-643-5499</a></strong></p>
<p><em>Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist and columnist who writes for </em><a href="http://isracampus.org.il/"><em>Isracampus.org.il</em></a><em>, Israel National News, and the Northeast Intelligence Network. He is a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy and the founder of DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com. He wrote this article for </em><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><em>Campus Watch</em></a><em>, a project of the </em><a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><em>Middle East Forum</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank" target="_blank">Click here</a>.  </strong></p>
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		<title>Israel-Bashing CSU Prof to Fight Anti-Semitism?</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2012/lee-kaplan/israel-bashing-csu-prof-to-fight-anti-semitism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=israel-bashing-csu-prof-to-fight-anti-semitism</link>
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		<pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 04:41:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lee Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=168611</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Why is an infamous anti-Israel activist coming to rescue pro-Israel students from discrimination?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2012/lee-kaplan/u-cal-appoints-anti-israel-prof-to-fight-anti-semitism/boycott-divest-sanction-israel/" rel="attachment wp-att-168653"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-168653" title="boycott-divest-sanction-israel" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/boycott-divest-sanction-israel-444x350.jpg" alt="" width="311" height="245" /></a>Does appointing an advocate of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel to chair a committee aimed at combating anti-Semitism in the California State University system make sense? That’s exactly what happened in the case of Manzar Foroohar, a well-known anti-Israel activist who teaches modern Middle Eastern and Latin American history at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. The Iranian immigrant was placed in charge of an Academic Senate 2012/2013 CSU <a href="http://www.calstate.edu/AcadSen/Committees/SystemwideCommList.shtml">committee</a> charged with implementing the “Governor’s Task Force on Tolerance and Anti-Semitism Training,” an effort that originated in 2010 under former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Foroohar does indeed have extensive experience in training students and faculty members—in how to delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel, an activity that hardly promotes an environment of “tolerance” for pro-Israel CSU students.</p>
<p>When asked about Foroohar’s appointment, Diana Guerin, chairwoman of the Academic Senate CSU (ASCSU) who oversees committee selections and appointments, offered the standard bureaucratic response, making sure to include politically correct praise for the professor’s “divergent” point of view:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Executive Committee of the Academic Senate makes appointments each year based on senator interest in serving on the various committees. With over forty senators eligible to serve and approximately fifty committees to staff, this is a very involved process. We note that sometimes committees do their best work when there are divergent points of view that lead to careful consideration and thorough discussion of issues. Senator Foroohar has been elected by her peers at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo multiple terms and has served the Academic Senate of the CSU with distinction.</p></blockquote>
<p>After further questioning, the chairwoman explained that at a 2010 meeting with the Governor’s task force at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Concern arose about the potential blurring of the lines between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, <strong><em>which are two separate issues</em></strong> [emphasis added]” and that, “It was important for faculty to have a voice on this type of training for our students.” This sheds light on the ASCSU’s true agenda: using the committee to promote the idea that campus anti-Zionism has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Foroohar’s appointment to “train” faculty effectively ends any meaningful attempt by the Governor’s task force to battle campus anti-Semitism.</p>
<p>Among Foroohar’s anti-Israel activities:</p>
<p>• She is on the <a href="http://www.usacbi.org/about-us">Organizing Committee </a>of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI ) and in 2010, signed a <a href="http://boycottzionism.wordpress.com/2010/03/10/a-joint-letter-to-the-international-society-of-iranian-studies-on-ariel-university-of-samaria-israel/">petition </a>to have an Israeli scholar ejected from an academic conference in Los Angeles. She is also on the <a href="http://israeldivestmentcampaign.org/content/contact/contact.htm">Coordinating Committee </a>of the Israel Divestment Campaign.</p>
<p>• She is <a href="http://amchainitiative.org/amcha-co-founders-send-letter-to-california-state-assembly-members-about-hr-35-and-california-scholars-for-academic-freedom/">one of the signatories</a> to a 2012 <a href="http://cascholars4academicfreedom.wordpress.com/author/cs4af/">open letter </a> to the California State Assembly objecting to House Resolution 35, which condemned anti-Semitism on California campuses, alleging that it threatened academic freedom by conflating “criticism of Israel or its policies with anti-Semitism.”</p>
<p>• In 2009, she <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11388">authored a resolution</a> that was adopted by the 23,000-strong California Faculty Association that condemned Israel for its 2006 military incursion into Gaza and white-washed the terrorist organization Hamas.</p>
<p>• She <a href="http://www.csun.edu/%7Evcmth00m/studyabroad.html">signed </a>a 2011 open letter to CSU Chancellor Charles Reed<strong> </strong>demanding an end to the CSU Israel [Study] Abroad program.</p>
