Hamza Musse

Overview

Hamza Musse has spread hatred of Israel and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. Musse promoted the UMN Divest campaign, launched by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Minnesota (UMN) in 2018.

As of July 2020, Musse’s LinkedIn page said he was a Data Engineer at ASR Analytics, LLC, in Washington D.C. from “Sep 2019 - Present,” and that he received his “Masters in Public Policy” from UMN in 2017. Musse also wrote on LinkedIn that he studied “Political Science and Government” at UMN, from “2012 - 2016.”

Also as of July 2020, Musse’s Facebook page said he was a “Former Research Scientist at Minnesota Department of Health.”

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On August 4, 2014, Musse tweeted: “Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza http://dailym.ai/1ueKM89 via @MailOnline... Concentration camp?... Really???”

Musse’s comments were based on a Turkish WorldBulletin.net article that misquoted an Israeli cabinet minister and claimed that he called for placing Palestinians in “concentration camps.”

On July 28, 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Musse tweeted: “Someone please help me differentiate Zionism and terrorism.”

Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

On July 20, 2014, Musse tweeted: “‘Peace’ for Israel is the continued illegal occupation, creating more settlements in Palestinian land, and keeping Gaza unemployment at 40%.”

On July 18, 2014, Musse tweeted a fabricated quote, attributed to Albert Einstein, that read: “‘It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionist Jews do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews’ -Albert Enistein.”

Support for BDS

On November 21, 2016, Musse tweeted: “Don't buy Sabra. It's products are already contaminated with apartheid and human rights violations and now…” Musse’s tweet referred to Sabra, an Israeli Hummus company.

In March 2018, Musse promoted on Facebook SJP’s UMN Divest campaign.

The 2018 UMN Divest campaign launched a petition calling to “demand that the University of Minnesota Investment Committee and any other responsible bodies authorized to make investment decisions divest fully from the companies mentioned in the UMN Divest campaign.”

On February 25, 2018, SJP UMN shared to Instagram a post launching the UMN Divest 2018 campaign that said: “UMN Divest is back and this time we’re doing a campus wide referendum. March 5-7 all undergraduate and graduate students can vote ‘yes’ to divest.”

SJP UMN’s “explanation statement” in support of its proposed “campus-wide” referendum claimed that UMN had investments in companies “that violate human rights” and called on UMN to divest from G4S, Boeing and Raytheon and Elbit Systems for being “complicit in Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, 2) maintaining and establishing private prisons and immigrant detention centers, or 3) violating Indigenous sovereignty.”

On March 6, 2018, Musse shared a link to a student newspaper article by SJP UMN activist Malak Shahin, titled: “Letter: Why you should vote yes on the UMN Divest referendum.”

In March 2018, the divestment resolution reportedly was passed by the UMN “All Campus Elections Commission” and sent to the UMN Board of Regents for review.

On March 11, 2018, Musse shared a link on Facebook to SJP UMN’s Facebook statement praising the passing of the resolution and wrote, in a separate post: “The divestment referendum passed!! #UMNDivest.”

It was reported that 6,567 people out of UMN’s 51,367 students who were eligible to vote on the referendum actually voted upon the divestment referendum, representing less than 13% of eligible voters.

The resolution reportedly passed by 217 votes, with a total of 3,392 voting "yes" and 3,175 voting "no" on divestment. The “yes” votes represented 6.18% of the eligible voters.

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.