SJP Tag

Soon after the defeat of anti-Israel divestment resolutions at U. Michigan and UCLA, I began to see anti-Israel advocates single out pro-Israel students who had gone on trips to Israel sponsored by pro-Israel groups, or had received advocacy training from pro-Israel groups. These trips and advocacy training are critical because some campuses have become openly hostile to pro-Israel students as a result of "direct action" and other intimidation by relatively small but highly coordinated anti-Israel groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. Professors actively participate in demonizing pro-Israel students.

Here's UM CSG Vice Pres @Bobby_Dishell at AIPAC: http://t.co/dYE6kOJ9xJ He has learned from the best. — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) March 26, 2014

 

Bobby Dishell is Campus Coordinator at Teach for America. School privatization hawk and Israel hawk. http://t.co/d62X23oJ1i #UMDivest — Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) March 26, 2014

  So I was not completely surprised when I learned from reader emails over the past several days that there is an attempt at UCLA to disqualify any student who received pro-Israel training or trips from being on the Student Council. Because of my trip to Vassar and follow up, I didn't have time to write it up. So I'm glad that two others have done so. Jonathan Tobin at Commentary writes, The Next Step in the Campus War on Jews:

One of the beauties -- and sometimes nightmares -- of Twitter is that sometimes people tell you how they really feel without filters. Such as the NYU Dorm Stormers at Students for Justice in Palestine, who sent out the tweet in the featured image above. That tweet puts the lie to the claims of SJP and similar anti-Israel groups on campus that they do not seek the destruction of Israel, and merely want to have Israel leave Judea and Samaria (aka the West Bank). http://youtu.be/TQxzojmhWW0?t=53s There are naïve followers of these groups who actually believe that spin, but that's not what the groups are about. When they say "Justice in Palestine," what they really mean is that Israel has no right even to exist. NYU SJP was called out on the tweet at Truth Revolt: A funny thing then happened. The tweet was deleted, rendering this image at the Truth Revolt post:

We covered the NYU "Dorm Storming" by Students for Justice for Palestine. It's now received national attention through Greta Van Susteren, who I think did a good job in this interview with Laura Adkins at focusing on the provocative nature of the act. That's something we've focused on. Of course it's part of a greater BDS movement to demonize Israel, but it's also an attempt to intimidate students in their bedrooms. Local ABC News reports (if video doesn't load, click on link): It violated NYU rules, which protect the privacy of students. If NYU takes no action, which is what I expect, then it has rendered students captives in their own dorm rooms. Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 738 (1970)

“We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another…. That we are often ‘captives’ outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.”

So what is NYU going to do?

This has been a mixed, but mostly bad, year for the BDS student movement on campuses in the United States. While a BDS motion did pass at Loyola Chicago because it was brought up with little or no notice, major BDS pushes were rejected at UCLA (down vote), U. Michigan (vote to table) and Arizona State (vote to table). For the most part, when pro-Israel students have time to organize, they win. At Northeastern University, the administration suspended Students for Justice in Palestine after a long series of incidents culminating in service of mock eviction notices in dormatories, in violation of school policy. Expected mass protests did not materialize -- instead Northeastern SJP and its allies could muster only 150-200 marchers, many if not most of whom were not even students. The tension is boiling among student BDS supporters who claim that they are being denied a chance to speak. That, of course, is nonsense. They hold their defamatory "Israeli Apartheid" weeks (in which interest is waning) and otherwise can advocate their cause. What they can't do is things like invading personal dorm rooms to leaflet.  You may have a right to speak, but not in my living room on my couch. When they lose a motion to table a resolution, they claim it's a denial of their free speech rights -- but no one stops them from speaking; a motion to table a resolution is a legitimate procedural device (just ask Democrats in the Senate). Nonetheless, these pro-BDS students now are taking "direct action." Anti-Israel students at U. Michigan have taken over the student government offices, renaming it the Edward Said Lounge. A leader of Northeastern SJP, Max Geller (see more about him here) writes in The Nation to expect more "direct action":

Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd, endorsed the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement in 2011. Since then, his rhetoric has gotten more and more extreme, including comparing Israelis to Nazis. He uses a giant balloon of a pig at his concerts, featuring a Jewish Star of David on its side. Waters has lashed out at Scarlott Johansson, among others, and actively seeks to lobby other musicians and artists not to visit Israel. On March 17, 2014, Waters wrote an "exlusive" column for Salon.com, Why I must speak out on Israel, Palestine and BDS.

In the Salon.com "exclusive," Waters details the routine justifications, but then pulls out a supposed quote from Mahatma Gandhi to prove that Waters is on the right side of history (emphasis added):

In the furor that exists in the U.S. today about BDS and the right and wrong of a cultural boycott of Israel, a quote from one of my heroes, Mahatma Gandhi, has been on my mind. He prophetically said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” The BDS movement is fulfilling its promise and fits Gandhi’s description. Once dismissed by many as a futile strategy that would “never work,” BDS has gained much ground in recent weeks, bringing with it the expected backlash. ....  I think it’s safe to say BDS is in the “then they fight you” stage.

This is a common quote used by the BDS movement. The anti-Israel Mondoweiss website used it, as has a Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine Facebook commenter and a commenter at the anti-Israel Electronic Intifada. This student at the recent Northeastern University anti-Israel protest used it to fire up the crowd: The only problem is that it's a fake quote. All available evidence is that Gandhi never said it, as The Christian Science Monitor noted in 2011, Political misquotes: The 10 most famous things never actually said:

We reported previously on Anti-Israel student group suspended at Northeastern for vandalism, intimidation, disruption. That group was Northeastern Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Ilya Feoktistov has an excellent write-up on the group at FrontPage Mag, including images of its leader, law student Max Geller, wearing a Hezbollah t-shirt and carrying a weapon in the Palestinian Territories. A rally in support of Northeastern SJP was held on March 18. The rally was hyped in advance by anti-Israel websites like Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada, and among branches at SJP at numerous universities. The co-sponsors included a wide range of left-wing groups: The expectation was that there would be a mass rally. It didn't turn out that way. There were at most about 200 protesters according to participants. It's pretty obvious from photos and video that many if not most of the protesters were not even students, but a coalition of local (and rather aged) activists and some union members with gripes unrelated to Israel: Calling the President of Northeastern a "Zionist Goon," as reflected in the video, was bad enough, and was typical of the attacks. Chanting "Long Live the Intifada" was much worse.  The Second Intifada alone caused the deaths of approximately 1000 Israelis and 3000 Palestinians. Supporters of Venezuela and the Hugo Chavez socialism agenda were handing out flyers: