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SJP Tag

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 15, 2017 14 Comments
Rasmea Odeh recently pleaded guilty to immigration fraud, for failing to disclose on her immigration applications her 1970 conviction and imprisonment in Israel for a 1969 supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. Rasmea concocted a defense that she falsely answered the questions because she was suffering from PTSD, which made her “filter” the plain wording. At multiple levels that defense was as big a lie as her lies on her immigration forms, and in the plea agreement she admitted her false statements were not the result of PTSD or any other mental condition. But if you need a refresher on the case, and Rasmea’s other nonsense claims, see our coverage of the guilty plea, Rasmea Odeh pleads guilty to immigration fraud, and follow up post, VIDEO: Terror victim’s brother says Rasmea Odeh supporters “have to eat their words”. Rasmea has been treated as a hero by anti-Israel groups, including Jewish Voice for Peace and various chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on May 04, 2017 8 Comments
At Cornell we mostly have great students. This is a story about some of those great students at an Israel Independence Day event who reacted in a powerful way when a small group of students from the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine disrupted the event. You may recall that there have been problems with anti-Israel activists on campus disrupting any positive event about Israel. Anti-Israel activists were the vanguard of the campus anti-free speech movement, as I documented in With campus shout downs, first they came for the Jews and Israel. At places like Berkeley, Jewish students have to find non-disclosed locations for pro-Israel events. Intimidation tactics by anti-Israel students have not been as big a problem at Cornell as on some other campuses, but a dozen or twenty people can cause a lot of trouble. In November 2014, anti-Israel students, assisted by Ithaca activists, tried to physically intimidate pro-Israel students. I covered the story, Cornell Pro-Israel students taunted: “F**k You Zionist scums” (Video at the link).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 10, 2017 15 Comments
Last night anti-Israel groups, led by Students for Justice in Palestine and "Jewish Voice for Peace," took advantage of the Passover Holiday when many Jewish students already had left for home for the Passover Seders, to bring to the Tufts University student Senate a resolution to divest from certain companies doing business with Israel. The resolution was loaded with defamatory "Whereas" clauses portraying Israel as at the "intersectional" center of worldwide injustice, much as the international Jew has been portrayed in classic antisemitic literature as the source of the world's problems. I discussed the details and how the process was manipulated in my prior post, Another sneak Passover Divestment attack, this time at Tufts University. That resolution will not change any facts on the ground but it reflects the continuing reality of the passage from the traditional Passover Haggadah:
For not just one alone has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us; and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand!

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 09, 2017 3 Comments
I have seen this movie before. In early April 2014, anti-Israel students at Cornell University, led by Students for Justice in Palestine, brought a last minute resolution before the student assembly to divest from certain companies doing business with Israel. The resolution was managed in such a way as to provide the bare minimum notice and, most important, just before the Jewish Holiday of Passover, when many Jewish students travel home. These student divestment resolutions have no power, because student governments do not control university investments. Rather, these are symbolic resolutions meant to demonize Israel. I reported on April 8, 2014, ALERT: Sneak Passover Anti-Israel Divestment attack at Cornell:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on March 07, 2017 4 Comments
Two violent attacks campus speakers have gained widespread media attention in recent months -- the attack on Milo Yiannopoulos' appearance at UC-Berkeley, and Charles Murray at Middlebury. Less violent, but still disruptive, attempts were made to shut down Rick Santorum and Michael Johns at Cornell, Christina Hoff Sommers at Oberlin, Georgetown and elsewhere. and other conservative speakers. Finally, there is widespread condemnation even from the left, particularly after Middlebury.

Posted by Miriam Elman on December 17, 2016 5 Comments
What’s happening to Jewish and pro-Israel students on many American universities and colleges from coast to coast is horribly ugly. On “hotspot campuses” the problem is only getting worse. “Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus”, a new 70 minute documentary recently released by the organization Americans for Peace and Tolerance, chronicles the rampant anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activism prevalent on many of America’s institutions of higher learning. We featured the film’s trailer in a recent post and the movie premiered in NYC on November 30. Last week, I had the opportunity to watch the film in its entirely. In this follow-up post, I review the documentary’s central themes and take-home messages.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 26, 2016 6 Comments
Americans for Peace and Tolerance is releasing a 70-minute documentary on the rise of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campuses and the role played by the BDS movement and Students for Justice in Palestine. The movie is titled Hate Spaces: The Politics of Intolerance on Campus. I was interviewed for the documentary, along with others such as Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, Richard Landes of Boston University, Bret Stephens of The Wall Street Journal and Caroline Glick of The Jerusalem Post. Here is one early review of the film:
I’ve written about the phenomenon more than once, so I didn’t expect to be surprised by anything in the film. But despite knowing about the various incidents described, the sheer volume and intensity of them taken together left me shaken. Yes, shaken, and I’m not easy to shake....

