Edina Metovic

Overview

Edina Metovic [Edina Metovic Haikal] co-authored two Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolutions at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in 2015. She has also spread hatred of Israel.

Metovic was listed as the contact person for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC Davis (SJP at UC Davis) in 2015.

As of June 2023, Metovic’s LinkedIn profile said she had been the owner of Sweet Spectrum Bakery in Elk Grove, California, since March 2022.

As of the same date, Metovic’s LinkedIn said she was the owner of the Sugar Plum Family Daycare Center in San Jose, California, from July 2019 to April 2022.

Also as of June 2023, Metovic’s LinkedIn said she received a bachelor’s degree in economics from UC Davis in 2015.

As of June 2023, Metovic’s LinkedIn said she was located in the San Francisco Bay area.

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

In January 2015, Metovic co-authored a student senate divestment resolution at UC Davis titled: “ASUCD [Associated Students, University of California, Davis] Senate Resolution #9 (SR #9),” which called on the University of California (UC) Board of Regents to divest from companies doing business in Israel.

The UC Board of Regents sets UC Davis’s investment policy.

SR #9 was an expanded version of SR #20, an April 2014 divestment resolution authored by SJP at UC Davis activist Saliem Shehadeh that failed to pass in the student senate on May 9, 2014.

On May 19, 2014, Metovic signed a guest opinion article that condemned the ASUCD Senate for failing to pass SR #20 and accused those voting against the resolution of considering “the tears of the anti-divestment community worth more than Palestinian blood." The opinion article was published in the California Aggie, UC Davis’s student newspaper.

On January 29, 2015, an ASUCD Senate hearing was called to present resolution SR #9. Following speeches for and against the resolution, the students opposing the resolution, who reportedly constituted “about a third of the attendees,” walked out [00:06:48] of the room.

As those opposing SR #9 left the room, a large group of pro-divestment students chanted [00:00:05]: “Allahu akbar! [God is the greatest].” After the students exited the hall, the leader of the meeting mocked [00:08:43] the walk-out.

On January 30, 2015, UC Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi issued a statement that SR #9 “does not reflect the position of UC Davis or the UC system.” Referring to an earlier statement issued by the UC Board of Regents, Katehi wrote: “The statement reiterates the Board’s position that this type of call to action will not be entertained.”

The UC Board of Regents’s statement also said: “This isolation of Israel among all countries of the world greatly disturbs us and is of grave concern to members of the Jewish community.”

SR #9 passed with a vote of 8-2-2, but was overturned as unconstitutional a month later by the university’s Court of Associated Students, reportedly on the grounds that it was “PRIMARILY a political document,” with insufficient relevance to student welfare on campus.

In May 2015, SJP at UC Davis responded by proposing a new resolution, which Metovic co-authored with Obeid, who was president of SJP at UC Davis at the time, titled: “ASUCD Senate Resolution #17 (SR #17).”

SR #17 was introduced by Anas Tresh, who served as an ASUCD senator in 2015-2016.

The resolution alleged: “enabling Israel’s occupation of Palestine compromises the integrity of students’ education,” and claimed that divesting “will create a climate of tolerance and open channels of dialogue between different campus communities.”

The May 2015 resolution passed 10-0-2, but was later ruled unconstitutional by the ASUCD Judicial Council in May 2019.

The council noted that the resolution violated the ASUCD Bill of Student Rights because its passage “led to the discrimination and harassment of students whose ethnicity, national origin or political beliefs are in opposition to the content of the Resolution.”

The council’s statement also said: “the verbiage within the Resolution has caused the harassment of many students.”

Hatred of Israel

On May 15, 2015, Metovic changed her Facebook profile picture to a 2012 “Nakba Day” cartoon [photo 1] created by anti-Israel cartoonist Carlos Latuff.

The cartoon depicted a Palestinian woman with the numerals “1948” carved onto her arm, suggesting an equivalency between Israel and Nazi Germany, which tattooed numbers onto the arms of concentration camp inmates.

The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.

Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian political cartoonist who has equated Israel and America with Nazi Germany and promoted violence. In 2006, he won second prize at Iran’s “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition” for a cartoon that compared Israel’s security barrier to Nazi concentration camps.

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.

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.