Darializa Avila Chevalier

Avila Chevalier was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Columbia in 2015 and 2016. Avila Chevalier attended the 2015 National SJP Conference in San Diego, California and has promoted SJP events on social media.

Avila Chevalier is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and was also a 2016 student activist with Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that promoted BDS at Columbia.

As an activist with CUAD, Avila Chevalier reportedly helped launch and promote CUAD’s BDS campaign at Columbia and has protested an Israeli official speaking on campus. 

Avila Chevalier was an illustrator [00:00:10] for the opinions section of Columbia’s student newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, and designed the logo for CUAD’s campaign.

As of February 2021, Avila Chevalier’s LinkedIn profile said she was a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology from The Graduate Center at the City University of New York (CUNY). 

Also as of September 2024, Avila Chevalier’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in Middle Eastern studies in 2016.

As of the same date, Avila Chevalier’s LinkedIn also said she was an international intern at Tomorrow’s Youth Organization in Nablus, West Bank, from May through July 2014 and that she “Conducted professional competency courses at An-Najah National University.”

Al-Najah (alternatively, An Najah) University is the largest Palestinian university in the West Bank and is notorious for its triumphal exhibit lauding the August 9, 2001 Sbarro cafe suicide bombing. The blast killed 15 civilians, including 7 children and a pregnant woman and wounded 130.

As of February 2020, Avila Chevalier was an organizer chair for BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), whose mission statement read: “BYP100 is a National, member-based organization of Black 18-35 year old activists and organizers, dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people.” In 2017, Avila Chevalier was an organizer with the NYC chapter of BYP100.

In June 2017, Avila Chevalier used the screen name “Mother of Dragons” on Twitter.

Support for Terrorists

On December 8, 2014 Avila Chevalier posted in support of Rasmea Odeh on Facebook “Help Rasmea come home! ” 

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate. 

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind. 

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison. 

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

In her Facebook post, Avila Chevalier also shared a petition soliciting funds for the Rasmea Defense Committee.

Whitewashing Terrorism

On August 6, 2014, Avila Chevalier posted on Facebook: “... I resist the urge to characterize all forms of resistance as terror. Especially, if we will not first be honest about the colonization and apartheid that fomented these acts of rebellion.”

On July 26, 2014, Avila Chevalier shared an article on Facebook titled: “Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza—Debunked” written by anti-Israel activist Noura Erakat and commented: “If you still think Palestinians systematically use civilians as human shields, I need you to reconsider your sources of information.” 

In her Facebook post, Avila Chevalier quoted Erakat who wrote: “... only Israeli soldiers have systematically used Palestinians as human shields. Since Israel’s incursion into the West Bank in 2002, it has used Palestinians as human shields by tying young Palestinians onto the hoods of their cars or forcing them to go into a home where a potential militant may be hiding.”

Throughout the summer of 2014 — during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — Hamas's deployment of human shields was extensively documented and publicized. Hamas encouraged Gazans to act as human shields to frustrate Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza. 

In the article, Erakat also claimed that Hamas “clearly did not” dig tunnels “beneath the entirety of the Gaza Strip.”

Hamas terror tunnels are intended for mass murders and hostage-taking scenarios against Israeli civiliansand soldiers. They stretch from the Gaza Strip into Israel.  

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On November 29, 2017, Avila Chevalier was a featured panelist at an event titled “The Criminalization of Home: Organizing to Protect Communities from NYC to Palestine.” 

The event was co-organized by Adalah-NY: Campaign for the Boycott of Israel, Addameer Prisoner Support & Human Rights Association, BYP100 NYC chapter, and the Center for Constitutional Rights

The event’s Facebook description said: “This panel explores the different ways criminalization fractures communities and separates people from the place(s) they call home. Bringing together activists from New York City to Palestine, it looks at how state violence enforces a system of racialized dispossession, whether through eviction, deportation, incarceration, or colonization and ethnic cleansing.”

The event’s Facebook description also said “We'll also learn how people are protecting their communities by fighting back against the increasingly militarized policing of their neighborhoods, supporting prisoners' rights, and advancing a vision of freedom and self-determination.”

