Vile antisemitism at UC Santa Cruz

For all JVP's rhetoric about not conflating Judaism with Zionism, I don't see them running to defend this student.

Via StandWithUs

Alarming antisemitism on campus as a UC Santa Cruz Stevenson College Elected Representative, Daniel, was asked to "abstain" from voting on a BDS resolution because he is President of the Jewish Student Union and was "elected with a Jewish agenda." The original message is in the photo.

We call on the UC system to immediately take action against the unacceptable antisemitism running rampant on California college campuses.

Here is Daniel's statement:

"About two days ago, I received a Facebook message from someone I won't name, instructing me to abstain from the vote about the divestment issue because I am the Vice President of the Jewish Student Union. Furthermore, I was told that members from the Stevenson College Council were concerned that I would be biased because I was elected with a "Jewish agenda," as if my involvement in and passion for the wellbeing of the Jewish community, MY COMMUNITY, is something that I should be ashamed of, and something that will hold me back from representing my constituents fairly in the greater student assembly.

The implication that I, as a Jewish student and leader in the Jewish community, should not be allowed to vote on an issue that so deeply impacts the Jewish community, and that I should abstain because I cannot be trusted due to an alleged, “Jewish agenda,” echoes the racism Jews have faced all over the world throughout our history. I wish that me being subjected to anti-Semitism was a shocking new occurrence. But the truth is that I’m not shocked. I’m not shocked because this hatred and ignorance has followed me everywhere. I'm not shocked because Jewish students have been targeted with this vile racism all over the UC system for years, and especially since BDS became a major issue of discussion. Anti-Semitism today may not be the same as it was in the 1930s. But it has clearly evolved to become an inseparable part of campus politics right here at UC Santa Cruz and across the UC system.

This was evident when Rachel Beyda, at UCLA, was denied a position on the Judicial board because of her identity as a Jew, it was evident when my fellow AEPi brothers had swastikas painted on their house in Davis, and now I have had a firsthand experience that this volatile bile of racism is evident at UCSC.

The only "Jewish Agenda" I care about is keeping my community safe and making it so we can coexist peacefully among the other 15,000 students on our campus. I want my community to have a normal learning environment, free from hate speech and harassment, where we can enjoy college without being discriminated against. If people here see that as a legitimate reason to distrust me, to stop me from voting my conscience on issues that matter to the Jewish community, or even to remove me from positions of leadership, then so be it. But they should know that they will never silence me, and they will never stop my community from fighting for the rights and protections that we deserve on this campus.

I am calling on the leadership at UC Santa Cruz, from the student level on up to start taking concrete action to get the anti-Semitism at this campus under control. Student governments at UCLA, UCSB, and Berkeley addressed this issue last year, and the UC Regents are addressing it now. If we stand idly by in the face of this racism, we are sending a clear message that Jewish students cannot expect to be treated with a basic level of fairness and respect at this university. It’s time for the student leadership and the administration here to make a decision: are we going to ensure the fair and equal treatment of all students on this campus, or not? For the sake of future generations of Jewish students here, for the sake of the Jewish community as a whole, and for the sake of everyone on this campus, I hope that we make the right decision."

Anti-Israel activists threaten to silence LGBT voices at UC Santa Cruz

This weeks events at UC Davis highlighted the increasingly shrill intolerance of anti-Israel activists and their efforts to drown out opposing voices on California campuses. The  exposure of the anti-Semitism at the heart of the BDS movement, the taunts of "Allahu Akbar"directed towards Jewish students and the poisoned campus climate have had a chilling effect that extends well beyond the boundaries of the bucolic Davis campus.

No, Davis is not alone in this struggle.

Tyler Gregory, the Director of Programs and Development  at A Wider Bridge was recently invited to UC Santa Cruz by the staff of Hillel.  The  program was scheduled for the Lionel Cantu LGBT Center on campus. According to Tyler, his objective was " to engage LGBT students with Israel through the experiences of Israeli LGBT people – their challenges and victories, their fight for equality, and their desire to live and to love."

Tyler Gregory has documented how  "students and faculty, unsuccessfully attempted to use intimidation to cancel the event", and failing that, threatened to drown out their voices.

