Dan Solomon

Overview

Dan Solomon [Dan Loops] was a student activist with Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and in May of 2015 — participated in Claremont SJP’s installation of a mock "apartheid wall" on Claremont’s campus. Solomon portrayedhimself as a Palestinian, supposedly detained near Israel’s security barrier.

On April 2, 2015, Solomon co-hosted Claremont SJP’s screening of an anti-Israel documentary, narrated by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir — founder and executive director of the anti-Semitic organization If Americans Knew (IAK).

In 2014, Solomon was also a student activist with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

On August 20, 2014, Solomon joined JVP Boston activists protesting Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas in Gaza. The protesters held a large banner that read: "Boston Jews say stop the war on Gaza." Other signs read: “We mourn warsaw 1944, Gaza 2014,” and “End U.S. AId to Israel.”

Claremont SJP - Excluding Pro-Israel Voices

On April 16, 2017 — on the sixth day of Passover, which was also Easter Sunday — Claremont College’s Student Senate held a vote revising the Pitzer College Student Senate Budget Committee Bylaws. Pitzer College student Simone Bishara added an amendment to the Student Activities Funds’ restrictions — to force the student senate budget committee to adhere to a boycott list formulated by the BDS movement.

Bishara’s amendment to the Bylaws, (P.4. Student Activities Funds, Section 2. Restrictions VI.), stated: "Student Activities Funds shall not be used to make a payment on goods or services from any corporation or organization associated with the unethical occupation of Palestinian territories. Products include those products from corporations and organizations as delineated in the boycott list maintained by bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-toboycott."

Upon being informed of the vote, the executive boards of Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance (CPIA) and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges circulated a petition that objected to the vote’s timing —when many Jewish and Christian students, including student senators supportive of Israel were off-campus, celebrating their respective holidays.

Bishara claimed "the timing was merely an unfortunate coincidence."

The petition also criticized the fact that the amendment was not announced before the meeting.

Claremont’s student newspaper, the Student Life, also reported that Bishara did not include the amendment in the first draft of the budgetary bylaws presented on April 9.

Because the BDS resolution was couched as an amendment, Bishara was not required to announce the measure on the meeting’s agenda. Bishara stated: "It's just not procedurally how Senate does things."

Although Bishara did not inform anyone from CPIA and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges of the amendment, The Student Life reported that Bishara did "reach out" to some senators and Claremont SJP, which sent members to speak at the meeting in favor of the amendment.

Bishara told Student Life she did not alert CPIA that she was presenting the amendment "because my intention was to have it pass. I have had enough intellectual conversation about why people disagree with me."

Bishara went on to say: "My opinions are less rooted in academic knowledge or political belief and more in this identity-based concern," she said. “It's emotionally gutting for me to sit here and have to explain why I think these things are the right things to do. ... It's just emotional labor that no one ever should have to do.”

In the same Student Life interview, Bishara claimed the amendment’s timing also made it difficult for her to go home to celebrate Easter.

"...I had to pull myself away from home and I would never, in a million years, ask anyone else to do that, and never in a million years would intentionally target something around somebody's faith. ... I can't even conceive of a world in which I would be okay if I knew somebody was doing that on purpose."

Claremont SJP’s press release on Facebook, celebrating the vote, said it passed by "22 aye, 0 nay, 4 abstentions." The announcement did not mention that the budget committee’s decisions would be tied to the dictates of the BDS movement.

Claremont SJP - Advised by Defender of Hezbollah

Claremont SJP’s faculty advisor is Department of Anthropology Chair at Scripps College (Scripps), Lara Deeb — who has excused Hezbollah's terror activities and anti-Semitism in her scholarly work. Deebs is a member of the Facebook groups Al-Awda News and Al-Awda Los Angeles and a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In the spring of 2011 — in her review of a book about Hezbollah — Deeb trivialized the anti-Semitism of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Deeb referenced a 1998 Nasrallah statement that Israel is "the state of the Zionist Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs," claiming that the quote was not proof that Nasrallah was an anti-Semite.

Claremont SJP - Demonizing Israel

On April 12, 2017 — in conjunction with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) — Claremont SJP held a screening of an anti-Semitic documentary titled: "The Occupation of the American Mind," in order to solicit support for their upcoming campus BDS resolution.

The film claimed to show that Israel controls the American public’s view on Arab-Israeli conflict via the media.

The event organizer wrote on the Facebook event page that the aim of the week’s events was to: "shed a light on the settler colonial project and apartheid policies of Israel and build the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement..."