In a video posted to YouTube by Adalah NY on February 3, 2018, Avila Chevalier said [00:01:21]: “To me, the constant policing and surveillance that takes place for the purposes of gentrifying these predominantly and historically black communities is not much different from Israeli policies that use incarceration and collective punishment to push Palestinians out of their homes to create Israeli settlements.” 

In the video, Avila Chevalier invoked JVP’s “Deadly Exchange” campaign, saying [00:01:39]: “And it’s no secret the NYPD [New York Police Department] and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] frequently engage with one another to exchange tactics and technology for their respective projects.”

In 2017, JVP launched the “Deadly Exchange” campaign, including a video that accused mainstream American Jewish organizations in the United States of coordinating exchange programs between American and Israeli security personnel, to advance “worst practices” and “racist policies.”

JVP’s video also blamed [00:04:04] US-based Jewish organizations for violence that occurs against Black and Brown communities, immigrants and activists in the U.S.     

On July 5, 2015, Avila Chevalier commented on Facebook: “You know, the sad things is we could probably bail out Puerto Rico if we weren't spending so much on Israel and its millions of war crimes -- and you know, apartheid.”

On August 23, 2014,Avila Chevalier commented on Facebook: “I think that unity - culturally or otherwise - can be established and maintained without a ‘state’ per say [sic.] so long as that nation of people have equal rights where they are… But I think creating a place for that on another's land is colonialism…”  

The same day, Avila Chevalier also claimed on Facebook that “[a state] in which Israel still claims a Jewish identity...is the basis for codified colonialism and racism in many ways.”

On August 4, 2014, Avila Chevalier shared a +972 magazine article on Facebook promoting an August 2, 2014 demonstration in Washington, D.C. to protest against U.S. support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza. The rally was organized by the ANSWER Coalition.

Avila Chevalier commented on Facebook, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Free!” 

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:47] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state. In April 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the chant as antisemitic.

Demonizing Zionists

On August 19, 2016, Avila Chevalier co-authored an Electronic Intifada (EI) article titled “Black activists owe no apology for charging Israel with genocide.” 

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture. Zionism is a core part of the identity of most Jews.

On June 3, 2017, Avila Chevalier posted on Facebook claiming that Israeli actress Gal Gadot “openly supported the 2014 bombing of Gaza that killed thousands of civilians.”  

Starting in 2016, Israeli actress Gal Gadot portrayed Wonder Woman in films as part of the DC Extended Universe.

Avila Chevalier’s Facebook post included a post by anti-Israeli poet Remi Kanazi that labelled Gadot “a colonizer, an occupier & a supporter of mass violence.”

Poet Remi Kanazi is known for his aggressively anti-Israel spoken-word performances. He has supported terrorism and has compared Israel to both ISIS and the Ku Klux Klan.

On June 6, 2017, Avila Chevalier tweeted: “Gal Gadot [Israeli actress] is definitely white. She is also a Zionist who served in the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Basura [trash]”

On the same day, Avila Chevalier tweeted: “If you're a Zionist in my mentions I just wanna know “¿QUIEN CARAJO TE MANDA? [WHO THE F**K IS SENDING YOU]”

Promoting BDS at Columbia

In 2016, Avila Chevalier promoted on Facebook a Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) petition that was launched by Columbia SJP and Barnard/Columbia JVP.

On February 1, 2016, CUAD launched a divestment campaign on Facebook with a petition and inaugural event titled “BDS 101,” scheduled for February 4, 2016. CUAD’s Facebook post stated that the campaign was “embedded in the larger BDS movement.” 

CUAD described the campaign in its Facebook post as a “call for the University to divest its stocks, funds, and endowment from companies that profit from the State of Israel's ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”

CUAD’s campaign targeted eight companies and alleged that by failing to divest from these companies, Columbia was supporting “continued occupation of and assaults against the Palestinian people,” by Israel.

On February 18, 2016, Avila Chevalier indicated on Facebook that she “went” to an event hosted by Columbia/Barnard JVP and cosponsored by CUAD and CSJP, titled “Is BDS Anti-Semitic?”

