Hannah Al Jallad

Hannah Al Jallad has spread anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel, including during Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists in late 2023 while she was president of an anti-Israel campus activist group.

Al Jallad became president of the Palestinian Student Association (PSA) at the University of Central Florida (PSA at UCF) in February 2023. She still held the position in January 2024 when the group announced its board members. UCF is located in Orlando, Florida.

In October 2023, PSA at UCF promoted hatred of Israel online following a series of Hamas terror atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023. The terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 7] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Also while Al Jallad served as president, PSA at UCF expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on social media.

As of December 2023, Al Jallad’s LinkedIn profile said she was studying health sciences at UCF, slated to graduate in 2024.

As of January 2024, Al Jallad was listed [p. 46] as a May 2021 graduate of Valencia College (VC).

As of December 2023, Al Jallad’s LinkedIn said that she had been working part-time as a medical scheduler at the Psychiatric Group of Orlando since May 2022.

As of January 3, 2023, Al Jallad was listed as the managing member of “Blisss LLC,” located in Orlando, Florida.

On November 18, 2023, Al Jallad posted a video on TikTok from an anti-Israel protest.

The video featured a sign that said [00:00:15]: “WE KNOW WHO IS PULLING THE STRINGS but BIDEN YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS.” The sign showed Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with bloody hands sticking out of the poster and a red line across his eyes. One of Netanyahu’s hands held a puppet of U.S. president Joe Biden, alluding to a common conspiracy theory among anti-Israel activists.

The “Israel Lobby” is a conspiracy theory alleging Israeli and Jewish control over the U.S. government. Proponents of the theory decry the negative effects on American interests, particularly in foreign policy.

Another poster in the video showed [00:00:16] a map of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza all as one unit, covered over by a Palestinian flag. Next to the map was the text: “A THIEF NEVER BECOMES AN OWNER.” The poster also had the text “#Gaza genocide” and a cartoon called “Handala,” which is a symbol of the “right of return.”

One way that anti-Israel activists spread anti-Semitism is by claiming that Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel.

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Another poster said [00:00:19]: “USA. STOP FUNDING HITLER” with an Israeli flag next to the word “HITLER.” Other signs around the poster accused Israel of “genocide,” as did the song Al Jallad used [00:00:06] for the video.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) highlights as one possible contemporary example of anti-Semitism: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” The U.S. State Department adopted the IHRA’s working definition of anti-Semitism in 2016. Over 40 countries have adopted the definition as well.

On October 31, 2023, while Al Jallad was president of UCF-PSA, the group issued an anti-Israel statement during Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group. The statement claimed [slide 3] that Israel was committing a “silent genocide” and there was “ongoing oppression and colonialism taking place.”

The statement also accused [slide 2] Israel of “ongoing apartheid and ethnic cleansing,” and demonized [slide 1] Israel for “Building walls and checkpoints,” a reference to Israel’s security barrier.

Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

Israeli checkpoints were built to prevent terror attacks, such as suicide bombings, against Israel's civilian population.

UCF-PSA also claimed [slide 1] in the statement that Israel’s founding was a “Nakba,” and it further stated that “Gaza is the largest open-air prison” and that Gazans are “held under a suffocating blockade.”

The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by drawing a comparison to the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, meaning “catastrophe.”

Referring to Gaza as an “open-air prison” is a way to delegitimize the UN-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets. Following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, the Israeli military discovered that Hamas went around the blockade by smuggling weaponry through tunnels under the Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt.

On July 16, 2021, Al Jallad wrote an article titled: “The US Should Cut Military Aid to Israel and Provide Humanitarian Assistance to Palestine.” In the article, she wrote that the U.S. government was “funding a genocide” being carried out by Israel.

In the article, Al Jallad accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and also wrote: “The US continues to publicly support the apartheid and settler colonialism in Palestine at the hands of the Israeli forces they fund.”

Al Jallad wrote the article two months after Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW) against Hamas. In the article, she also dismissed Hamas's military capabilities.

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

Spreading Anti-Semitism and Hatred of Israel

BDS

Social Media and Weblinks