Good info on terror-tied Muslim groups on campus

[Dan Ben Noah]

A resource on Islamo-Nazism in our colleges and universities.  For better formatting, go to the link.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/20/muslim-hate-groups-on-campus-2/

Muslim Hate Groups on Campus
“The architects of the financial crash,” thundered Imam Amir -Abdel Malik-Ali, “Alan Greenspan, Zionist Jew, Geithner, Zionist Jew, Larry Summers, Zionist Jew.”1
The occasion for this statement was “Israel Apartheid Week” at the University of California, Irvine. Similar events occur at universities around the country and have become occasions when the already tense atmosphere for Jews on many campuses turns even grimmer. As Muslims and their leftist allies string barbed wire around “checkpoints” where pro-Palestinian activists brandish mock weapons and shout to passing students, “Are you Jewish?”2 They erect “Apartheid Walls” plastered with Hamas posters describing Jews as baby-
1 http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2011/08/uc_berkeley_students_for_justice_in_palestine.php
2 “Death to Apartheid“, Irvine, May 2010. For a profile of Malik-Ali, see DiscovertheNetworks.org
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killers and maps showing the Jewish state erased and replaced with “Palestine.”
The lead sponsors of the Israeli Apartheid weeks (and “Palestine Awareness” weeks, which have the same features) and the chief instigators of the campus attacks on Jews are members of two genetically connected groups, the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine. A civil rights lawsuit against the University of California, Berkeley, for failing to protect a Jewish student from a violent attack by an SJP activist notes that “the two groups [MSA and SJP] not only co-sponsor events and cooperate on strategic projects, but they even share the same office and campus facilities.” It further charges that “The more publicly activist SJP may be understood as the militant arm of the outwardly benevolent MSA.”3
Throughout the school year and across the country, the two groups sponsor extremist speakers who support terrorism against Israel and call for an Islamic jihad against the United States.4 Two-thirds
of Jewish students polled at the University of California believe that such events promote hate and
3 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/663.pdf
4
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violence against them,5 and a civil rights complaint filed by Jewish students at the university accuses both organizations of being responsible for campus anti-Semitism.6 Meanwhile the university, which reacts fiercely to intolerance directed at every other ethnic group, turns a blind eye when the victims are Jews.
While not every chapter of the Muslim Students Association is actively engaged in these hateful activities, none has condemned them or dissociated itself from the national organization to which they are formally affiliated. The national MSA is both the instigator and a staunch defender of the anti-Jewish speakers and events. When the University of Southern California removed from the campus MSA website the infamous saying of the Prophet Mohammed calling on Muslims to “fight the Jews and kill them” the national association protested this action as “religious persecution.”
There is a reason for this attitude. While it may pose as just another campus “cultural pride” group,
the Muslim Students Association was created by
5 http://www.americanfreedomalliance.org/newsletter/images/Letter-to-President-Yudof.pdf
6 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/663.pdf
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members of the Muslim Brotherhood some fifty years ago; and Brotherhood front groups are closely associated with the MSA to this day. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, an Islamic fundamentalist who was an open admirer of Adolf Hitler. Its doctrines combine a fundamentalist Islamic outlook with Nazi and Marxist influences. In 1948, the year Israel was struggling to be born, Hassan al-Banna said, “If the Jewish State becomes a fact, the Arabs will drive the Jews who live in their midst into the sea.”7 This is still the goal of the members of the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine, whose campus chant is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Israel is bounded by the Jordan River to the east and the Mediterranean Sea to the west.)
The Muslim Brotherhood’s leading thinker, Sayyid Qutb, wrote in an essay called “Our Struggle with the Jews”: “Behind the doctrine of atheistic materialism was a Jew; behind the doctrine of animalistic sexuality was a Jew; and behind the destruction of the family and the shattering of sacred relationships in society...was a Jew.” This is
7 Dana Adams Schmidt, “Aim to Oust Jews Pledged by Sheikh., New York Times. August 2, 1948.
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Nazi doctrine in its pure form. The current spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, Skeikh Yusuf Qaradawi, made the following statement on Al-Jazeera TV in 2005: “Throughout history Allah has imposed on [the Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler
. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers.”8
John Guandolo, a former FBI special agent, describes the Muslim Students Association as “a recruitment tool to bring Muslims into the Brotherhood.”9 This would explain why the training camps it sponsors in the summer for its budding cadre are dominated by officers of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and the Islamic Circle of North America, two Brotherhood fronts. Because the Muslim Students Association’s principal function is recruitment, its chapters often keep a low political profile and allow their sister organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, to engage in more aggressive political activities.
However, a large number of former Muslim
8 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=822
9 http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2011/March/Muslim-Student-Group-a-Gateway-to-Jihad/
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Students Association leaders have gone on to become leading figures in terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. Anwar al-Awlaki, for instance, was MSA president at Colorado State University10 before he became the leader of external operations for Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Ziyad Khaleel, was MSA president at Columbia College11 before he became Al-Qaeda’s procurement agent in the United States. Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, onetime MSA president at the University of South Alabama, is now the spokesman for the Al-Qaeda affiliate in
Somalia.12 Wa’el Hamza Julaidan was MSA president at the University of Arizona before he became a co-founder of Al-Qaeda.13
Some former MSA presidents are in prison on terrorism charges or actively involved in illegal activities. Abdul Rahman Alamoudi, a former MSA national president, is serving a 23-year sentence for illegal transactions with a state sponsor of ter10
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=7411
11 http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-muslim-student-associations-terror-
problem/
12 http://www.usavanguard.com/past-student-tied-to-al-qaida-1.424012#.Tqyms_SInlY
13 http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-muslim-student-associations-terror-
problem/
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rorism.14 The president of the Montgomery College MSA, Ali Asad Chandia, was sentenced to 15 years for providing material support to terrorists.15 The president of the MSA DC Council, Ramy Zamzam, was convicted in Pakistan of attempting to join the Taliban.16 Jamal Barzini, co-founder of the Muslim Students Association, was named in a federal affidavit as being “not only closely associated with PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad), but also with Hamas.”17 Two other Muslim Students Association co-founders, Hisham al-Talib and Ahmed Totanji, were also officers of the “Safa Group,” which funneled money to terrorist front groups.18
The Muslim Students Association has also raised money for terrorist support groups such as Global Relief Foundation, an Al-Qaeda front, and the Holy Land Foundation, a Hamas front.19 Barzini, al-Talib and Totanji were signatories to a letter promising support to the leaders of Palestinian
14 http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2004/October/04_crm_698.htm
15 http://www.globaljihad.net/view_page.asp?id=1906
16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_D.C._Five
17 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/891.pdf
18 Ibid.
19 “FBI Eyes Muslim Student Groups,” Associated Press, December 24, 2001.