<p>• She <a href="http://amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Professor-Foroohar-Announces-Pappe-at-CSUN.pdf">invited</a> Ilan Pappe, a former Haifa University history professor and notorious anti-Israel <a href="http://www.tnr.com/article/books/magazine/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian?passthru=MWE4MzAwYzEwZTUxY2M3Y2VjZWEwODI4NTYyOTZlYmU">propagandist</a>, to speak on her campus, leading to public <a href="http://amchainitiative.org/pappe_at_csu/">outcry</a> and protests.</p>
<p>• From 2007-2010 she worked to organize the Students for Justice and Peace in the Middle East-sponsored “Wall of Separation” displays on her campus.</p>
<p>• In 2003 she oversaw a <a href="http://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3497&amp;context=pao_pr&amp;sei-redir=1#search=%22manzar+foroohar+middle+east%22">lecture series</a> offered in conjunction with one of her courses that featured only anti-Israel speakers.</p>
<p>• Student comments <a href="http://pr2.sigkill.com/eval.phtml?profid=213">at Polyratings.com</a> include the following: “I am a Jewish student, and I felt extremely uncomfortable during her discussions about the Middle East, as she presented all of the course material in ways that seemed to attack Israel”; “This class is just pandering to Palestinian propaganda”; “She is also rabidly anti-Israel”; and “God forbid if you are Jewish or Israeli because she has it in for you.”</p>
<p>Viewing Foroohar’s dubious resumé against the U.S. State Department’s <a href="http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/fs/2010/122352.htm">working definition</a> of anti-Semitism—which includes demonizing, delegitimizing, and applying double standards to Israel—it’s clear that her appointment to lead a committee charged with promoting tolerance and opposing anti-Semitism is unacceptable. Concerned faculty members have expressed their opposition to the CSU administration privately, but thus far have been met with stonewalling, claims of ignorance, or attempts to downplay the situation by maintaining that the position is merely symbolic. Whatever the truth, Foroohar’s appointment is a stark reminder that pro-Israel CSU students facing discrimination are on their own.</p>
<p><em>Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist and columnist who writes for </em><a href="http://Isracampus.org.il/"><em>Isracampus.org.il</em></a><em>, Israel National News, and the Northeast Intelligence Network. He is a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy and the founder of DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com. He wrote this article for</em> <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/"><em>Campus Watch</em></a><em>, a project of the</em> <a href="http://www.meforum.org/"><em>Middle East Forum</em></a><em>.</em></p>
<p>NB: If you wish to make your views known to the administration of the California State University, you may contact the CSU Public Affairs office, at:</p>
<p><em>Email:</em> <a href="mailto:publicaffairs@calstate.edu">publicaffairs@calstate.edu</a><br />
<em>Phone:</em> (562) 951-4800</p>
<p>The office of California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo President Jeffrey D. Armstrong may be contacted at:</p>
<p><em>Email:</em> <a href="mailto:jarmstro@calpoly.edu">jarmstro@calpoly.edu</a><br />
<em>Phone:</em> (805)756-6000<br />
<em>Fax:</em>  (805)756-1129</p>
<p>The office of California Governor Jerry Brown may be contacted at:</p>
<p><em>Email:</em> <a href="http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php">http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php</a><br />
<em>Phone:</em> (916) 445-2841<br />
<em>Fax:</em> (916) 558-3160</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n%3A133140011%2Ck%3Adavid+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank">Click here</a>.</strong></p>
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		<title>Manzar Foroohar: The California Faculty Association’s Secret Weapon</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/lee-kaplan/manzar-foroohar-the-california-faculty-association%e2%80%99s-secret-weapon/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=manzar-foroohar-the-california-faculty-association%25e2%2580%2599s-secret-weapon</link>
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		<pubDate>Fri, 03 Jun 2011 04:00:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Lee Kaplan]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Cal Poly's History professor can't let her anti-Semitic odyssey rest.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/hateisrael.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-95109" title="hateisrael" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/hateisrael.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="207" /></a></p>
<p>When the <a href="http://www.calfac.org/home">California Faculty Association</a> (CFA) adopted a <a href="http://www.calfac.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/PJ_middleeastviolence_020709.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">resolution</span></a> in 2009 condemning Israel for its military incursion into Gaza, it reinforced the fear that academic unions would be the next front in an ongoing propaganda offensive against the Jewish State. Amidst the ensuing controversy, one of the key players in the resolution’s formation—<a href="http://cla.calpoly.edu/hist/faculty_profiles/foroohar_manzar.html">Manzar Foroohar</a>, an Iranian immigrant and <a href="http://cla.calpoly.edu/hist/faculty_profiles/foroohar_manzar.html">history professor </a><a href="http://cla.calpoly.edu/hist/faculty_profiles/foroohar_manzar.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">specializing</span></a> in the modern Middle East and Latin America at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo—came to the fore. However, the extent of her involvement was never publicly acknowledged. In fact, Foroohar authored and championed the resolution, which was presented by the <a href="http://www.calfac.org/peace-and-justice"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">CFA Peace &amp; Justice Committee</span></a> (Committee), unanimously adopted by the CFA <a href="http://www.calfac.org/cfa-board-directors">Board of Directors</a> on February 7, 2009, and passed by the CFA General Assembly in Sacramento on April 4-5 that same year.</p>
