Ahmed Sedda

UCSC SJP student activists lay down directly in front of the students who were tabling in sympathy with the murdered Israelis. 

In April 2015, UCSC SJP student activists disrupted a talk given by former Israeli officers, trying to dialogue with students on-campus. One agitator covered his face and bellowed from a prepared text at the visiting Israelis. The Israelis welcomed the protesters’ voices and beseeched them to engage in civil dialogue. However, UCSC SJP student activist Wessam Awadalla shrieked: “You can’t tell me that you value life and you lost people and that hurts you...You can’t talk to me like this!” Awadalla called further requests for dialogue “an act of terror and the violence of colonization.” Meanwhile, the masked disruptor continued his rant — accompanied by fellow UCSC SJP student activists chanting “Free Free Palestine,” before walking out.

UCSC SJP/CJP - Spreading Hate on Campus

On March 7, 2015, UCSC SJP student activists dressed up in mock Israeli Defense Forces uniforms and set up four mock “checkpoints” on UCSC’s campus. UCSC SJP physically blocked students entering one of the main campus libraries before final exams until they produced “proper identification.” UCSC SJP’s disturbance of student life purported to illustrate how Palestinians experience military checkpoints. 

On March 12, 2015, UCSC’s Chancellor and Campus Provost sent an email to the UCSC community that the administration had received “hate/bias” reports filed against the mock-checkpoint demonstrators and acknowledged that other students felt “particularly targeted” by the UCSC SJP tactic. 

On December 2, 2013, UCSC CJP student activists distributed fake eviction notices to more than 400 UCSC students in campus dorm rooms. Those notices ordered the students to leave their rooms, threatening that they would be demolished within four days.

In January 2015, UCSC SJP student activists crashed an LGBT campus event hosted by “A Wider Bridge”. Hoisting a placard reading “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA!” the demonstrators invoked, approvingly, the wave of Palestinian violence occurring in Israel that month. UCSC SJP student activists moved to the front of the room and imposed their message upon the audience while delaying the invited speaker from talking. UCSC SJP later posted a video inadvertently showing that its student activists lied when agreeing not to disrupt the event, as a condition of their admittance.   

Hours before the event, unidentified callers harassed the UCSC’s LGBT center, threatening to block students’ entry to the event — and demanding its cancellation. A flyer advertising the LGBT event was defaced with “F*ck Zionist Pinkwashing Free Palestine.” Eventually, the LGBT Center’s environs, intended to be a safe place for students, became so hostile and threatening that the program was relocated.

UCSC SJP/CJP - Applauding Hate Speech

In February 2015 UCSC SJP co-sponsored an event that brought Steven Salaita to UCSC’s campus.

In 2014, The University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted On June 19, 2014 — after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students at a bus stop —  read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” The abducted boys were murdered and their bodies were found buried in Palestinian-controlled territory on June 30, 2014.

A month later, Salaita tweeted, "Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”

UCSC SJP/ CJP - Pushing BDS

At a May 2014 UCC Student Union Assembly (SUA), UCSC CJP proposed a non-binding resolution, urging UCSC to divest from corporations that “support the Israeli occupation.” 

The resolution initially failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority. However, following a complicated procedural battle, during which UCSC SJP student activists argued that SJP student activists would feel “unsafe” on campus if the vote did not go in their favor, SUA voted on November 18, 2015 to validate the divestment resolution. 

Two days prior to the November 18 vote, a Jewish SUA representative, Daniel Bernstein, received a Facebook messagewarning him to abstain from voting on the resolution because he was the president of the schools’ Jewish Student Union. The message said that his College Council determined that he was motivated by “a Jewish agenda,” and was unfairly biased against the resolution.  

On November 19, 2015 UCSC’s Chancellor George Blumenthal sent an email to the campus community announcing that he would be convening a Chancellor's Diversity Advisory Council to discuss the climate for Jewish students on campus. Chancellor Blumenthal also noted that the resolution “may create an environment in which some of our Jewish students feel alienated and less welcome on our campus.”

On December 6, 2015, UCSC SJP responded via a Facebook post to the Chancellor’s email —which demanded his resignation: “We are disgusted with you and your ‘chillingly’ racist email to the campus community...we recognize the opportunistic nature of your email and it is clearly a part of the University of California’s continued systematic attempt to silence activism around Palestine...“In recognition of your absolute incompetence and steadfast defense of white supremacy, we demand your resignation.”

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/100008338695752 [Deactivated]

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-sedda-86852487