On February 29, 2016, Avila Chevalier shared Columbia SJP’s Facebook post reporting that Columbia faculty had endorsed CUAD’s petition. As of April 5, 2016, nearly 80 Barnard and Columbia professors had signed the petition which supported CUAD’s demand that the university "divest from corporations that supply, perpetuate and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people for over 68 years." 

On February 29, 2016, Avila Chevalier indicated on Facebook that she “went” to a panel discussion titled “The Case for Academic Boycott" which featured anti-Israel professors Neferti Tadiar, Katherine Franke and Nadia Abu El-Haj.

The event was co-hosted by Columbia SJP and Columbia/Barnard JVP at as part of Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW 2016). IAW 2016 was hosted by CSJP and Columbia/Barnard JVP on campus from February 29 - March 5, 2016.


On June 8, 2016, Avila Chevalier shared CUAD’s post on Facebook urging New York state residents to oppose Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that the state of NY would boycott companies that boycotted Israel. Andrew Cuomo is the 56th Governor of New York.

In June 2016, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo signed executive order no. 157 that prohibited public funds from supporting BDS campaigns against Israel.

On March 30, 2015, Avila Chevalier shared a Columbia Spectator op-ed on Facebook, titled: “Apartheid requires facts, not perspectives.”

The article, written by fellow Columbia SJP members Ayah Zaki-Sabet and Sumaya Awad, called for BDS on campus, saying: “Just as students before us pressured university divestment from South African apartheid, let us follow in their footsteps and divest from Israeli apartheid.”

Protesting an Israeli Official on Campus

On April 7, 2016, Avila Chevalier participated in a CSJP and CUAD protest of a campus event featuring then Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barakat. The event, titled “Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat: A Discussion of the Mayor’s Vision for the City,” was hosted by the pro-Israel student organization Aryeh: Columbia Students Association for Israel.

At the event, CUAD members held signs as Barkat entered the room and for the duration of his speech and then reportedly walked out of the auditorium towards the end of the program. 

In an April 8, 2016 statement on Facebook, CUAD accused Barkat of racism, inciting violence and calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

SJP Activism

On April 7, 2016, Avila Chevalier indicated on Facebook that she “went” to an event co-hosted by Columbia SJP and Columbia/Barnard JVP titled “Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising.”

The event’s Facebook description suggested a comparison between Israel and South African Apartheid and claimed: “The Intifada, the self determined response of the Palestinian people to the daily horror and atrocities committed by the state of Israel, today is called an act of terrorism.”

Since the early 2000s, the term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” has carried the connotation of violence.  

The event’s Facebook description continued: “These repudiations assume the stability and objectivity of the label ‘terrorist’- in fact, a subjective rhetorical strategy used by the powerful to demonize legitimate acts of resistance and to maintain systems of oppression.”

On March 4, 2016, Avila Chevalier indicated on Facebook that she “went” to a CSJP and Columbia/Barnard JVP IAW 2016 event titled “Why is Palestine Still the Issue in 2016?” featuring anti-Israel activist Ilan Pappé.

In 2011, Pappé was discredited as “one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest” by fellow historian Benny Morris.

On April 28, 2015, Avila Chevalier attended a Columbia SJP event titled: “Israel, Racism, and Apartheid: An Insider's View with Haneen Zoabi,” featuring then Israeli-Arab member of Israel’s parliament, Haneen Zoabi. On April 29, 2015, Columbia SJP posted to Facebook a group photo of Avila Chevalier and fellow Columbia SJP activists posing with Zoabi.

Haneen Zoabi, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, has a long history of inciting violence. In 2014, she was suspended from the legislature after defending the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by the terror group Hamas, and who were later found executed in a field. In 2015, a criminal investigation was opened against Zoabi after she reportedly condoned anti-Israel violence and called for a new intifada.

Mock “apartheid” walls have been constructed by SJP groups on campuses to draw attention to alleged Israeli human rights violations against Palestinians. 