No, it was not the Westboro Baptist church trying to silence the voices of LGBT activists. It wasn't a far right homophobic  group, motivated by religious fervor. It  wasn't a neo-fascist group.
Had it been, perhaps this story would have been more widely heard,

It was anti-Israel activists that threatened to silence LGBT voices at UC Santa Cruz

Tyler writes:

The day of the program, Israel's detractors at Santa Cruz began contacting the LGBT Center to demand that the program be canceled and then to threaten that they would block students' entry to the event. The environment in and around the LGBT Center, intended to be a safe place for students, became so hostile and threatening that the program was relocated. With the leadership of Cantu Center Director Deb Abbott, Hillel Director Jim Atkins, and UC Santa Cruz Provost Elizabeth Abrams, the program moved forward successfully at the campus' Merrill College.

What is it about what I had to say that so angered or threatened the protesters that, rather than simply not attend, they seemed determined to deny interested students the opportunity to learn, engage, and come to their own conclusions? Our nuanced message about Israel and its LGBT community — thriving, yet still yearning for equality, doesn't fit well into their black and white world, in which Israel is nothing more than a pariah state. The students who came to the program that evening learned that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have allowed gays and lesbians to serve openly since 1993, the same year Bill Clinton signed "Don't Ask Don't Tell" into law. They discovered that LGBT Israelis have been protected from workplace discrimination since 1992, while the US Congress in 2015 has still failed to pass ENDA. At the same time, I didn't shy from sharing that same sex marriages are not yet legally performed anywhere in Israel and that beyond the gay "mecca" of Tel Aviv, homophobia is still widespread. Why? Because these realities aren't about promoting or rejecting Israeli governmental policies – they're about relating shared experiences to build understanding and connection.

Read it all here.

Tammi Benjamin Under attack: A troubling Double Standard at the University of California.

From  an article by Thomas Lifson , originally published in the American Thinker:

A troubling double standard appears to exist when it comes harassment at the publicly funded University of California. The University has taken strong action against harassment, physical assault, terrorization and targeting individuals on the basis of their ethnic origin or religion -- except when the person under assault is Jewish, and the perpetrator is a member of an antisemitic or jihadi front group. Then UC administrators have no time to answer emails pleading for protection...

Only one professor in the entire University of California so far has had the intestinal fortitude to speak out about the growing jihadi harassment of Jewish students on campus, a beloved part-time professor of Hebrew at U.C. Santa Cruz, Tammi Benjamin, who has appeared often in AT articles.

After the Civil Rights law was re-interpreted to include Jews in 2010, Tammi Benjamin made history by successfully applying for the federal Office of Civil Rights to investigation the hostile environment for Jews at UC Santa Cruz. If she wins, it will be first time the Civil Rights law is applied to antisemitism.      

     Her students love her:

Tammi is AMAZING. I've taken dozens of language classes in my life, and Tammi is hands down one of the greatest teacher's I've ever had. Her lesson plans are great, the course is thorough, and she is dedicated to helping you learn AND get a good grade. You'd have to honestly try to do badly in her classes. Wonderful person, wonderful teacher.

Frustrated by the increasing level of anti-Semitic intolerance on campus, as well as the vitriolic rhetoric directed against her personally Tammi Benjamin wrote a letter to the President of the UC system

As Tammi describes in a letter to the president of UC published this week on the website of her organization, the AMCHA Initiative, she is being harassed mercilessly for having exercised her free speech off campus….

In her letter to President Yudof, Tammi detailed clearly antisemitic actions tolerated on UC campuses, which are illegal by university rules.

At an SJP rally at UCB in 2002, UCB Lecturer Hatem Bazian, then a graduate student and co-founder of the first SJP chapter in America, told a large crowd, "Take a look at the type of names on the buildings around campus -- Haas, Zellerbach -- and decide who controls this university."

Former Nation of Islam member Imam Abdul Malik Ali, a frequent speaker on many UC campuses, has railed against the "disproportionate numbers of Jews, Zionist Jews, in the media, in finance and foreign policy."

