Erick Ceballos

Overview

Erick Ceballos [Erick Ceballos-Vazquez] has spread hatred of Israel and promoted a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), in 2017.

Ceballos was also an activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UCSB since November 2016. He also attended the 2018 National SJP Conference.

The 2018 National SJP conference was held on November 16-18, 2018 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The conference was themed “Radical Hope: Resistance in the Face of Adversity.” The conference website stated: “[t]he reason we can have hope is that Zionism...can be destroyed.”

As of October 2018, Ceballos was reportedly an intern with the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 labor union.

As of January 2019, Ceballos’s Facebook page said that he was studying Political Science at UCSB, slated to graduate in 2020.

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On August 1, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Ceballos tweeted: “Does Hamas have to dump Israeli tea into the ocean for you to understand their struggle?”

Hamas is a designated terrorist organization by the European Union, Canada, Australia, the United States and Israel.

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

On September 1, 2014, Ceballos tweeted: “Gaza is considered a refugee camp, how do you go to war with a refugee camp?”

Hamas fired over 4,564 missiles and rockets — including Grad rockets — at Israeli population centers during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July of 2014.

On August 22, 2015, Ceballos tweeted: “When I think Starbucks I think dead kids in Gaza.”

On September 6, 2015, Ceballos tweeted: “Would like to take this moment to say screw Israel and #FreePalestine.”

On November 6, 2017, Ceballos tweeted: “I used to think the left could b unified until I entered a space that was progressive but didn't fight the settler-colonialism in Palestine.”

Promoting BDS

On April 23, 2017, on Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, SJP UCSB launched “UCSB Divest,” the group’s fourth anti-Israel divestment campaign since 2013.

SJP UCSB’s 2017 “Resolution to Divest From Companies that Profit From Human Rights Violations in Palestine/Israel” called for UCSB’s Associated Students Senate (A.S. Senate) to divest from specific companies that do businesses with Israel and that allegedly “profit from human rights violations”

On April 24, 2017, Ceballos promoted the SJP UCSB’s divestment resolution on Facebook, calling it “A Resolution to Divest from Companies that Profit from Apartheid.” The post also accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “crimes against humanity.”

Ceballos post included a link to the 2017 proposed divestment resolution. That same day, Ceballos posted another image on Facebook promoting UCSB Divest.

On May 4, 2017, Ceballos tweeted: “Just lobbied my first senator !!

” and shared a photo of a button that said: “Free Palestine.”

On May 10, 2017, Ceballos tweeted: “everyone come through to the divestment hearing tonight.” One day later, the resolution failed to pass with 16 votes against the resolution and 7 abstentions.

In 2018, SJP UCSB launched an anti-Israel divestment campaign for the fifth time in six years. The campaign called “for the UC to withdraw investments from companies that profit from alleged human rights violations in Israel and Palestine.”

On May 16, 2018, Ceballos tweeted: “friends of Palestine come to Corwin and tell senate you support divestment.”

That same day, the UCSB A.S. Senate failed to vote on SJP UCSB’s divestment resolution targeting Israel. A disagreement following a 10-hour debate caused 12 senators to walk out of a Senate meeting, leaving less than the minimum number of Senators present required for a vote.

On May 25, 2018, SJP UCSB’s divestment resolution again failed to pass when 15 outgoing senators and proxies failed to attend the last meeting of the 68th session.

On May 30, 2018, Ceballos tweeted: “divestment needs to pass it's been 6 years in the making and we are the last UC to do so.”

SJP UCSB Activism

On May 1, 2017, Ceballos tweeted “catch me here all week

” and tagged himself at UCSB and shared a photo of himself in front of a series of anti-Israel panels designed to look like Israel’s separation barrier.

On May 3, 2017, SJP UCSB hosted Israel Apartheid Week (IAW) on campus.

Mac SPHR - Israel Apartheid Week

SPHR Mac hosted and ran a two-week long “Israel Apartheid Week (IAW)” from March 6 until March 17, 2017.

On March 1, 2017, SPHR Mac tweeted: “Join us from March 6-17 here at McMaster University in our struggle against colonization, militarization and apartheid! #IAWMAC2017.”

The tweet featured an IAW promotion video that claimed “to raise awareness for Israel’s settler colonial project and its apartheid policies” [0:19] against Palestinians who are being “targeted and cleansed by the state of Israel” [1:25], an “apartheid regime” [1:31].

Young Communist League (YCL) activist Aparajito Singh, working in tandem with Mac SPHR, created buttons for IAW 2017 featuring the PFLP logo, PFLP terrorist Leila Khaled as well as Ghassan Kanafani, a leading member and spokesperson of the PFLP in its early years.

Kanafani announced the PFLP’s responsibility for the Lod Airport Massacre of May 1972 and was personally linked to the airport attackers. The attack killed 26 people.

SPHR Mac denied Jewish indigeneity to Israel and hosted speakers who accused Jews of “settler colonialism.”

On March 16, 2017, Mac SPHR hosted an event, titled “From Intifada to Liberation - Defeating Colonialism & Imperialism.” Since the early 2000’s, the term “intifada” has carried the connotation of militant violence. In 2017, violent intifada that erupted two years earlier continued in Israel.

On March 8, 2017, Mac SPHR co-hosted the event “Israeli Apartheid Week: The Lab.” The Facebook event page elaborated that: “Since 9/11, the Israeli arms industries are doing bigger business than ever before. Large Israeli companies develop and test the vessels of future warfare, which is then sold worldwide by private Israeli agents, who manipulate a network of Israeli politicians and army commanders, while Israeli theoreticians explain to various foreign countries how to defeat civil and para-military resistance.”

Mac SPHR also hosted IAW in 2016.

On February 7, 2016, Mac SPHR advertised for IAW by posting on Facebook photographs that likened Israel to Jim Crow America.

On March 9, 2016, Mac SPHR hosted the event “Apartheid, Live!” as part of IAW.That event showcased a poster that described Gaza as an “open Air Prison” and referred to Israeli defensive operations as “attacks.” The poster misleadingly employed raw casualty figures as indicators of moral merit.

The event displayed another poster featuring a graphic composed of a series of maps portraying 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.

The event also featured an installation mischaracterizing Israel’s security fence as an “Apartheid Wall.”

On March 14, 2016, Mac SPHR members posted to Facebook an article written by then-SPHR President Yara Shoufani and 2017 SPHR President Lina Assi, who claimed that IAW aimed to raise “awareness about Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project and apartheid policies… of racial segregation.”

On March 1, 2015, Mac SPHR hosted David Sheen during Israel Apartheid Week. Sheen is an anti-Israel propagandist who was banned from the German Parliament in November of 2014.

On May 4, 2017, Ceballos tweeted: “we still out here

” and shared a photo of activists tabling for SJP.

On May 5, 2017, Ceballos tweeted: “It's been a good week

” and shared a photo of himself with other students in front of a series of anti-Israel panels designed to look like Israel’s separation barrier.

Attending the 2018 National SJP Conference

On November 19, 2018, Ceballos posed for a group photo taken during the 2018 National SJP Conference.

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.