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Islamic Jihad, an organization founded by Brotherhood members and headquartered in Syria that has killed more than a hundred civilians in suicide bombings in Israel.20 The lead signatory to this letter, Taha Jaber al-Alwani, was the chairman of the Fiqh Council of North America, which originated in the Religious Affairs Committee of the Muslim Students Association and was also targeted in the Operation Green Quest raids. In one article, al-Awlani claimed that the Jews had exploited the Holocaust “to ensure that the world – the whole world – remain beneath them.”21
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose martyr’s portrait adorns the MSA’s Israeli Apartheid Walls on U.S. campuses, publicly declared that “reconciliation with the Jews is a crime.”22 Sheikh Yassin was responsible for more than 380 terrorist killings. But when Israeli forces finally put an end to Yassin’s bloody career, the national Muslim Students Association issued a strongly worded condemnation praising his terrorist organization as “the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS)
20 Ibid.
21 http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=320161
22 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/2885
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that has engaged in armed resistance to the Israeli occupation.”23
It is no wonder, then, that the internal extremism of the Brotherhood shines through the MSA –through its leaders, its speakers and its publications. Al-Talib, the magazine of the MSA chapter at UCLA, praised Osama Bin Laden “as a freedom fighter.. who has forsaken wealth and power to fight in Allah’s cause.”24 Al-Kalima, the publication of the MSA chapter at the University of California, Irvine, ran an article glorifying Hamas, and asserting that Israeli executions of its leaders “will embolden the organization and those within it by making them stronger and eventually allowing them to succeed and reap the rewards they seek.”25
Rallying for Terror
Some MSA presidents have been able to discharge their campus duties even while working for a terrorist organization. Kamran A. Bokhari, MSA
23 http://web.archive.org/web/20050211160216/http://www.msa-national.org/news/yassin.htm
24 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=26821
25 http://www.alkalima.com/?page=Archives&vol=6&issue=3&id=51
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president at Southwest Missouri State University, also served as the spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun, an organization linked to several bomb attacks and plots. At a rally, Bokhari was taped leading a chant of “Hezbollah, Hezbollah! And we support Bin
Laden! Bin Laden! We support Bin Laden! What do we want? Jihad!”26
Ahmed Shama, the president of the UCLA MSA, led a crowd outside the Israeli embassy chanting “Victory to Islam!” and “Death to the Jews!”27 At the MSA West Conference at UCLA, he stated that Hamas was “doing the work on behalf of the Ummah in Palestine.... Their slogan has been quite
clear that the only solution to the current occupation is military resistance. Not shaking hands. Not dialogue.”28
At that same rally, Sohail Shakry, the president of MSA West, the umbrella organization of MSA chapters on the West Coast, enthusiastically quoted the leader of Hezbollah’s call for the destruction of Israel: “If we really want true peace then we must see that it goes with the elimination of the Zionist
26 http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/95
27 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30445
28 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/31.pdf p.5
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entity in the middle of the Muslim world.”29
MSA leaders not only praise terrorists; they in-
vite them to campuses and distribute their videos and press releases. Six months and a day before the attacks of September 11 2001, Syed Rahmatullah Hasimi, the senior advisor to Mullah Omar of the Taliban, was invited to speak at UCLA by the MSA chapter there.30 Other MSA chapters sold tapes of his appearance.31
At the same time, the UCLA chapter engaged in a campaign in behalf of Ahmad Chaudhry,32 a UC student who had been convicted of attempted murder after stabbing his roommates. According to Chaudhry, they had “humiliated my prophet” by making unflattering comments about Mohammed.33
The extremism of the UCLA Muslim Students
29 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30445
30 http://web.archive.org/web/20040214113001/http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/Taliban/talebanlec.html
31 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/31.pdf p.10
32 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=18870
33 http://web.archive.org/web/20020604045824/http://teamjihad.net/freechaudry.html
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Association is mirrored on campuses across the country. Ohio State University’s MSA used its publicaton MSANEWS to distribute terrorist bulletins from Hamas, Hezbollah, Al-Muhajiroun and even Osama Bin Laden.34 These bulletins included Bin Laden’s “Declaration of War” against the United States.35 (the introduction appended to Bin Laden’s words concluded: “Read and get ready for JIHAAD!!”) MSANEWS even maintained a special section dedicated to Bin Laden36 under its listing of “scholars,” which was featured on a CNN broadcast as an example of how Bin Laden used the Internet
to spread his teachings.37 An MSANEWS bulletin from Al-Muhajiroun praised the Al-Qaeda attacks on American embassies in Africa, saying, “American interests are not safe anywhere in the world,” and “the Mujahideen will seek out and obliterate them into rubble as happened today.”38
34 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32477
35 http://web.archive.org/web/20010209091713/http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199610/19961012.3.html
36 http://web.archive.org/web/19981205043011/http://msanews.mynet.net/Scholars/Laden/
37 CNN World View, July 15, 1997.
38 http://web.archive.org/web/20010302185337/http://msanews.mynet.net/MSANEWS/199808/19980809.15.html
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Muslim Student Mayhem at UC Irvine
One of the most notorious MSA chapters is housed at the University of California, Irvine,
where it is called the Muslim Student Union. The MSU has become notorious for its anti-Jewish attacks and for wearing the green sashes of Hamas during graduation ceremonies, as well as for raising funds for Hamas through Viva Palestina,39 a group that directly gives money to the terror organization’s leaders. Its violent obstruction of the Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s campus speech in 2010 led to the convictions of ten MSU members, including its president, Mohamed Abdelgany.
The Irvine MSU had previously disrupted a speech by Daniel Pipes. Afterward, an MSU member was recorded outside saying, “It’s just a matter of time before the state of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.”40 The MSU created an atmosphere of hate at Irvine by inviting speakers like black imam Abdel Malik-Ali, who told a campus audience, “Palestinian mothers are supporting their children who are suicide bombers, saying, ‘Go,
39 http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/4120
40 Daniel Treiman, “California Campuses Gain a Reputation as Hotbeds of Anti-Israel Rhetoric,” The Forward, April 06, 2007.
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honey, go!’ That ain’t suicide; that’s martyrdom.” The Irvine MSU has a documented record of threatening violence to Jewish students, throwing rocks at their opponents during demonstrations, and desecrating a Holocaust memorial. When its leaders were indicted for attacking Ambassador Oren, the national MSA defended them and their actions.41
Four months after the MSU’s assault on Ambassador Oren, the university’s Cross-Cultural Center rewarded the MSU with the Praxis Award for its campus campaigns against Israel. The award, which is determined by a selection committee consisting of faculty, staff and students, showed that despite the MSU’s temporary suspension by the administration as a result of its violent actions, it had a deep base of support at UC Irvine.42
When police were escorting them out of the Oren event, the MSU students shouted, “Whose university? Our university!” making it clear that they felt that UC Irvine belonged to them, not equally to the Jewish students in attendance.43 “Our
41 http://www.msanational.org/content/greenRamadan
42 http://www.investigativeproject.org/2939/uc-irvine-awards-msu-
legitimacy
43 http://blog.newvoices.org/?p=3673
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university” was the theme of their attack.
