Rabab Abdulhadi: GUPS Terror-Linked Faculty Advisor
The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) awarded Rabab Abdulhadi its 2022 Jere L. Bacharach Service Award for her "service to the field of Middle East Studies."
Who is Abdulhadi and what kind of “service" has she done for the field of Middle East Studies?
Who is Abdulhadi and what kind of “service" has she done for the field of Middle East Studies?
Rabab Abdulhadi is the face and force behind the antisemitic student group General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) at San Fransisco State University. An associate professor of Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies at SFSU, Abdulhadi is GUPS’ faculty advisor and reportedly cofounded the group in 1973.
Abdulhadi is also the founding director and senior scholar of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program.
Abdulhadi has a long history of admiration for Palestinian terrorists, including Leila Khaled and Ghassan Kanafani. Both individuals are from the U.S.-designated Marxist terror organization the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
In July 2022, Abdulhadi promoted an event in which she was a speaker titled “Celebrating Ghassan Kanafani on the 50th anniversary of his assassination.” In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Abdulhadi, along with AMED, organized a Zoom event for “students, activists, and scholars” featuring Khaled. The day before the event, Abdulhadi was quoted as saying,
“We really idolize somebody like Leila Khaled, somebody who actually stands up for herself, speaks for herself, actually goes to a plane and hijacks it …”
Abdulhadi has also expressed admiration for terrorists Rasmea Odeh and Shadia Abu Ghazaleh, both of whom she referred to as “female freedom fighters.” In 1969, Odeh masterminded a supermarket bombing by the PFLP that killed two college students in Jerusalem. She also attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem.
Ghazaleh, a bomb-maker for the PFLP, was notorious for her involvement in many attacks against Israel (until she accidentally killed herself while making a bomb).
Zionists Not Welcome
In 2018, SFSU president Leslie Wong declared that “Zionists are welcome on our campus.” In response, Abdulhadi wrote,
“I consider the statement … from President Wong, welcoming Zionists to campus…to be a declaration of war against Arabs, Muslims, Palestinians…”
Abdulhadi continued:
“I … demand the immediate retraction of this racist, Islamophobic and colonialist statement … it is embarrassing to have our campus leadership cater to donor pressures and the Israeli lobby.”
Rabab Abdulhadi's Ties to Terror
In 2014, Abdulhadi invited students to join her on a university-funded “Academic and Labor Delegation to Palestine” she organized. During the trip, which she characterized as a “political solidarity tour,” Abdulhadi met with Khaled and convicted Hamas funder Sheikh Raed Salah.
Abdulhadi later responded to a lawsuit brought against her for using tax-payer money to meet with terrorists, saying both individuals were “part of the Palestinian people's authentic and legitimate leadership.” During the same trip, Abdulhadi made efforts to establish ties between SFSU and two Hamas-dominated Palestinian universities: Birzeit and An-Najah. Following the visit, a Memorandum of Understanding was reached between An-Najah and SFSU enabling a student exchange program between the two universities.
In 2016, GUPS SFSU posted a statement of support for Abdulhadi and the memorandum. The statement condemned pro-Israel organizations for denouncing the partnership. In 2017, Abdulhadi was slapped with a lawsuit for spearheading the collaboration with An-Najah since it was a “known recruitment facility for Hamas."
The lawsuit said,
“students indoctrinated to hate Jews would be sent to San Francisco and SFSU students would travel to An-Najah where they would likely be radicalized in ways that could further endanger Jewish students on campus … or at least exacerbate the already hostile environment for Jews on campus at SFSU.”
Antisemitic Tropes and Distorted Statements
Here are some of the notorious antisemitic tropes and distorted statements pushed by Rabab Abdulhadi:
Jews Control the U.S. Government
Abdulhai promotes the classic anti-Semitic trope of a Jewish cabal that controls the U.S. government/the media/Hollywood/global banking/[fill in the blank]. This trope goes back centuries. It has been used to smear Jews as sinister, secret plotters against society.
Rabab Abdulhadi:
“The Jewish establishment... these groups are bullies... with AIPAC and the people they push around in Congress, and they bribe them and they give them money, they twist their arms and so on.
"There isn't a Jewish conspiracy, it’s not a conspiracy, but it is. There are too many influential right-wing Jews.”
Rabab Abdulhadi Supports Suicide Bombers
Abdulhadi decries that because BDS activists get so much praise for being a non-violent anti-Israel activity (it’s not), it makes the young suicide bombers look bad by contrast!
Rabab Abdulhadi:
“When we talk about BDS… that BDS is very nice because it's a nonviolent option to these crazy kids who go blow themselves up, what is it that we are saying about the hundreds and thousands of martyrs who gave their lives up for the cause?”
Rabab Abdulhadi Whitewashes Palestinian Terror
During the Second Intifada in Israel (2000-2005), at least 1,100 Israelis were killed and over 8,000 wounded by Palestinian terror including suicide bombings, shootings and knifings. It was a horrific and traumatic time for Israelis.
Yet Abdulhadi contends that it is only in retrospect that it is being thought of (“imaged”) as violent, dangerous, dark and chaotic.
She also seems to object that it is mainly being remembered for the impact it had on Israelis.
Rabab Abdulhadi:
“The way the Second Intifada, the 2000 intifada, gets imagined and portrayed and deployed now, it's imagined as violent, as chaotic, as ‘dark,’ as ‘dangerous.’ And also, mostly, what it means for Israel.”
Rabab Abdulhadi Denies Jewish Self-Determination, Calls Zionism Racism
Abdulhadi wants to find ways to stop Jews from moving to Israel, a fundamental principle of Judaism, which is referred to as Zionism. She further brainstorms about what to do with the Jews already in Israel. Presumably, they would not be welcomed in her idea of a Palestinian state.
Abdulhadi further characterizes Zionism as racism. Yet the right to self-determination of the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland is no different than indigenous peoples’ claims across the globe, which she champions (see below).
Rabab Abdulhadi:
“What can we think about to reverse the trend? How do we reverse the trend of (Jewish) immigration to Israel? Not only … what should we do with those there? What do we do with reversing the trend?
"An antidote to Zionism, which is an exclusivist Jewish, built on exclusivist, Jewish ideology.”
Rabab Abdulhadi Advocates Appropriating Others' Struggles to Frame the Palestinian Cause
Abdulhadi advocates framing the “Palestinian struggle” as an indigenous people’s struggle, presumably since the large tent of intersectional coalitions now incorporate indigenous people and their land rights claims.
This tactic would be pure, cynical opportunism on Abdulhadi’s part if it wasn’t so ironic. Historically, the Jewish people’s claim to Israel goes back to before the common era. Since then, the Jewish people are the only people that have had a continuous presence in the land. And they are the only people that still exist today who ever had a claim to the land. Although anti-Zionist like like Abdulhadi likes to deny this fact, the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel.
Rabab Abdulhadi:
“Comparisons with indigenous people ... becomes not only a rhetorical device: it has to become part and parcel of our mindset, of the paradigm shift in which we present the conflict.”
GUPS SFSU
The General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State University (GUPS SFSU) has been a generator of anti-Semitism at SFSU since 1973 when it was founded.
- Abdulhadi has been the faculty advisor for GUPS SFSU for over a decade.
- SFSU is host to the highest number of antisemitic incidents (over 50%) in the California State University system.
- Hatem Bazian, the notorious founder of Students for Justice in Palestine was leader of GUPS SFSU in the 90s.
- PLO Leader Yasser Arafat founded GUPS in Cairo in 1959.
- GUPS SFSU Activists have been harassing and discriminating against Zionists on campus for decades
Learn more about GUPS SFSU here.
