Eva Kalikoff

Accusing Jews of White Supremacy

Spreading Hatred of Israel

Pushing BDS

CUAD is comprised of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) members, who joined forces in February 2016. The group called on Columbia to divest its equity holdings and endowment funds from companies that “profit from the State of Israel’s ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid law.”

CUAD lists eight target companies that it believes “*likely* to be invested in by a university like CU,” without knowing whether Columbia actually had holdings in the corporations.

Boycotting Jewish Heritage Tour

Return the Birthright Campaign  

Supporting an Anti-Israel Agitator

INN Activism

JVP Columbia

JVP Columbia was founded in March, 2015 by Barnard College senior Eva Kalikoff, primarily to shatter "the illusion of a Jewish consensus on the policies and actions of the State of Israel." Kalikoff co-chairs the group, with Columbia senior Chris Godshall.

JVP SJP Demonizing Israel

On April 28, 2015, JVP Columbia and CSJP co-hosted an event that featured Haneen Zoabi, called "Israel, Racism, and Apartheid: An Insider's View." Zoabi, a member of Israel’s parliament (the Knesset), has been investigated for inciting violence on a number of occasions. In July 2014, Zoabi was suspended from the Knesset after she excused the Hamas terrorist kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers — declaring that the abductors were "not terrorists." The kidnapped boys were later found in a field — executed by their Hamas kidnappers.

In October 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated a criminal investigation against Zoabi after she doubled down in a Hamas-affiliated newspaper, Al Resalah — imploring Muslims to give a wave of murderous “individual attacks ... popular support,” and calling for the “outpouring of thousands” to create a “real intifada.”

On December 10, 2015 JVP Columbia politicized the issue of sexual violence to demonize Israel — by linking all victims of sexual violence to the Palestinian cause. JVP Columbia and CSJP hijacked the global problem — alleging that "... sexual violence is intimately connected with colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of state violence. As shown by the stories of Rasmeah Odeh and countless Palestinian survivors, sexual violence has routinely been used as a tool of oppression against Palestinian women."

Supporting Terrorists

On January 27, 2016 JVP Columbia joined in Palestine Legal’s support for Rasmea Odeh. 

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.

Standing with Terror

On January 14, 2016 JVP Columbia tweeted their solidarity with the "brave students" at Birzeit University. 

Birzeit is a hotbed of anti-Israel agitation. The university has been accused of radicalizing students as well as promoting and encouraging political violence.

The student body elected Hamas to power in 2003, 2015 and 2016.

In January of 2016, Birzeit characterized an IDF raid to seize Hamas propaganda and arrest wanted militants as a "belligerent ... attack on the university and our right to education …"

JVP Columbia - Protesting Israeli Aid to Syrian Refugees

In the article, Fineman and Hansen politicized IsraAids work and claimed that "there can be no such thing as an “apolitical" celebration of Israel” until the “Palestinian refugee crisis” — which they blamed solely on Israel— is solved. Fineman and Hansen also falsely accused Israel of denying humanitarian aid to Palestinians.and charged Aryeh with “hypocrisy” for celebrating Israel’s assistance to Syrian refugees in Jordan and Europe.

The same day, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Columbia (CSJP) members held a demonstration on campus, displaying posters that declared: "Celebrating Israel is celebrating Apartheid" — The placards also misrepresented that Israel was created in 1948 “through the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians … and that Israel maintains itself today “through ethnic cleansing ...expulsion and Jewish only settlements.”

CSJP - Whitewashing Anti-Semitic Hate Speech as "Pro-Palestinian Speech"

On November 19, 2014, CSJP hosted professor Steven Salaita, who misleadingly claimed the University of Illinois (U of I) silenced him for articulating pro-Palestinian views when it withdrew an offer of employment in 2014 — after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets.

CSJP’s event description quoted Salaita saying “I posted tweets critical of Israel’s actions..." and went on to say “Salaita's story is only one of many instances of the silencing of pro Palestinian speech”

One tweet, Salaita posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped and murdered three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” A month later, Salaita tweeted, "Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: “These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East.”**

CSJP

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.” 

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans  comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”

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.