Judea Pearl, and a faculty member at UCLA and the father of Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamic terrorists, described the MSU’s events as “a week-long lynching of Jewish identity” and called UC Irvine the “proving ground for a nationally orchestrated Israel-defamation campaign.”44
The MSU organized an event called “A World Without Israel,” which stigmatized Jewish cultural identity and Israel’s achievements. The event was attended by Vice Chancellor Manuel Gomez, who has repeatedly defended the MSU, and who described “A World Without Israel” as an example of Irvine’s commitment to free speech.45 In response to Jewish student complaints at UC Irvine, Gomez said, “One person’s hate speech is another person’s education.”
Daniel Alouan, a former Irvine student, was forced to leave the campus because the MSU’s constant harassment resulted in an atmosphere where
44 http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/the_crucible_of_uc_irvine_20090527/
45 http://www.newuniversity.org/2005/06/opinion/respecting_free_speech_in119/
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“Jewish students showed the fear in their faces.”46 Other Jewish students at Irvine avoided wearing symbols or clothing that might identify them as Jewish. 47 As well they might, since Irvine is a campus where Jewish students are called “dirty Jew” and “f____g Jew,” echoing the student fee funded bigotry of the speakers invited to spread hate on campus by the MSU.
But nothing the MSU did at Irvine – expressing support for terrorism, hijacking the Holocaust, inviting prophets of hate to speak, disrupting Jewish student events, allegedly vandalizing Jewish campus facilities, making threats against students48 – dampened the enthusiastic support it received from MSA chapters across the country.
The Muslim Face on Campus
As the seeds of hatred were sown by MSA chapters across the country, many wondered why
46 Brad A. Greenberg, “Quiet War on Campus: Israel Remains Under Attack Despite Fever Public Protests,” Jewish Journal,. August 2008.
47 http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=2104
48 http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/081506campusantibrief07.pdf
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campus administrators who make a fetish of toler-ance when it comes to other ethnic groups (includ-
ing, particularly, Muslim groups) did nothing to protect Jewish students. One of the reasons – in
addition to an atmosphere of political correctness that privileges groups associated with the political left is the way the MSA generally presents itself as the organization of all Muslim students on campus, and treats criticisms of its actions as attacks on Muslim students as such.
This is a standard tactic of the Muslim Brotherhood, which invented the term “Islamophobia” to stigmatize its critics.49 “The first edition of the MSA Guide for its members says “the student body must be convinced that there is such a thing as a Muslim-bloc especially when it comes to voting.” “When student election time comes around, candidates should be trying to trip over themselves in order to speak to the MSA
membership in order to solicit their votes.”50
In assuming a role as the official face of the
49 David Horowitz and Robert Spencer, Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future, a pamphlet published by the David Horowitz Freedom Center,
available on Kindle.
50 http://web.archive.org/web/20030225195749/http://www.msa-natl.org/publications/startersguide.html
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Muslim students on campus, the MSA has positioned itself as an identity group, protected under prevailing campus sensitivity for multiculturalism. This posture has brought it the power to discourage individual Muslim students from
speaking out against the organization, despite its history of terrorist affiliations and extremist positions.
The MSA has also been able to build its position on an exclusionist Islamic solidarity that is part of the culture of Islam itself. the MSA Guide declares, “We are commanded by Allah ‘And hold fast, together, by the Rope which Allah (stretches out for you), and be not divided among yourselves.’” (3:102)51 The third chapter of the Koran is also notorious for its Jew-hatred and antagonism toward “infidels” – i.e., non-Muslims. A handful of verses later, it enjoins Muslims against having non-Muslim friends: “O ye who believe! take not others than your own people as intimate friends; they will not fail to corrupt you.” (3:118)
Such religious instructions reinforce the dominance the MSA aspires to achieve in the campus
Muslim community. Amir Mertaban, president
51 Ibid.
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of the MSA at California State Polytechnic University, invoked the idea of religious solidarity when he urged Muslims to remain silent in the face of Islamic extremism and in precisely religious terms: “War in Iraq or Afghanistan or Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein.
Don’t ever compromise on Islam.... Support your Muslim brothers whether it is right or wrong.”52
A Hate Speech Establishment
In the spring of 2011, Imam Abdel Malik-Ali appeared at the MSA West Conference, which was held at UCLA. Ali was featured at three separate events, more than any other speaker.53 He led his audience in the MSA version of the Muslim Brotherhood pledge of allegiance: “Jihad is my spirit. Righteousness is my character. Paradise is my goal. For I enjoin what is right. I forbid what is wrong. I will fight against oppression. And I will die to establish Islam.”54
52 http://msawest.net/multi/msa-west-2011-conference
53 http://msawest.net/multi/msa-west-2011-conference. He was also featured at the MSA Southeast annual conference. http://www.uncmsa.org/msa-weekly-announcements-feb-8-feb-13
54 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/WhatWillYourImpactBe.html
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Malik-Ali is a former member of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and an open supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda. He is equally open about his bigotry toward Jews, telling his audience at UC Irvine, “Don’t worry about anti-Semitic talk, it’s not anti-Semitism. It’s anti-racism.”55 In speeches to the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine, Malik-Ali claimed that the Jews were behind the attacks of September 1156 and equally implausibly that the Matthew Shepard Act to protect gays and other minorities against persecution was a Zionist conspiracy to criminalize Holocaust denial and criticism of Israel.57 He also ranted, in classic anti-Semitic style, about the “disproportionate numbers of Jews, Zionist Jews, in the media, in finance and foreign policy.”58
At an MSA event at San Francisco State University, Malik - Ali appeared on Holocaust Memorial Day to deliver a rant in praise of Palestinian suicide bombers. Five days earlier, a flyer distributed at an event co-sponsored by
55 “Death to Apartheid”, Irvine, May 2010.
56 “America Under Siege: The Zionist Hidden Agenda”, Irvine, Feb 2004.
57 “Death to Apartheid”, Irvine, May 2010.
58 “To Exist is to Resist”, Irvine, May 2009.
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the MSA featured an image of a dead baby
with a headline reprising the medieval blood libel:
“Palestinian Children Meat – Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License.”59
Malik-Ali has not been alone in spreading Jew-hatred on the MSA speaking circuit. When he called Hamas and Hezbollah part of the “Islamic Revival” that would destroy Zionism at an MSA- sponsored event at Irvine, he was joined by other anti-Israel demagogues: Imam Mohammed al-Asi, Norman Finkelstein and the parents of Rachel Corrie.60 During Holocaust Memorial Week, Imam Abdul Alim Musa, the founder of an organization that he calls the Islamic Institute of Counter-Zionist American Psychological Warfare, accused Jews of funding the slave trade.61 Mohammed al-Asi, another frequent MSA speaker said, “We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings.... And, now they have American diplomats and politicians and decision makers and strategists
59 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/17591/size-vitriol-of-anti-zionist-rally-surprises-sfsu-jews/
60 “Never Again? The Palestinian Holocaust,” Irvine, May 2008.