<p>Blandly titled, “CFA Call for a Halt to Violence Against All Civilians in Palestine and Israel,” the resolution was, in fact, blatantly <a href="http://www.standwithus.com/app/iNews/view_n.asp?ID=972"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">anti-Israel</span></a>. According to <em>University of California, Los Angeles,</em> <em>professor emeritus </em>Leila Beckwith writing <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/california_faculty_association.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">at <em>American Thinker</em></span></a> in January, 2010:</p>
<blockquote><p>The resolution states seven propositions that form the basis for the actions recommended. The propositions include affirming a moral equivalence between Israel defending its citizens from missile attacks and Hamas firing missiles against Israeli civilians, a misstatement of the conditions in Gaza, an omission of the U.N. Security Council’s condemnation of acts of terrorism, and a false charge against the U.S. of not seeking a just peace agreement.</p></blockquote>
<p>Why would an academic union that acts as an exclusive bargaining representative within CSU and is devoted to improving working conditions for its members pass a resolution regarding international affairs? It turns out CFA president and California State University, Los Angeles, history professor Lillian Taiz—according to interviews with CFA members, and as the list of <a href="http://www.calfac.org/peace-and-justice-committee-resolutions"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Committee resolutions</span></a> makes clear—appointed the members of a statewide Committee in 2008 for this very purpose. With the exception of Foroohar, none of the unelected committee members have any expertise in Middle East studies, which might explain why their names were <a href="http://www.calfac.org/overview/cfa-peace-justice-committee">not listed</a> on the resolution, nor was it <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/california_faculty_association.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">prominently displayed</span></a> on the CFA website in 2009. But during a phone interview, Stanley Oden, a professor in the department of government at Sacramento State University and a current member of the Committee, acknowledged that Foroohar was behind the 2009 resolution. Additionally, even though the names of Committee members <a href="http://www.calfac.org/overview/cfa-peace-justice-committee"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">no longer appear</span></a> at the CFA website, a <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20080820021557/http://www.calfac.org/peace.html"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">screen capture</span></a> from 2008 demonstrates that both Foroohar and Oden were on the committee not long before the resolution was passed.</p>
<p>The resolution was slipped quietly in front of CFA members—for whom monthly dues are mandatory— for endorsement; afterward, several of them, when contacted by this author, said they felt duped. Decrying “violence against civilians—whether in Palestine or Israel” in the “interest of peace and greater humanity in the region,” the wording of the resolution led CFA members to believe that by signing it they would simply be supporting innocent victims. They were also unaware of the level of anti-Israel activism engaged in by Foroohar and others on the Committee.</p>
<p>A cursory review of Foroohar’s academic work at Cal Poly reveals that she donates a good deal of her time both inside and outside the classroom to demonizing Israel, particularly by promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). Indeed, Foroohar, along with a number of <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/9711"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Middle East studies academics</span></a> teaching in California, is on the <a href="http://www.usacbi.org/about-us/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">organizing committee</span></a> for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic &amp; Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that <a href="http://bdsmovement.net/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">works internationally</span></a> to promote BDS.</p>
<p>The bibliographies and hand-outs (click <a href="http://www.omdurman.org/kaplan/214%20topic%208.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>, <a href="http://www.omdurman.org/kaplan/214%20topic%205-2.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a>, and <a href="http://www.omdurman.org/kaplan/214%20topic%2010-1.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">here</span></a> for examples) for Foroohar’s Middle East history courses reveal a biased professor trying to convince her students to blame Israel for the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and to reject Zionism. Student comments <a href="http://pr2.sigkill.com/eval.phtml?profid=213"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">at PolyRatings.com</span></a> demonstrate as much, with one of them flatly stating that, “This professor has an agenda. Her classes are nothing but propaganda to support her cause.”  Fittingly, she supports her “research” with pseudo-scholarship that reiterates standard anti-Israel propaganda, <a href="http://www.omdurman.org/kaplan/214%20topic%2010-1.pdf"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">including selections</span></a> from Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer’s <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/3581/is-campus-watch-part-of-a-conspiracy-on-mearsheimer-walt"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">notoriously shoddy</span></a> book <a href="http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_context=8&amp;x_nameinnews=189&amp;x_article=1105"><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Israel Lobby</span></em></a>.</p>
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