With ISIS and other Islamic terror groups blowing up innocents in cities all over the world, one would think there would be more concern about groups that support terrorists and are active on American college campuses. One of the principal culprits, Students for Justice in Palestine, a supporter of the terrorist army Hamas, is a presence on approximately 200 college campuses. SJP was founded by UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian in 2001, during the notorious Second Intifada, infamous because it introduced suicide bombings as a terrorist weapon of choice. At the time, Hatem Bazian achieved his own notoriety when he called for an Intifada in the United States.
Despite its name, Students for Justice in Palestine is not concerned with justice for the million Palestinians who suffer under the Hamas terror regime, or with the Hamas theft of hundreds of millions of humanitarian aid dollars diverted to the construction of terrorist tunnels into Israel. Its sole concern is to spread Hamas propaganda to delegitimize the Jewish state and call for its destruction. Among its other activities, SJP is the chief campus sponsor of resolutions to boycott Israel as part of the so-called BDS campaign, which is also funded and orchestrated by Hamas. Among its slanders is SJP’s claim that Israel “brutally slaughtered over 2,500 Palestinian civilians” in the Gaza war, ignoring the fact that Hamas started the war with 4,000 unanswered rocket attacks into Israeli cities or that Israel’s military policies are the most protective of civilians in the world. SJP’s unvarying theme is that Israel’s Jews are land-stealers, baby killers and racists - libels that have led to an epidemic of hostile attacks on Jewish students on American campuses.
Because I have conducted a poster campaign to expose these outrages and confront the perpetrators, I have been attacked by a Huffington Post blogger under the tongue-in-cheek title, “A Special Thanks to David Horowitz From A Student for Justice in Palestine” (7/1/16). The writer, Gabby Aossey, a senior at UC San Diego, describes me as “a self-proclaimed racist and bigot.” Who exactly proclaims themselves racists and bigots? As evidence of this preposterous assertion, Aossey, offers my opposition to the Islamic terrorist network. This is the standard trope of Hamas supporters who cynically confuse the opposition to Islamic terrorism with anti-Muslim bigotry. I have written millions of published words, yet neither Aossey nor other apologists for Islamic terror have been able to cite a single sentence of mine that can be construed as anti-Muslim.
Not even the premise of Aossey’s blog can withstand scrutiny. She claims that my anti-Hamas/anti-SJP posters on her campus created sympathy for her cause. ‘The support for SJP, and the named students of San Diego State University (like UCSD one of my target schools), was boosted by the community inside and outside of the college atmosphere; Jewish Voice for Peace and local San Diegan ministers denounced the pro-Zionism and pro-Israel organizations that take part in childish finger-pointing.” Aossey doesn’t specify which ministers, but Jewish Voice for Peace - a well-known organization of Jewish Israel-haters - is perhaps the oldest and most visible ally of SJP on campuses across the country. I had nothing to do with their support for SJP’s anti-Israel agendas.
My goal in putting up posters targeting SJP on campuses like UC San Diego and San Diego State has three goals: First, to counter the mis-education of students like Gabby Aossey who falsely claims that Israel is a majority Muslim state and illegally occupies Arab land; second, to counter the Jew-hatred that these libels inspire; and third, to question why university funds are being used to support hate groups against Jews. The reaction of members of these Hamas-support organizations has been to accuse me and other critics of being racists and “Islamophobes.”
Coincidentally, Hamas-supporter and SJP founder, Hatem Bazian, is the head of the “Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project” - an official program of UC Berkeley, which recently issued a “report” identifying me as part of the “inner core of an “Islamphobia network” that includes Fox News as part of the “outer core.” Evidently any fear of terrorist armies, like Hamas, and their support groups like SJP, is phobic and has no basis in fact. Tell that to the parents of 13-year old Hallel Ariel, an American Jew living in Israel, who was murdered in her bed by a Palestinian terrorist last week.