61 http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/sabiqun_anti-semitism.htm?Multi_page_sections=sHeading_3
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in their pocket because they have the money.”62
The Muslim Students Association sent Sheikh Khalid Yasin on a speaking tour during which he addressed students at Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University and the University of Minnesota, among other campuses. Yasin has said that women should be beaten and homosexuals should be killed, and has described Christianity and Judaism as “filth.”63
Much of the funding for this hate comes from student fees, which university administrations provide to student activities boards for “educational” purposes. Professor Ward Churchill, who was fired from the University of Colorado after referring to the victims of 9/11 as “Little Eichmanns,” is an MSA speaker who earns as much as $15,000 – distributed from student fees – per appearance. At Penn State, $14,000 in student activity fees were allocated to the MSA and SJP. At the University of Pennsylvania, the MSA received $20,000, while the UPenn College Republicans received $0. At Columbia, the MSA was given $15,000, while the
62 http://www.investigativeproject.org/239/muhammad-al-asi-ghetto-jews
63 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2319
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College Republicans received $1,500.64
The role of the MAS’s subsidized speakers is to drive home a message that the MSA also disseminates through its literature and its websites. At Berkeley65 and Wayne State University, for example, this included the distribution of copies of the notorious anti-Semitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which is the template for all the accusations of Jewish conspiracies from czarist Russia to Nazi Germany.66
At the University of Toronto, the MSA screened a film depicting Jews as Christ-killers who were conspiring to control the media and the banks.67 The MSA chapters at Dartmouth and the University of Southern California both posted on their websites the saying of the Prophet Mohammed that is incorporated in the Hamas Charter: “The Last Hour will not come till the Muslims fight against the Jews,
64 http://www.terrorismawareness.org/campus-news/224/funding-campus-extremism/
65 http://www.adl.org/special_reports/protocols/protocols_contemporary.asp
66 American Jewish Committee, “Review of the Year 1987,” p 127.
67 Democracy Off Balance: Freedom of Expression and Hate Propaganda Law in Canada, Stefan Braun, University of Toronto, 2004 p.124.
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until a Jew will hide himself behind a rock or a tree and the rock or the tree will say: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.’ The commentary on the Dartmouth site added: “The Jews have predominance over the Muslims in spite of the fact that they are a minority. But according to this true narration, the situation will definitely change before the Day of Resurrection, and the Muslims will dominate the Jews.”68
Instances like these are what the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was referring to when it found that on many campuses, “anti-Israeli or anti-Zionist propaganda has been disseminated that include traditional anti-Semitic elements, including age-old anti-Jewish stereotypes and defamation.”
Jewish Enablers of the MSA
Aside from the occasional protest over particularly hateful MSA speakers, the organization has been able to maintain good relations with other groups on campus, often including Jewish organizations, and has even been defended by them. This
68 http://web.archive.org/web/20030421234820/www.dartmouth.edu/~alnur/ISLAM/HADITH/RIYADH_AS_SALIHEEN/book19.htm
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can be explained in part by the effectiveness of the MSA’s posture as a cultural and religious group. The atmosphere on campus is shaped by the left to present Muslims – but not Jews – as a persecuted group and to establish a narrative whereby students who challenge the MSA are “racists” and “Islamophobes.” This creates an intimidating prospect for any individual or group that challenges the MSA’s actions. To dissociate themselves from this stigma and to forestall even worse attacks on the campus Jewish community, many Jewish organizations engage in outreach activities with the MSA, and even defend it from its critics.
An illustrative instance of this was the reaction to appearances by David Horowitz at the University of California’s Santa Barbara campus in 2009 and 2011. Horowitz had taken out ads in campus papers, including the UCSB Daily Nexus, drawing the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and the MSA. When he spoke on campus in 2009 he was denounced in the Nexus by members of the MSA and Students for Justice in Palestine as a “racist” and “Islamophobe,” and a concerted effort was made to prevent the College Republicans who had invited him from receiving funds to put on the event.
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When Horowitz finally spoke, over thirty members of the Muslim Students Association, including their president, were in the audience, some
wearing the kaffiyeh, which has become a symbol of Palestinian terrorism. Horowitz noted the presence
of these MSA members in his audience several
times during the speech and asked them directly if they would “condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization.” None would.69 During the question - and - answer session, the first speaker identified himself as the president of the MSA. Horowitz asked him if he would condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization. The MSA president’s response: “That’s too complicated for a yes/no answer.”70
Horowitz then said, “Let me put it to you this way, then. I am a Jew and the head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he won’t have to hunt us down globally. For it or against it?” Again, the MSA president refused to answer, and Horowitz said, well then I guess we know what your answer is. When Horowitz asked the same question of an MSA student at UC San
69 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=30959
70 http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/15/the-anti-semitic-jihad-on-campus-my-night-at-usc/. video of speech at http://Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-BsElcG6hA
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Diego a year later, she hesitated for a long time and then finally leaned into the microphone and said, “For it.” The video of this exchange has gone viral on YouTube.71
When the UCSB College Republicans invited Horowitz to speak again in 2011, the MSA and SJP led a coalition of the left that attacked them as racists and Islamophobes. The coalition put up a five-hour battle in the Student Council to prevent the College Republicans from getting funds for the event. This battle led to a First Amendment challenge by the civil liberties group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and a ruling from the university that the College Republicans would have to be reimbursed for the money they were denied.
The coalition formed to deny Horowitz an opportunity to speak was joined by the UC Santa Barbara rabbi on the specific grounds that Horowitz had linked the Muslim Students Association with the Muslim Brotherhood. The rabbi observed that the UCSB MSA was not formally affiliated with the national MSA. This
71
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was true. But it was also true that leaders of the UCSB MSA with support from student funds attended the MSA West - conference at UCLA that was key-
noted by Abdel Malik-Ali. It also shared a name with the national MSA and had never dissociated itself from the hateful activities of the MSA, including its sponsorship of Israeli Apartheid events. The campus Jewish organization joined with the MSA and SJP in co-authoring a letter to the Daily Nexus asserting that “The UCSB MSA is an incredibly valuable member of our campus” and claiming that the “accusation that the UCSB MSA has ties to terrorism is not only baseless but inaccurate.”72
At the University of Pennsylvania, the Horowitz Freedom Center took out an ad opposing the Israeli Apartheid Weeks sponsored by Muslim Students Associations on other campuses. The ad specifically challenged the claim that Israel was created on land that belonged to “Palestinians” or “Arabs.” It pointed out that the land on which Israel was created had belonged to the Turks (who were neither Palestinians nor Arabs) for 400 years prior to Israel’s birth. In response, a letter was sent to the editor of the Daily Pennsylvanian signed by the president of
72 http://www.dailynexus.com/2011-05-26/jewish-muslim-students-unite-debunk-horowitzs-claims/
29
the Muslim Students Association, the president of “Penn for Palestine” (formerly Students for Justice in Palestine) and Jewish student leaders. Claim
ing to speak for Penn’s Jewish and Muslim communities, the letter’s signatories called the ad “hor-
rifying and divisive.”73 When contacted, however, the UPenn rabbi agreed that the ad was entirely factual.