On April 11, 2017, as part of IAW, Claremont SJP held an event titled: "Pinkwashing 101 Workshop." The event page claimed “Pinkwashing is a deliberate marketing campaign that Israel uses to project an image of queer-friendliness in order to cover up its atrocities of apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”

On April 7, 2017, Claremont SJP published an article accusing Israel of being an "Apartheid state." The article accused Israel of ethnic cleansing “700,000 Palestinians — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish alike — were violently uprooted and expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948.” The article went on to mislead its readers claiming that “Palestinian citizens in Israel are also subject to racialized laws and regulations that inhibit them from living as equals under the law,” and that “There are over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians in Israel.” The conclusion of the article encouraged readers to participate in its IAW events saying: “We call attention to these crimes this year in Israeli Apartheid week.”

On April 3, 2017, Claremont SJP erected a mock apartheid wall on the Pitzer college campus as part of IAW. On April 6, 2017, Claremont SJP wrote a blog post condemning individuals who displayed an Israeli flag behind in opposition to the wall, saying: "This flag shows the ideological underpinnings of Zionism, a settler-colonial project to lay claim to Palestinian indigenous land without acknowledging the human rights abuses, the violence, the massacres, the apartheid, and the walls that are necessary to sustain this project... this 20 foot flag that was hung in an attempt to cover up the horrors of Zionist violence."

Claremont SJP - Harassing Students

On December 12, 2016, Claremont SJP posted a statement on Facebook defending their posting of mock eviction notices on student dorm room doors, in violation of the college’s posting regulations, the notice read: "EVICTION NOTICE: DORM SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION IN THREE (3) DAYS. If you do not vacate the premises by 3/10/2016 8 PM, we reserve the right to demolish your premises without delay." It was reported that following expressions of concern by Jewish students that they were being targeted, Stan Skipworth — Claremont’s Director of Campus Safety — wrote in an email to the student body that “the flyers violated posting regulations at CMC, Pitzer College, and Scripps College.”

The Claremont SJP Facebook post also stated the group's intention to engage in "pursuing boycott/divestment campaigns" at the Claremont Colleges.

Claremont SJP - Supporting Terrorist Rasmea Odeh

Claremont SJP - Supporting Inciter to Violence

On July 12, 2016, Claremont SJP shared a petition on Facebook supporting Dareen Tatour, who was placed under house arrest for inciting violence in the fall of 2015. October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the "Knife Intifada," saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.

Tatour posted a Facebook status reportedly "calling for intifada on behalf of al-Aqsa mosque."Tatour also posted on Facebook “I am the next shahid [martyr],” under a picture of attempted-stabber Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed.

Tatour also posted a Youtube video, narrated with a poem that glorified violence and ethnic cleansing of Jews from "Arab Palestine." The Arabic poem in the video begins: “Resist, my people, resist them. In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows. And carried the soul in my palm. For an Arab Palestine. I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution,’ Never lower my flags Until I evict them from my land.”

The poem also contained the lines: "Resist the settler’s robbery And follow the caravan of martyrs."

Claremont SJP - Hosting David Sheen

On October 25, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted a speaking event co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — and featuring anti-Israel journalist, David Sheen — titled "The Bullet, the Ballot, & the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today."

The Facebook post advertising the event announced that Sheen would "describe how top Israeli political and religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews."

Claremont SJP - Spreading Anti-Israel Propaganda

On April 2, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event screening the documentary Occupation 101 as part of Claremont SJPs Israeli Apartheid week. The documentary is narrated by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir, founder of the controversial website If Americans Knew (IAK). Weir is notorious for writing an article that endorsed a Swedish newspaper’s blood libel — claiming Israel harvested Palestinian organs.

On April 1, 2015, Claremont SJP installed of a mock apartheid wall on campus that aimed to "bolster support for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel." Claremont SJP student activists posed as Palestinians supposedly being oppressed by an Israeli soldier next to the mock apartheid wall.

The mock wall misrepresented Israel’s security fence, built as a non-violent deterrent to Palestinian terrorist attacks — mostly by suicide bombers. The wall featured text that read: "Zionism is Racism." The wall also featured a series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” purportedly stolen by Israel.

In February of 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled and destroyed copies of a college level textbook that contained the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, the United States cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

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.

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.” 

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish value.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans  comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:www.facebook.com/1602447672 [Deactivated]