Dina Omar

Overview

Dina Omar is a long time member and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) having been affiliated and active in SJP chapters at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and Columbia University (Columbia). Currently, she is a member of the national branch of SJP (NSJP) and is active at the Yale University (Yale) SJP.

Omar is an active supporter and promoter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Omar has Supported the movement at UC Berkeley, Columbia and is currently active in BDS activities at Yale.

Omar is a writer for the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada and is currently working as the membership coordinator for the Arab Resource and Organizing Center. She is also an avid poet who frequently writes vivid and frightening anti-Israel poetry - though she claims that her poems are not "Anti-Jewish." In one such poem about Gaza, she writes "...I need to burn a flag...I will burn the american flag..I will burn the Israeli flag" and "....maybe I need an AK, a molotov cocktail, and a videotaped goodbye letter to my family who is already busy dying the kind of body that socks and pushes back on the people who grope me the wrong way..."

Omar is a doctoral student at Yale pursuing a Ph.D in Palestinian Studies. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology. Additionally, Omar has a M.A from Columbia.

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.

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.