At an MSU-sponsored speech at UCI in 2001, Imam Mohammed Al-Asi said: "We have a psychosis in the Jewish community that is unable to co-exist equally and brotherly with other human beings. You can take a Jew out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew".

Al-Asi also actively promotes the lie that Jews were behind the 9-11 attack, stating: "Where were the 4,000 to 5,000 Israeli Jews that were supposed to be in those two buildings on the 11th... Did they know something we didn't know?"

Imam Abdul Alim Musa, a frequent speaker for the MSU at UCI, sells at some of his events copies of an antisemitic book, The Ascendant Qur'an, which blames Jews for conspiring against Islam. Musa maintains contact with virulently antisemitic groups such as Jamaat al-Muslimeen, which promotes Holocaust denial and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.

Tammi concludes her letter:

As a result of the hostile environment created by these chapters and their members, Jewish students have reported feeling physically unsafe, harassed, and intimidated while on campus, and some have even reported leaving the university, avoiding certain parts of campus, and hiding symbols of their Jewishness.


Students can be pro-Palestinian without resorting to physically confrontational, disruptive, and virulently aggressive behavior and it is this behavior, which continues to escalate, that deeply concerns me. Expressing support for the Palestinians is not the same as chanting "Death to Jews!" "Death to Israel"...O Jews, the army of Mohammed is coming for you," or holding banners that read "Death to Zionism" and "Long Live the Intifada."

The quiescence and timidity of the academic community in the face of these continuing personal attacks on Prof. Benjamin must be challenged. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr famously declared "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Its time to break the silence.

Tammiphobia: Why is the harassment of Tammi Rossman-Benjamin allowed to continue on the UC campuses?

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life." Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill’s words are of likely of little comfort to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a UC Santa Cruz lecturer and fearless advocate for the rights of Jewish students on campus. Her outspoken advocacy has won her acclaim throughout the Jewish community- she was on the short list of finalists in a nationwide Jewish Community Hero contest. Its also made her enemies.

From the Fousesquak blog:  In this open letter to Chancellor Blumenthal  Tammi Rossman-Benjamin describes the level of harassment and intimidation she has faced for daring to speak her mind   

She writes;

“In exercising my 1st amendment rights, a campaign of harassment, defamation and intimidation has been waged against me by CJP students. They certainly have the right to disagree with me, to ask for clarification, to voice dissent.  However their chosen response is deeply disturbing and alarming. Rather than disagree with me in a way that fosters understanding or asks for clarification, I am being harassed, intimidated and defamed in ways that are causing me to fear for my physical safety”       

The most current attack on Rossman-Benjamin stems from a talk she gave last summer, far away from the UC campuses.

Rossman-Benjamin writes:

....As you know, last summer I spoke out against campus anti-Semitism at a synagogue near Boston, in order to alert members of the local Jewish community to the problem of intimidation and harassment that some Jewish students face on college campuses today.  In my speech, I did not state, nor imply, that all Muslims or members of MSA and SJP are terrorists, or associate with terrorists. I spoke to raise awareness about a situation that exists in some instances on some campuses.  My intention was not to make a blanket statement or blanket accusations.  Yet my statements are being distorted by the Committee for Justice in Palestine to demonize me, I believe in retaliation for my speaking out against campus anti-Semitism in general, and initiating a Title VI complaint in particular.

 The pattern of harassment began with an email from UC Berkeley activist Tom Pessah , urging students to formally report this off campus talk to a UC campus climate survey on intolerance.

From: Tom Pessah
Date: February 17, 2013, 4:48:22 PM PST
Subject: [cal_sjp] report islamophobic incitement against SJP and MSA

A video has surfaced http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnSlbOhZgGI, showing UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman Benjamin making extremely offensive comments about the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine groups at an off-campus event in June 2012. Benjamin singles these student activists out from all others, saying, “These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or Young Democrats. These are students who come with a serious agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations”.

