Danish Hasan

Overview

Danish Hasan promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as a student senator at the University of South Florida (USF) and has demonized Israel.

As of February 2016, Hasan’s LinkedIn page said he was the USF Student Government (SG) Senate President Pro-Tempore since April 2015. He was also the president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at USF since April 2015. 

As of October 2019, Hasan’s LinkedIn page said he was the co-founder of Tampa’s Opioid Research Network (TORN). 

As of the same date, Hasan’s LinkedIn page said he planned to graduate with a doctoral degree in Podiatric Medicine from Rosalind Franklin University (RFU) of Medicine and Science, in 2023. He also planned to graduate with a master’s degree in Legal Studies from Washington University (WU), in St. Louis.

Also as of the same date, Hasan’s LinkedIn page said he graduated from USF in 2017, with a bachelor’s degree in Public Health. 

Hasan was also listed on his LinkedIn page as “Director Medical Affairs,” of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) from September 2015 to April 2018, which has been financially linked with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the Global Relief Foundation, both of which were shut down by the United States government for funneling donations to terrorist organizations.

Supporting BDS

In 2016, Hasan reportedly supported and co-signed into effect a BDS resolution at USF.

The student newspaper, the USF Oracle, quoted Hasan in his capacity as “Senate President Pro-Tempore, in a January 27, 2016 article about the BDS resolution as saying: “It is a complete honor to support the resolution...”

The BDS resolution that Hasan supported came as a result of SJP at USF campaigning for BDS the previous two years and originally passed on January 20, 2016. The resolution was then vetoed by the USF student body president and vice-president.

The Oracle further reported that Hasan, while acting as the Senate President Pro-Tempore, “presided over” all discussions of the BDS resolution when it was presented again in February 2016. 

Following the discussions and a failed Senate vote “on a Congressional override of the veto,” the resolution was re-introduced under a different classification, which allowed it to pass with a simple majority vote.

The Senate then passed the resolution and Hasan co-signed it into effect in the USF SG Senate.

Shortly after Hasan co-signed the BDS resolution into effect, the USF Oracle reported it was struck down by the USF student government supreme court because the resolution was “outside of the Senate’s jurisdiction, as it was not related to the allocation or expenditure of student expenses.”

The USF Oracle also reported that the court found that “the [BDS] resolution violated the racial and national origin elements of the clause by specifically targeting companies that have business in Israel.”

On May 3, 2014, Hasan tweeted an opinion piece in the Tampa Bay Times that promoted the group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at USF and its BDS campaign at the University.

Demonizing Israel

Hasan retweeted a July 28, 2014 tweet that said: “Supporting Israeli apartheid and massacre of civilians is unamerican #GazaUnderAttack #GazaUnderFire.”

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.  

BDS

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true. 

One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”  

Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”

In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.

Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.

BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.

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