Similarly, Jewish officials at Yale, UC Santa Barbara, Florida State University and the University of North Carolina came to the defense of the Muslim Students Association when the Horowitz Freedom Center published another ad in their campus papers calling the claim that Israel stole Palestinian land a “genocidal lie.” The Slifka Center at Yale, the hub of Jewish life on campus, took out a full-page counter-ad in the Yale Daily News saying: “We reject attempts by outsiders to inject hateful ideas to our campus discourse
We have a proud tradition of respectful Jewish-Muslim dialogue on campus. We have great respect for Yale’s Muslim Students Association, which does not spread hateful lies about Israel.” The ad went
73 http://www.dailypennsylvanian.com/article/guest-column-statement-principles
30

[Dan Ben Noah]

on to say “In this spirit of respectful dialogue we welcome Imam Abdel Faisal Rauf to campus today under the auspices of Jews and Muslims at Yale.”74 Rauf is the imam who has sought to build an eleven-story mosque adjacent to the site of the former Twin Towers. Rauf is also notorious for refusing to condemn Hamas and for suggesting that America was itself responsible for 9/11.
The principal Jewish organization at the University of North Carolina sent a letter to the Daily Tar Heel claiming that its members and the MSA have been working together productively at UNC for years, modeling true interfaith partnership.75 But the UNC MSA is affiliated with MSA Southeast, whose conference speakers have included Imam Amir Abdel Malik-Ali, Sheikh Khalid Yasin and El-Hajj Mauri Saalakhan. The letter has claimed that the Palestinians were the victims of a Holocaust perpetrated by the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors,76 has denied the Sudanese genocide77 and has writ74
Yale Daily News, March 23, 2011; http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/29/how-not-to-defend-yourself-as-a-jew-at-yale/
75 http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/03/ad_incorrectly_portrays_msa_hillel_as_opposed
76 http://web.archive.org/web/20100325212506/http://www.thepalestiniansholocaust.com/
77 http://www.peacethrujustice.org/sudan_and_slavery.htm
31
ten that “Bin Laden’s real crime revolves around
his willingness to voice (on a public stage) some of the things that millions of other Muslims around the world feel.”78
At Florida State University, the main Jewish organization even joined with MSA to form “The Palestinian-Israeli Coalition Against Hate,”79 which was directed against the students who had protested the lies of Israeli Aprtheid Week.
Part of the reason for the campus success of the MSA is that it operates like the Communist fronts of old, which presented their agendas as “peace,” “equality” and “justice.” Many unsuspecting individuals joined Communist fronts who had no idea what their actual political agendas were. This is true of many of the students who join the Muslim Students Associations today, drawn by the organization’s promise to connect them to their religious and cultural roots. The Muslim Students Association can retain its influence, however, only if troublesome questions about its true agendas and real allegiances remain submerged. To accomplish
78 http://www.peacethrujustice.org/SpecialReport.htm
79 http://www.fsunews.com/article/20110317/FSVIEW/110316031/
Students-take-sides-Israel-Palestine
32
this, the campus left has mounted a prodigious effort to designate such questions as “offensive” and “divisive,” so that campus editors will not raise them (or permit paid political advertisements raising them). Meanwhile, students who do raise them are stigmatized as “Islamophobes.” This is the way its alliances with the campus Jewish organizations work. The Jewish organizations seek outreach to the Muslim organizations. But the condition of the dialogue is that “offensive” questions or observations or requests remain off the table.
Students for Justice in Palestine
While most campus liberals, including the Jewish leaders participating in the incidents above, are taken in by the cultural-religious façade of the Muslim Students Association, they understand that the secular organization Students for Justice in Palestine is a radical anti-Israel organization that makes no attempt to hide its agenda of obliterating the Jewish state. What they don’t understand are the deep ties of Students for Justice in Palestine to the MSA and its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood.
33
Students for Justice in Palestine was created in
Berkeley in 2001. Originally describing itself as a coalition, SJP was constructed by experienced
Islamist and Marxist activists for the sole purpose of waging a campus war against the Jewish state. The year 2000 marked the beginning of the Sec-
ond Intifada against Israel, the Intifada of the suicide bombers. This Intifada also coincided with a growth in the power of Hamas and an intensification of the political left’s animus against Israel and the Jews. It was the backdrop against which SJP was born.
Hatem Bazian, a senior lecturer in Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, is a co-founder of the organization who achieved national notoriety in 2004 by calling for an Intifada in the United States.80 Bazian had come to America from Nablus, a Hamas stronghold. Before starting SJP at Berkeley, he had served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students at San Francisco State University.81 The GUPS is the worldwide student arm of the terrorist PLO, a fact which caused it to be banned in Germany after the Munich Olym80
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1165
81 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2173; http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Hatem-Bazian
34
pics massacre.82
Jewish students remembered Bazian’s years at San Francisco State as years of terror. Bazian worked his way up through the student government while conducting a private war against Jewish students any students with Jewish last names who aspired to student government positions were interrogated about their views on Israel and rejected even if they were in favor of a two-state solution.83 A mural was commissioned for the campus depicting Malcolm X surrounded by skulls and crossbones and Stars of David. When protests followed, Jewish students were barred from Bazian’s press conference in support of the mural.84 In response to the Anti-Defamation League’s attempts to monitor hate on campus and train Jewish students to counter bigotry, Bazian accused Hillel – the campus’s main Jewish organization – of serving as the ADL’s spy network and drummed up a campaign of vilification against it.85 Jewish students were accused of acting as Hillel spies and evicted from meetings.
82 “Germany Kicks Out Arabs,”,Associated Press, Oct. 1972.
83 Kevin Bark, “Campus Jews Struggle with Anti-Semitism,” Golden Gater,. May 1993.
84 The Golden Gater, May 26, 1994.
85 http://safesf.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/media_part2.pdf
35
Bazian and his cronies also attacked the student newspaper, the Golden Gater, when it refused to print their accusations; they destroyed hundreds of copies of the paper while shouting anti-Semitic slurs.86
Rabbi Doug Kahn of the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council said, “Hatem Bazian was more responsible than any other student on campus for trying to make life miserable for Jewish students.”87 The vice president for academic affairs admitted that numerous students had reported anti-Semitic behavior by Bazian. A Jewish student from the USSR said that because of Bazian’s agitations she was “more scared than ever of anti-Semitism.”88
Bazian moved on to Berkeley and headed the Muslim Students Association while he was a doctoral student. In 1999, he appeared at the “United for al-Quds” conference in Santa Clarita, California, co-sponsored by the American Muslim Alli86
Jeffrey Yitzchak Santis, Anti-Semitism at SFSU Worth of “Twilight Zone’” Jewish Bulletin,. May 1993.