If you are a UC student we encourage you to fill in this form for reporting incidents of intolerance on campus:
https://ucsystems.ethicspointvp.com/custom/ucs_ccc/default.asp

A petition was started, along with a poster campaign.  The harassment culminated in a resolution at UC Berkeley condemning  Tammi Rossman-Benjamin.  Some speculated the cowardly move to introduce the resolution at Berkeley rather than her home campus of UC Santa Cruz  was made to eliminate potential opposition and to deliberately silence the voices of her supporters at Santa Cruz.

At no point has anyone addressed the actual content of  Rossman-Benjamin's statements, instead focusing their efforts on ad hominem attacks.

The historic ties of such groups as the Muslim brotherhood to the Muslim Students Association have been well documented   An article by Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe and Laurie Cohen, from a 2004 Chicago Tribune documents the history of the Muslim brotherhood in America, including  the establishment of the  Muslim Students Association (MSA), incorporated in 1963, by members of the Muslim Brotherhood at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Over the years, at Berkeley and elsewhere there have been close ties between various extremist groups and the Students for Justice in Palestine.  There is appreciable cross-pollination between SJP and extremist anti-Israel groups, including Al Awda and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). Over the course of years,  SJP has hosted members of  Al Awda and the International Solidarity Movement and has promoted, participated and co-sponsored their activities.

From 2004

SJP ISM ties

To today

SJP ISM ties

A screen shot taken today of the resources page of SJP ( http://calsjp.org/?page_id=5 ) links directly to the International Solidarity Movement.

The relationship between the International Solidarity movement and SJP is not one-sided.  Local ISM members have been heavily promoting SJP's  Dam concert on their website as well.

The International Solidarity Movement is not a peace group. From the ADL's backgrounder

 Though ISM claims to promote only nonviolent means of resistance, it voices support for others who engage in armed resistance against Israel. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has even warned that its activity "at times" is "under the auspices of Palestinian terrorist organizations."

Paul Larudee  who recently advocated that "armed struggle must not be discouraged, but rather made as effective as possible" is the reputed head of the  Northern California International Solidarity Movement. Paul has been photographed with Hamas leaders in Gaza, and has been hosted multiple times on campus, sponsored by the SJP.

Paul Larudee  has worked closely with Deppen Webber, who once infamously tweeted "My New Years resolution is to destroy the Zionist state"

To Students for Justice in Palestine, to Tom Pessah , Rebecca Pierce and their friends:  Just as not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, not all criticism of your group's tactics are "Islamophobic".  If you want to be taken seriously as a force for peace in the community, you will stop aiding and abetting extremists , stop hosting them, stop co-sponsoring events with them.  Tammi Rossman-Benjamin's words should have forced you to take a long sober look at those you've associated with over the years. Sadly, you were too distracted by your own self-righteous indignation and delusions of eternal victimization to even notice.

Fighting Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism

Kenneth L. Marcus is Executive Vice President of the Institute for Jewish & Community Research and author of Jewish Identity & Civil Rights in America. He has just written an excellent article Fighting Back Against Campus Anti-Semitism

One day last March Jessica Felber, then 20, a Jewish undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, was standing on her campus, holding a placard bearing the words: “Israel Wants Peace.” At that moment, Husam Zakaria, a Berkeley student leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, reportedly rammed Felber from behind so hard with a loaded shopping cart that she had to be taken to the university’s urgent medical care facility. This violent episode has become sadly emblematic of a wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents that have rippled across the country, nowhere more so than in the “Golden State,” which has become an epicenter for the New Anti-Semitism in America. What makes this case different is that Felber fought back, charging this month in a federal lawsuit that UC Berkeley has ignored mounting evidence of anti-Jewish animus and should be held liable for the injuries she suffered. Her suit also contends that “physical intimidation and violence were frequently employed as a tactic by SJP and other campus groups in an effort to silence students on campus who support Israel”.