On March 24, 2015, Avila Chevalier indicated on Facebook that she was going to a CSJP event, co-sponsored by Columbia’s Muslim Students Association, Columbia MSA, titled “CSJP IAW: Media, Solidarity and Palestine.” 

The event’s Facebook description read: “For Israeli Apartheid Week, this panel will discuss US media coverage of Palestine with an eye on 2014's Operation Protective Edge, exploring the connections with coverage of recent attacks on the Muslim American community and the domestic repression in Ferguson.”

On October 2, 2015, Avila Chevalier posed in a Columbia SJP Facebook photo with fellow SJP activists at a campus event titled “Returning to Iqrit: Reclaiming the Right of Return,” hosted that day by Columbia SJP.

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. 

The event’s Facebook description read: “Iqrit, a small village of 450 Palestinians, is located in the Galilee in Northern Israel… The Iqrit Community Association leads the struggle of the people of Iqrit, strongly advocating for their right to return.” 

On November 17, 2014, Avila Chevalier participated in Columbia SJP’s “Right to Education Week 2014,” held on campus from November 17 - 20, 2014.  

The Right to Education Tour brings Birzeit University students to U.S. campuses, where they claim that Israel is obstructing the rights of Palestinians to higher education. This claim mischaracterizes the sweeps Israeli security forces have made to shut down terror cells operating on the Birzeit campus, including cells linked to Hamas. 

Darializa Avila Chevalier’s Organizing the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia)

A June 4, 2024 Truthout article reported that Avila Chevalier had been “active in the alumni organizing space throughout the current student protests,” including organizing “an alternative reunion for alumni…to protest the current administration.”

On April 24, 2024, Avila Chevalier featured [00:00:23] in a video at the encampment published by Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet.

On April 29, 2024, Avila Chevalier was featured in an Instagram photo participating in the encampment. She was photographed for TIME and quoted saying: “The divestment demand is not a symbolic demand; it’s a very concrete one. It’s asking that the university divest all funds and monetary support for the companies that produce the weapons, the technology, the institutions that uphold Israel’s capacity for engaging in genocide and apartheid.” 

On May 1, 2024, Avila Chevalier was featured [slide 4] in an Instagram photo participating in the encampment. She can be seen speaking into a megaphone and wearing a keffiyeh. The photo caption said: “...Protesters tried to protect the occupied building until the last moment, linking arms and singing ‘we shall not be moved…’”

On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.

Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”

Anti-Semitism at Columbia 2016-2017  

A 2017 report by AMCHA Initiative found that Columbia, which includes Barnard College (Barnard), had the highest overall anti-semitic activity (35 incidents) in 2016, the highest rate of incidents of anti-Semitic expression (23 incidents) and the highest rate of BDS activity on campus (22 incidents).

The AMCHA Initiative documents anti-Semitism at U.S. colleges, using “the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and the U.S. State Department definitions to identify” anti-Semitic incidents.

CSJP Demonizing Israel 2015  

In December 2015, CSJP promoted a video, originally produced by Al-Jazeera, that referred to Israel’s security fence as “The Apartheid Wall.” The video also suggested that a non-binding, advisory opinion on the security fence issued by the International Court of Justice is binding international law. 

CSJP BDS Campaign 2016  

On February 1, 2016, Columbia SJP and Columbia/Barnard JVP launched a joint divestment campaign on Facebook, titled: “Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD).”

The campaign was launched with a petition and inaugural event titled: “BDS 101,” scheduled for February 4, 2016.

CUAD’s Facebook post stated that the campaign was “embedded in the larger BDS movement.” 

CUAD also described the campaign in its Facebook post as a “call for the University to divest its stocks, funds, and endowment from companies that profit from the State of Israel's ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”

CSJP’s Banner Controversy at Barnard 2014  

In March 2014, Columbia SJP organizer Jannine-Masoud Salman made a large banner that was hung at the entrance of Barnard college. The banner read: “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” and featured a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with no internal borders, colored uniformly green. 

CSJP’s Mock Israeli Checkpoint 2010  

On November 20, 2010, CSJP uploaded a video to their YouTube channel, titled: “Mock Israeli Checkpoint at Columbia University”

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 Student 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.

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.