87 Jonathan Mahler, “Howard’s End: Why a Leading Jewish Studies Scholar Gave Up His Academic Career”, Lingua Franca,. March 1997.
88 http://safesf.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/media_part2.pdf
36
ance and the Holy Land Foundation. The HLF was later shut down as a Hamas funder and front, and its officers were put on trial. Bazian founded the American Muslim Association with another Berkeley grad and University of California professor, Agha Saeed. The AMA’s support of Hamas eventually led Hillary Clinton to return Saeed’s contributions to her campaign. When Hamas won the Gaza elections in 2006, Bazian called it “a monumental event.”89 In one essay he described Hamas as “a classical anti-colonial nationalist and religious guerrilla movement.”90
Students for Justice in Palestine bears Bazian’s stamp. It works with other Hamas front groups, in particular the Islamic Association of Palestine91 and American Muslims for Palestine.92 The IAP was created by a Hamas leader and raised money for the terrorist organization.93 One of the speakers at the conference was Sami al-Arian, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in America, a terrorist or89
“Mixed Local Reaction to Hamas’ Win,” Oakland Tribune,. January 2006.
90 http://www.hatembazian.com/id4.html
91 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/sjpstand4facts25.html
92 http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/amp_student_activity.htm
93 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=20983
37
ganization responsible for more than one hundred suicide-bombing murders. Bazian himself was the founder of American Muslims for Palestine, a group that coordinated with SJP and provided training to SJP activists,94 and whose board and leadership also included Hamas fundraisers.
For all its pretense of being a secular organization committed to democracy, SJP is, in fact, a partisan of Islamist terrorists. It is committed to a life-and-death struggle against Israel and hostile to any students, both Jewish and non-Jewish, who have the temerity to defend it. The SJP’s campus focus on Gaza coincided with the rise of Hamas’s rule there.
Its verbal – and sometimes physical – violence against Jewish students and faculty coincided with the violence of the Second Intifada, and its assaults on the memory of the Holocaust echoed Hamas’s own Holocaust denial.
As Bazian earned his PhD and made the transition from student activist to faculty activist, he expanded his influence through regular speaking tours sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the country. He is an affiliate of the
94 http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Israel/amp_student_activity.htm
38
Center for Middle Eastern Studies,95 which was set up with a five-million-dollar grant from Saudi Arabia’s Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Foundation.96
This organization awarded a fellowship to Abbas Kadhim, a graduate student instructor, for defending the authenticity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion during a classroom discussion.97
A co-founder of SJP along with Bazian was Snehal Shingavi, a member of the Trotskyist International Socialist Organization. The ISO is a splinter faction with a history of supporting terrorists.98
Shingavi, a South Indian, drew national attention when he offered an English writing course called “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance” and told conservative students not to apply.99 In the face of a national backlash after the Fox News channel made the affair public, UC Berkeley officials made Shingavi drop the ban on conservative students but allowed him to continue the course, despite the fact that he had been arrested for conducting illegal demonstrations on campus.
95 http://cmes.berkeley.edu/people-faculty
96 http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/98legacy/11-23-1998c.html
97 http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=12913
98 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6399
99 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/printgroupProfile.asp?grpid=6379
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Shingavi’s course was little more than a cele-
bration of terrorist propaganda and a demonization of Israel. Shingavi is a public supporter of a one
state solution in the Middle East, i.e., the destruction of Israel.100 In a Hardball interview defending the course, he declared that the occupation began in 1948, the date of the creation of the Jewish state.101
Despite his Marxism, Shingavi was no opponent of theocratic regimes or Islamist terrorists, instead justifying the holy warriors by re-interpreting their
terrorism in Marxist jargon. In an International Socialist Review article, Shingavi explained that the Taliban were fighting against landlords and against the exploitation of workers.102 Of the Iraqi terrorists, Shingavi wrote: “The Iraqi resistance is an organic movement of fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters who are Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, working class, intellectuals, secular, Islamist, and Arab nationalists all united by their opposition to the [American] occupation.”103 In a Socialist Worker article, Shingavi made the convoluted argument that Hamas’s victory would actually pave the way
100 http://socialistworker.org/2008/08/08/one-state-with-equal-rights
101 http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/49
102 http://www.isreview.org/issues/66/rep-pakistan.shtml
103 http://archive.dailycal.org/article/17679/just_another_american_
publicity_stunt
40
not only for the destruction of Israel but also for
the creation of a secular state: “As a consequence, support for the idea of a secular, democratic state in Palestine has made a comeback. An important
indicator of this shift was the election of the Islamist party Hamas to the Palestinian Authority’s parliament.”104
Through such double think, Marxists like Shingavi were able to reconcile their coalition with Islamists like Bazian, creating the red-green alliance on which Students for Justice in Palestine was built. The alliance gave the MSA access to a broader coalition with left-wing activists who were practiced in the arts of intimidation and grievance. It gave the fringe Marxists, like Shingavi, a much bigger platform to operate from, making them both less isolated in the campus community and more protected as the champions of a “persecuted” religious group. But the alliance was – as all alliances with religious zealots are destined to be – entirely one-sided. In practice, Students for Justice in Palestine has no priorities higher than those of the MSA, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
104 http://wwww.socialistworker.org/2008/08/08/one-state-with-equal-rights
41
When SJP was founded in 2001, it staged an agit-prop event involving the erection of checkpoints, refugee camps, and war crimes tribunals for Jews. The following year, after the Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust organized by Jewish students had just concluded, SJP launched a counter-demonstration in which they chained shut the doors to Wheeler Hall, a classroom building in the center of campus, and demanded that the UC
Regents join the Arab League’s secondary boycott of Israel by divesting from companies that did business with the Jewish state.105
Students were expelled from Wheeler Hall through one door, while two other doors were physically blocked by SJP members in a real-life checkpoint. A banner was draped from the second floor declaring that Wheeler was now “Muhammad Al-Durra Hall,”106 named after the Palestinian youth whose shooting had falsely been blamed on Israelis.
While SJP was conducting its blockade, Professor Mel Gordon was on his way to teach a
105 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/19382/u-c-berkeley-settlement-lets-anti-israel-protesters-off-hook/
106 http://www.ccmep.org/hotnews/group042501.html
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class. Gordon had taught at the Lee Strasberg Institute and had been a professor of dramatic art at Berkeley for eleven years at that time. But more importantly, Professor Gordon was Jewish. As he was carrying his projector and slides, and trying to reach his students, SJP members spat on him and then beat him. Hussain Mohsen, an SJP member, hit him so hard in the stomach that Gordon
required medical treatment afterward.107
When campus police attempted to detain Mohsen, SJP members protected him, and then produced a doctored video in his defense. While the case was being decided, SJP members continued to harass Gordon, driving by his house, calling him with death threats and intimidating him in the courtroom during Mohsen’s trial. The assault on Gordon would have been the ideal time for UC Berkeley administrators to tackle the threat posed by SJP; they could have put the organization on probation or withdrawn its official recognition altogether. Instead the university turned a blind eye to the group, thus encouraging its members to continue their hate.
After 9/11, the College Republicans and the
107 http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/667.pdf#page=2
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Cal Berkeley Democrats organized a “Rally for America” event. Members of the SJP showed up wearing kaffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags, and yelling “Go back to Israel!” at students perceived to be Jewish.108
Then, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2002, Jewish students gathered for a 24-hour reading of the names of the victims of the Nazis. Students for
Justice in Palestine countered with an anti-Israel rally featuring Israeli flags covered in swastikas and signs that read: “Magen David = Swastika” and “Israel lovers are the Nazis of our time.”109 Then they headed to Wheeler Hall for another takeover to demand that the university boycott Israel.
Seventy-nine protesters were arrested, only forty-one of them actual students. The university temporarily suspended SJP, but while apologizing profusely for doing so. Undeterred, Bazian led a protest against the arrests. “Take a look at the type of names on the buildings around campus,” he told the protesters. “Haas, Zellerbach - and decide who
108 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/16540/u-c-berkeley-jews-cite-vocal-anti-israel-activity/
109 http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/berkeley-intifada/Content?oid=1074117
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controls this university.”110
Nine years after the Mohsen incident, on March 5, 2010, the SJP-backed “Israeli Apartheid Week” was taking place at the same time as an “Israeli Peace and Diversity Week,” organized by pro-Israel
activists. As part of the pro-Israeli event, a student named Jessica Felber stood holding a sign that read, “Israel Wants Peace.” The SJP president, Husam
Zakharia, who had been cited two years earlier for battery after attacking a Jewish student at a concert while his SJP entourage shouted that Jews were “dogs” and threatened to kill them,111 approached her from behind and rammed her with a shopping cart, leaving her to seek medical treatment at the campus Urgent Care Center.
The takeovers of university facilities, apartheid walls and checkpoints are metaphors for the SJP occupation of the Berkeley campus, not only during Israeli Apartheid Week, but day after day, semester after semester.
In the dark of night there is vandalism of Jew
110 http://www.jweekly.com/includes/print/17974/article/u-c-divestment-petition-troubles-pro-israel-activists/
111 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/128401
45
ish facilities in broad day light there are assaults on Jewish students and throughout the school year there are courses tought by SJP veterans who take Israeli Apartheid Week into the classroom and turn it into part of an indoctrination curriculum. After a series of assaults around University of California campuses, including Berkeley, Davis and Irvine, during the
third year of SJP’s activity, Jewish students were
advised to walk in groups to and back from reli-
gious services.112 The glass door of Berkeley’s Hillel building was shattered with a cinderblock. Even the University Lutheran Chapel was targeted with graffiti that read: “Free Palestine” and “F__ Israel” accompanied by bloody handprints.113
The window of the UC Davis Hillel was smashed and its Israeli flag set on fire, with the flames spreading to the roof. The police had been notified beforehand that an attack by pro-Palestinian activists was expected, but took no action.114 A sukkah on campus, a temporary religious structure, was van
112 http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/08/us/mideast-turmoil-colleges-campus-tensions-growing-with-support-for-palestinians.html
113 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/17595/spate-of-anti-jewish-anti-israel-vandalism-in-berkeley/
114 http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/15616/u-c-davis-hillel-attacked-in-suspected-hate-incident/
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dalized with the words “Free Palestine” and “End Israeli occupation.”115 Swastikas popped up on
campus after campus, on SJP leaflets and defaced
Israeli flags, on bathroom walls and dorm hallways and doors.
By now, SJP had spread to campuses across
America. At Georgetown, SJP erected a twenty-
foot apartheid wall with student funds. At Chicago University and Yale, the SJP chapters distributed fake eviction notices in dorms. At Hampshire College, Jewish students were abused and threatened.116 SJP chapters host leading terrorists as their speakers, including the head of Islamic Jihad in America and the head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,117 which pioneered terrorist airplane hijackings, most notably the Dawson’s Field hijackings of five planes bound for New York City, often cited as the precedent for the attacks of September 11. SJP’s own propaganda has displayed sympathy for the Dawson hijackings, using a key figure of the attacks, Leila
115 http://spme.net/cgi-bin/articles.cgi?ID=3018
116 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/20/anti-semitism-at-hampshire-college/
117 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/alawdaprof.html
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Khaled, on posters.118
SJP’s biggest and most obscene production is perhaps a national “Never Again for Anyone” tour that uses International Holocaust Remembrance Day to promote hatred of Israel and Jews. SJP chapters around the country sponsor these “Never Again for Anyone” events, which feature praise for Hamas, denunciations of Jews as “Nazi-Jews” and worshipers of a “Holocaust religion,” denunciations of Muslims willing to conduct peace negotiations as “collaborators,” and outright Holocaust denial.119
“Islamophobia” and the Assault on Free Speech
A third founder of Students for Justice in Palestine was Will Youmans, an Arab rapper whose stage name was the Iron Sheik. Despite the commonplace racism in the Muslim world and the Sudanese genocide of Africans, pro-Palestinian activists frequently appropriate elements of African
118 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/02/28/uclas-palestine-awareness-week-students-for-the-extermination-of-israel/
119 http://www.standwithus.com/app/inews/view_n.asp?ID=1764
and African-American culture and history, from hip-hop to apartheid, for their own agenda. You-
mans’ lyrics include “From the seeds of 48/ From
colonial deceit to the Jewish state” and “I said our taxes paid for this damn prison/ let me out now or I’ll resort to terrorism.”
During the early years of SJP, Youmans led the organization in a campaign against the Daily Cali-
fornian newspaper over an issue that had little to
do with Palestine and a great deal to do with expos-
ing SJP’s Islamist roots and its hostility to free speech.120 A week after the attacks of September 11, Darrin Bell drew a cartoon depicting two Muslim terrorists who expect to find 72 virgins in paradise but instead find themselves in the hand of the devil among the flames of hell. The flight manual lying to the side makes it clear that Bell was referring to the September 11 hijackers.