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 14, 2016 6 Comments
Anti-Israel activists, usually acting under the banner of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, repeatedly try to hijack unrelated causes to turn them against Israel. We have documented such actions many times, including with regard to Ferguson (Michael Brown) and Baltimore (Freddie Gray) riots, Eric Garner protests, the Standing Rock Sioux pipeline protest, domestic U.S. police shootings, Reclaim MLK marches, and the Black Lives Matter movement, among others. None of this is solidarity. It's conquest of other peoples and movements to redirect them to and focus attention on the BDS anti-Israel agenda. It is a form of Settler Colonialism, BDS is a Settler Colonial Ideology. Not surprisingly, BDS groups are attempting to inject themselves into and dominate the anti-Trump protests and riots.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on November 01, 2016 2 Comments
So this is interesting. Students for Justice in Palestine and its related groups are responsible for much if not most of the anti-Israel activity on campuses. We have documented dozens of incidents of intimidation and violence, scroll through our SJP Tag. For additional background, see reports by The Tower Magazine, The ADL, NGO Monitor and AMCHA Initiative. This is one of the milder shout-downs and stage takeovers by SJP:

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 28, 2016 3 Comments
I reported the other day how Israeli anti-Israel activist and BDS supporter Miko Peled was disinvited by a pro-Palestinian group at Princeton and denounced by Jewish Voice for Peace after a tweet characterizing Jews as having a "reputation 4being sleazy thieves," Jewish Voice for Peace disavows BDS activist Miko Peled: “No place 4 antisemitism in our movement”. https://twitter.com/mikopeled/status/776147480299835392

Posted by William A. Jacobson on September 03, 2016 3 Comments
The academic boycott movement against Israel has achieved very little so far, though it has poisoned the campus atmosphere with its anti-academic freedom message. There is no university or college in that United State that I'm aware of even considering the academic boycott of Israel. The academic boycott resolutions at faculty organizations have had limited success, limited to the humanities and social sciences, and even there the only significant sized group to adopt the boycott was the American Studies Association in December 2013. The move to hijack faculty groups continues, and we can expect more boycott resolutions this annual meeting season in the fall and winter. The information spread against Israel by these faculty members is consistently false and misleading, and always one-sided. It is a critical part of the international effort to delegitimize and dehumanize Israeli Jews, and needs to be fought for that reason regardless of the relative lack of success. Lacking institutional success, the BDS war on campus has devolved into trench warfare at a very personal level.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on August 06, 2016 10 Comments
A war has been declared on Israel on campus by faculty and students supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. The rallying cry is to blacklist those acting on behalf of Israeli academic institutions or participating in "normalization" events, such as musical and cultural events. On the faculty academic front, we have seen groups such as the American Studies Association and some smaller groups blacklist Israeli academics representing their institutions, as part of a formal academic boycott. That boycott has been declared by the American Association of University Professors to be a violation of academic freedom. There also are many reports from Israeli academics of a silent boycott, in which individual U.S. professors refuse to interact with individual Israeli scholars and students, resulting in denied access to journals for publication and peer reviews. The claim by many pro-BDS faculty members that BDS does not target individuals is an outright lie.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on July 18, 2016 8 Comments
At group calling itself Atlanta is Ready (#ATLisREADY), aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, recently issued a set of demands to the Mayor of Atlanta, including:
We demand a termination to APD’s involvement in the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) program, that trains our officers in Apartheid Israel
The Mayor rejected the demand, finding that counter-terrorism training benefits the Atlanta Police Department's ability to protect Americans: You could chalk this incident up to just some isolated ploy by local activists, but that would be a mistake. Rather, there has been a multi-year effort by left-wing and Islamist anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and openly anti-Semitic activists to hijack racial tensions in the United States and redirect that anger towards Israel.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 28, 2016 6 Comments
David Horowitz doesn't pull punches in defense of Israel and western civilization. Perhaps his most famous moment was when he got an anti-Israel student at UC-San Diego to admit she supports extermination of Jews (watch to the end): Horowitz's Freedom Center has been posting provocative posters at various campuses. In February the posters showed SJP as Hamas executioners, because so many SJP members express support for the bloody Intifadas and back "the resistance" (which is what Hamas means in Arabic).

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 28, 2016 8 Comments
The Vassar student body voted the past two days on two anti-Israel referenda sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. For background on anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activism at Vassar, see Tuesday's post, Vassar students start voting on anti-Israel referenda. The results were just announced by email, and both referenda were rejected. The vote was close.  The BDS resolution was rejected 573 Against, 503 For. The spending resolution was defeated 601 Against, 475 For. Under the circumstances, with a years-long anti-Israel propaganda campaign supported by vocal faculty members, this must be considered a huge victory for the voices of reason on campus.
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