Sixty miles or so south of Berkeley along the Pacific coast, University of California Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin makes a similar case against her own employer. For several years, Rossman-Benjamin has spoken out against anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism at the University of California, but she insists that the problem is not limited to a few rogue students: “Professors, academic departments and residential colleges at UCSC promote and encourage anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish views and behavior,” she insists, “much of which is based on either misleading information or outright falsehood.” Rossman-Benjamin describes an atmosphere at Santa Cruz in which taxpayer-supported, university-sponsored discourse that “demonizes Israel, compares contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, calls for the dismantling of the Jewish State, and holds Israel to an impossible double standard – crosses the line into anti-Semitism…” Like Felber, Rossman-Benjamin is fighting back. The Santa Cruz whistle-blower filed a civil rights action with the U.S. Department of Education’s powerful Office for Civil Rights, arguing that UCSC has created a hostile environment for Jewish students. Last week, OCR sent a powerful signal to academia when it informed Rossman-Benjamin that it is formally opening an investigation of her claims.

The Jessica Felber and Tammi Rossman-Benjamin stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Over the last decade – since 9/11 and the start of the Second Intifada – there has been a persistent drumbeat of allegations by students and professors at many university campuses across the country. It is true that most Jewish students will not face these problems, particularly if they avoid visibly associating themselves with the Jewish state or with Jewish institutions. Moreover, the reported incidents are disproportionately concentrated in coastal states and on highly politicized campuses, especially in California. Neverthless, problems are continually arising even on campuses like Indiana University which do not seem to fit the profile. In its widely read 2006 report on “Campus Anti-Semitism,” the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights observed that anti-Semitism had once again become a “serious problem” at many post-secondary institutions nation-wide. In numerous cases, Jewish and Israeli students, particularly if they are outspoken supporters of Israel, have been physically accosted or confronted with a mix of classic anti-Jewish stereotypes and “progressive” anti-Israel defamations. While it is difficult to quantify the extent of the problem – in part because of the dismal state of reporting on this issue – there is much support for the conclusion that Gary Tobin and Aryeh Weinberg reached in their book, The Uncivil University; i.e.,anti-Semitism has now become systemic throughout American higher education, even on the quieter campuses. Since 2006, the problem has only gotten worse, as old-fashioned bias has entered into the university-centered international campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State through boycotts, divestment and sanctions.

Read more here

Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education opens Title VI, Civil Rights Act of 1964 investigation at University of California

From our friends at the Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism

In a letter dated March 7, 2011, responding to a complaint filed by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) has agreed to open a Title VI investigation at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). The letter stated, “We have determined that the issue is appropriate for Investigation under the laws enforced by OCR.” The letter also stated that OCR has identified the following issue for investigation:
The recipient (UCSC) “failed to take steps in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to respond to notice of a then existing hostile environment for Jewish Students based on their actual or perceived ancestry or ethnic characteristics.”

Ms. Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), lodged a 29-page extensively documented Title VI Complaint with the OCR in June, 2009. The complaint alleges, among other things, that anti-Israel discourse and behavior in classrooms and that departmentally and university-sponsored events had created an “emotionally and intellectually hostile environment for Jewish students and had adversely affected their educational experience” at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). The complaint further alleges that:
Professors, academic departments, and residential colleges that had promoted and encouraged anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish views and behavior.
That rhetoric heard in UCSC classrooms and at numerous events sponsored and funded by academic and administrative units on campus went beyond legitimate criticism of Israel and crossed the line into anti-Semitism according to the standards employed by the U.S. Department of State.
That there were students who felt emotionally and intellectually harassed and intimidated, to the point that they were reluctant or afraid to express a view that was not anti-Israel.
That some students stayed away from courses because they knew that the courses would be biased against Israel and intolerant of another legitimate point of view.
A student described feeling “personally assaulted” by her professor when she tried to defend Israel from her professor’s attacks. Another Jewish student described her residential College’s sponsorship of a virulently anti-Israel event “more than hurtful, it’s absolutely unsettling.”
Rossman-Benjamin’s complaint also chronicled the failure of numerous efforts that she and others had made from 2001 to encourage UCSC faculty and administrators to acknowledge and address the problem.
A Title VI complaint was filed by the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) in 2004 on behalf of Jewish students at UC Irvine. Although the complaint was dismissed after a 3-year investigation, in 2008 the OCR initiated a new investigation of other allegations the ZOA made on behalf of Jewish students at UC Irvine. That investigation is still open.

Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism
www.octaskforce.org