Bell was a Berkeley grad himself and the first African-American cartoonist to have two strips syndicated nationally. Well to the left of most cartoonists, Bell was no conservative or war hawk, and no racist. The cartoon did not mention Muslims by name; it reflected the attitude
120 http://archive.dailycal.org/printable.php?id=6337
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of many Americans toward terrorists who hoped to make it to paradise by killing others. Students for Justice in Palestine nevertheless marched on the Daily Californian offices in outrage. “I thought when I came to Berkeley that hate, hateful speech was not to be permitted,” Youmans said.121 “Freedom of speech should not come at the
cost of anyone’s safety,” chimed in Robert Chala, another SJP member. “This cartoon is a license for violence.”122
But in this case, SJP was popular-fronting with the MSA, which was the real motivating force behind the assault on the Daily Californian. The MSA was offended because the cartoon mocked Islamic beliefs about the martyrdom of terrorists. By suggesting that their “martyrs” really wound up in hell, Darrin Bell had enraged the acolytes of the Muslim Brotherhood. Showing the contempt of the MSA for the First Amendment rights it was quick to claim for itself, Basim Elkarra, president of Berkeley’s MSA chapter said, “Feeling bad is one thing, but we want action. This is hate speech,
121 http://smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?type=lnews&id=7308&eddate=
122 http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/protesters-denounce-cartoon-stage-sit-in-at-college-newspaper
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not free speech.’’123
“They have to be held accountable,” Wajahat Ali of the MSA said. “The false representation
by the media is directly responsible for the current hostile, angry and fearful attitude of average Americans toward Muslims and Arabs, and this is
unacceptable.”124 (Ali later went on to co-author the 2011 Center for American Progress report attacking critics of Islamic misogyny and terror as Islamophobes.)125
But the Daily Californian rejected the protesters’ demands. The activists responded by hacking the Daily Californian website and inserting a fake apology for the cartoon. Copies of the paper were stolen and the ASUC student senate passed a bill demanding an apology and mandatory sensitivity training for the newspaper staff. Another bill attempted to raise the newspaper’s rent.126 Sajid
123 Matthai Chakko Kuruvila, “Campus Newspaper Cartoon Draws UC-Berkeley Protest, ” Mercury News, Sept. 2001.
124 http://archive.dailycal.org/article/6337/crowd_occupies_daily_
californian_office_over_contr
125 http://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/05/think-progresss-man-of-hate/
126 http://archive.dailycal.org/article/6622/asuc_passes_symbolic_bill_seeking_apology_for_cart
50
Khan, Muslim Students Association leader and student senator, was a co-author of the bill, claiming that there was a “direct correlation” between the cartoon and attacks on Muslims. No such attacks
were reported on the Berkeley campus, however, while the FBI’s official hate crimes statistics report eight times the number of attacks on Jews as on Muslims.127
The Oakland Tribune, sensitive to the freedoms that protect the press, had a refreshing final word on the incident: “The coalition of students, mostly but not exclusively Muslims, have used their minority status and a glass-shattering shrillness of tone first to try to muzzle the Daily Californian student newspaper, then to punish it through a student government bill and finally to shut it down with theft.”128
On many campuses, the MSA and SJP have worked to suppress dissent and punish student newspapers that are not sensitive to their demands for censorship, and have even conspired to have
127 http://archive.dailycal.org/printable.php?id=6622; http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=281049
128 Cal Student Paper Fights for Press Freedom. Oakland Tribune, Oct. 26, 2001.
51
professors who disagree with their views fired. This was the case at DePaul University, where the local chapter of SJP arranged to have Thomas Klocek, an expert in Slavic languages and literature, fired
after he opposed their views.129
Theology of Hate
As the PLO has been eclipsed by Hamas in the
precincts of the left, so too has the General Union
of Palestinian Students (GUPS) been eclipsed on most campuses by the MSA and SJP. But the GUPS
has nevertheless been able to function as a potent hate group. In 2002, Hillel organized a “Peace in the Middle East” rally at San Francisco State University, while the GUPS set up a counter-protest, which Laurie Zoloth, director of the Jewish Studies program, described as follows: “The counter-demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to ‘Get out or we’ll kill you’ and ‘Hitler didn’t finish the job....’ The police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our
129 http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/sjpstand4facts25.html
52
deaths surrounded us.”130
The GUPS riot was a reminder that hate groups come in all shapes and sizes. While the MSA and SJP dominate the campus scene, there are many other groups with similar agendas that fly under
the radar. And even well-known pro-Palestinian na-
tional groups confuse the issue by operating under different names. At Rutgers University, Students for Justice in Palestine call themselves Students
United for Middle Eastern Justice. At the University of Pennsylvania, SJP is known as Penn for Palestine. The International Solidarity Movement, whose solidarity is with Hamas terrorists, has tried to deny that the Palestine Solidarity Movement is its student arm, even though it is. At Rutgers, the Palestine Solidarity Movement operates as New Jersey Solidarity. MSA chapters sometimes appear as a Muslim Student Union or Islamic Society.
At Ohio State University and UC Santa Cruz, the Committee for Justice in Palestine hosts speakers such as Hatem Bazian and the ISM’s Adam Shapiro. Palestine@MIT co-sponsored an appearance by Allison Weir, who claims that Israel harvests
130 http://www.jr.co.il/articles/sf-univ.txt
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human organs to get revenge for the Holocaust and that Judaism is a “ruthless and supremacist faith.”131 The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee is promoting binationalism as yet another “solution” in which there is one majority
Muslim state where Israel once stood.132
The makeshift checkpoints and apartheid walls erected by the Muslim student hate groups—whatever they call themselves—say less about Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank than about their own occupation of American campuses, the ways in which they have held students hostage to their hate, silenced debate with cries of “Islamophobia,” and used Israel as the scapegoat for their aggressive agendas. The mock checkpoints begin as symbols and end as realities, dividing campuses and marginalizing dissenting students. The Palestinian Club at Brooklyn College has expressed this as a frank goal. “We hold an anti-normalization stance on dialogue,” says Eeman Abuasi, the club’s co-
131 http://www.adl.org/Israel/anti_israel/alison_weir/anti-Semitism.asp?m_flipmode=3
132 http://www.harvardpsc.com/alternatives-to-partition-new-visions-for-israelpalestine/
54
.
founder.133 What he means is clear: only one point of view will be tolerated.
Muslim groups like SJP, the MSA, and the GUPS along with their leftist allies, are not interested in hearing any dissenting ideas, but only in manufacturing a myth of victimhood that grants them license for a theology
of limitless hate. After the Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh visited some American campuses, he wrote: “I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah....What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is
about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the ‘occupation’ as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.”134
Abu Toameh is familiar with the universities in Gaza and the West Bank, which are dominated by Hamas and Fatah, and he is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. Even if he is shocked by the anti- Israel venom on American campuses, one can only
133 http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new_york/anti_israel_rhetoric_raises_alarms_brooklyn_college
134 http://www.hudson-ny.org/424/on-campus-the-pro-palestinians-real-agenda
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imagine how the Jewish students must feel when they get a taste of the raw hatred for the first time. The occupation of American campuses by anti-Jewish hate groups who attack criticism of their actions as “Islamophobic” and “offensive” is foreign to the traditions of pluralism and open dialogue
that the university was founded on. Their theatrical protests, calls for censorship, raw bleeding posters, and boycotts and intimidation are not an invitation to dialogue. The anti-Israel radicals who have occupied America’s campuses have made it clear that they are not there to learn, but to teach. And they have only one lesson to teach: the lesson of their hate.