Today was the "Day of Action" against Israel on the University of California at Berkeley campus. The Mulim Students Association and Students for Just Us in Palestine shrieked "from the River to the Sea", and "We support the Intifada" They bolstered their numbers with career anti-Israel activists from the community, but they were largely ignored by the students hurrying off to Top Dog for lunch
Lunch beats abject insanity any day.
The students of SJP made it perfectly clear that ALL of Israel was
occupied territory to them, and no, this had nothing to do with the
territory acquired during the 6 day war
The student group Tikvah: Students for Israel gathered in quiet dignity, holding signs urging tolerance, freedom and dialog.
Some students prayed
Others held a teach-in.
This girl gets it.
And this one doesn't
(Thanks to DS and FM for the photos)
Thanks to Tikvah, students for Israel at UC Berkeley for maintaining your dignity, composure and civility in the face of such ugliness and provocation.
September 23, 2014 has been proclaimed by Hatem Bazian as an "International day of Action" against Israel. Bazian, who once infamously called for an "intifada" in America, was a founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, the group that will be spring boarding the "Day of Action"
Students for Justice in Palestine, also known as SJP, or more popularly as Students for Just us in Palestine has a long history of threatening pro-Israel activists, shouting down free speech, and intimidating those who disagree with them. This year, they sport free legal protection for their rights, while they run roughshod over everyone elses
The comically named Center for Constitutional Rights, the Palestinian Solidarity Legal Support Group, and the National Lawyers Guild have joined together to cover for their bad behavior.
Roz Rothstein, founder of the educational organization StandWithUs has documented the hateful intolerance of SJP in the Times of Israel.
In
February 2014 SJP violated the free speech rights of two Israelis at a
pro-Israel event at Cal Poly Pomona. It brought professional anti-Israel
activists and students from other schools
to shout the speakers down, preventing them from making their
presentations and robbing audience members of the opportunity to hear
Israeli perspectives on the conflict.
When
SJP brought divestment campaigns to the University of Michigan and
other campuses, numerous Jewish students and members of student
governments were subjected to threats, hate speech, and other forms of intimidation.
At
UC Irvine and San Francisco State University (SFSU), SJP disrupted
Israel Independence Day celebrations. Its members attempted to shout
down pro-Israel student speakers at SFSU, physically pushed people away
from informational booths, and assaulted three Jewish students at Irvine.
UCLA’s SJP chapter employed an especially sophisticated intimidation tactic, filing judicial complaints against two student senators who had gone on sponsored educational trips to Israel.
Temple SJP is currently being investigated because a student associated with the group hit a pro-Israel student in the face during Welcome Week.
SJP
at Loyola University of Chicago is currently being investigated for
harassing Hillel students and blocking their Birthright Israel
informational table.
In
all of these instances, SJP demonstrated its total disregard for
freedom of speech, its eagerness to silence pro-Israel voices, and its
desire to prevent uninformed students from hearing or seeing Israel’s
side of the story.
Hatem Bazian, the man who notoriously called for an intifada in America has used his facebook page to call for an International Day of Action against Israel on September 23, 2014.
Tammi Benjamin,co-founder of the AMCHA initiative and a fearless advocate for Jewish students on campus has expressed her concerns about Hatem’s proposal in an open letter to UC Berkeley Chancellor Dirks, writing on behalf of Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity (AEPi) ,Americans for Peace and Tolerance, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law ,Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) ,Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) ,Hasbara Fellowships ,Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel ,National Conference on Jewish Affairs Proclaiming Justice to the Nations ,Scholars for Peace in the Middle East ,Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, The Lawfare Project , and the Zionist Organization of America.
From her open letter
... In the wake of the Israel-Gaza conflict, global antisemitism has reached levels not seen since the Holocaust. Jews throughout the world are being targeted for threats, physical assaults and murder, and Jewish property for desecration and destruction. While we fully support academic freedom and students' freedom of expression, these types of demonstrations can result in antisemitic rhetoric and violent behavior, creating a hostile and unsafe environment for Jewish students. Just days ago, a Jewish student at Temple University was punched in the face and called "baby-killer, racist, Zionist pig" and "kike" as he stood next to a table run by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
As you may be aware, the UC Berkeley SJP group, which was in fact founded by Dr. Bazian himself when he was a graduate student in 2001, has a long history of engaging in antisemitic behaviors targeting Jewish and pro-Israel students for harassment, intimidation, bullying and even assault. Dr. Bazian's call for students to engage in aggressive and potentially illegal actions against Israel and its campus supporters -- actions that include "civil disobedience" -- can only exacerbate the already hostile environment for pro-Israel Jewish students and create the conditions that could well lead to violence on your campus.
Moreover, Professor Bazian is promoting an academic boycott of Israel which calls for shutting down opportunities for students to study in Israel and severing all ties with Israeli universities and scholars -- a boycott which more than 250 university presidents, including yourself, have called a subversion of academic freedom, and which has been decried as antisemitic by government officials and Jewish leaders. Furthermore, we believe that it is highly inappropriate for Dr. Bazian, a faculty member at UC Berkeley, to incite students to engage in "civil disobedience", behavior which is potentially illegal and may lead to adverse consequences for the students and others.
We wanted to bring this to your attention immediately so you could monitor the behavior of SJP and other student organizations involved in the September 23 Day of Action, and ensure, through the use of campus police and administrative oversight, that behavior which violates university policy or the law will be swiftly and appropriately addressed, and that Jewish and pro-Israel students will not be harassed, intimidated, bullied or assaulted.
Anti-Israel activism on campus is not a
grass-roots localized effort- rather it is carefully coordinated and organized
by professional activists. We saw this earlier
this year when Max Samarovexposed career
activist Dalit Baum as the author of a campus BDS resolution at Loyola University
On Tuesday, April 1st, Students
for Justice in Palestine presented the Loyola student government with an
anti-Israel divestment resolution. But what they neglected to mention was that
they didn’t write the legislation themselves. It turned out that the real
author was Dalit Baum, a major leader in the global Boycott, Divestment, and
Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Baum is not a student or faculty
member of Loyola or any North American university. She is a paid operative working to co-opt student governments into
following the BDS Movement’s malicious, anti-Israel agenda. And if she is
writing resolutions for one school, it is likely that she is writing them for
others as well.
We are seeing it again. University
lecturer Hatem Bazian, who once infamously calledfor an “Intifada” in Americahas
begun promoting an anti- Israel agenda for the coming school year. A professional agitator, not a student representatives is again setting the
agenda, and has declared an “International
Day of Action” against Israel on Sept. 23, 2014.
University of California at Berkeley professor
and founder of the national student group “Students for Justice in Palestine”
(SJP) Hatem Bazian announced an “International Day of Action” to call for a
complete academic and cultural boycott of Israel on September 23rd-
the Eve before the Jewish New Year.
The anti-Semitic nature of the day included
calls for “No joint research or conferences with Israeli Institutions, No to
University Presidents' Visits to Israel, No Campus Police Training or
Cooperation with Israeli Security” in addition to demanding the elimination of
all study abroad programs in Israel. The effort is to prevent all academic
interaction with the Jewish state and to limit people’s ability to interact
with Israel and Israelis.
The attempt to isolate Israel extends to a
boycott of Jewish and Israeli on-campus organizations as well. Professor Bazian
has also commanded his group to demand “No to University Coordination and
Strategizing with the ADL, JCRC, AJC, Stand With US, ZOA, Israeli Consulate to
Limit Students Pro-Palestine Constitutionally Protected Activities.”
Lets hope our students are prepared for this latest round of anti-Israel activity
