Hoda El-Haj
Overview
Hoda El-Haj has promoted demonization of Israel at the University of Houston (UH), hosted a promoter of violence and spread anti-Israel propaganda events on social media.El-Haj is a student activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UH (SJP UH) and an admin for the SJP UH Facebook group.
El-Haj is a member of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at UH (UH MSA).
El-Haj is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of October, 2017, she was member of the closed Facebook group, UH Class of 2018.
Demonizing Israel
On August 4, 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), El-Haj participated in a demonstration in Austin, TX, that demonized Israel.
El-haj displayed a sign that read: “End the Siege of Gaza, Stop U.S. aid to Israel.” Another large banner at the rally read: “Stop the Palestinian every day Holocaust!” There were also multiple signs that accused Israel of committing Genocide and claimed: “Israel inflicts Holocaust on Gaza.” One protester held a sign that read “Stop supporting yahood [Jews] killing innocent Palestinians.”
Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 in order to stop rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Hosting a Promoter of Violence
On August 18, 2014, El-Haj and other SJP UH activists held up an SJP banner at an event SJP UH co-organized with UH MSA that featured Sheikh Omar Suleiman.On July 24, 2014, Suleiman called on Twitter for a “3rd Intifada” to destroy Israel and claimed Israel arbitrarily denied muslims the right to pray at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Spreading Anti-Israel Propaganda
On March 17, 2015, El-Haj promoted a flier on Facebook for SJP UH-organized Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW). The itinerary of events included a talk by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir, who founded the controversial site If Americans Knew (IAK).On August 8, 2009, Weir wrote an article supporting a blood libel published by a Swedish newspaper — about Israel harvesting Palestinian organs.
SJP UH’s IAW also featured a mock apartheid wall, erected on campus. The wall featured a misleading series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land,” purportedly stolen by Israel. In February of 2016, publishing giant McGraw-Hill Education recalled a college level textbook that featured the erroneous maps. In October 2015, MSNBC apologized for airing a similar grouping of maps and retracted them.
On March 12, 2014, El-Haj posted an invitation to IAW on the UH MSA page that read: “...starting Monday Students for Justice in Palestine at UH is having their Israeli Apartheid Week! Come check out the mock Apartheid Wall and checkpoint in Butler Plaza, get some free food, and learn about how the Israeli occupation restricts the freedom of movement of Palestinians on a daily basis. Invite your friends!.”
SJP UH - Supporting Violence
On November 1, 2015, SJP UH shared a post on Facebook promoting demonstrations supporting anti-Israel violence. The rallies, held in both Houston and Austin, were co-organized by SJP UH and the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at Austin, TX (PSCAT) and urged: “…Long Live the Resistance! Long Live the Intifada!”October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.
On August 18, 2014, SJP UH and UH MSA co-organized an event featuring Sheikh Omar Suleiman. SJP UH’s Facebook announcement billed Suleiman as a “vocal human rights supporter.”
SJP UH - Pushing BDS
On November 1, 2015, SJP UH shared an event on Facebook announcing plans for a UH Divest campaign and new Facebook page. The event aimed to discuss “all potential strategies” to bring BDS to UH. Proposed strategies included:Revamped tabling and silent demonstrations
SJP UH - Spreading Propaganda
On October 1, 2017, SJP UH shared a Facebook post that read: “17 years ago today, 12yr old Muhammad Al-Durra was shot dead on LIVE TV in his father's arms.#Coogs4Palestine #FreePalestine.”
The Al-Durah hoax is an iconic piece of anti-Israel propaganda, fabricated on September 30, 2000 at the start of the Second Intifada by a France 2 reporter.
On May 8, 2017, SJP UH organized Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) on UH’s campus. One IAW event featured a mock “apartheid wall” erected on campus. Text on the wall read: “If you want to find a safe place in Gaza, do not stand beside a child.” Other text read: “Israel uses sophisticated attack jets to bomb densely crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques and slums to attack a population that has no airforce, no navy, army and calls it a war. It is not war, it is murder.”
Throughout the summer of 2014 — during Operation Protective Edge (OPE) — Hamas’ continued deployment of human shields was extensively documented and publicized. Hamas encouraged gazans to act as human shields, to specifically frustrate Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza. Israel commenced OPEin July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
SJP UH - Supporting Terrorists
On September 5, 2017, SJP UH shared a graphic on Facebook of an image and quote by Leila Khaled.Khaled is a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and El Al Flight 219 in 1970. As of 2017, Khaled was a member of PFLP's Political Bureau.
Khaled has said that the second intifada failed because it was not violent enough, advocated for the use of children in terror activities and compared Zionists to Nazis.
The PFLP claimed credit for the 2014 Har Nof Massacre where six people were murdered during morning prayers in a Jerusalem synagogue. The PFLP also claimed credit for the 2001 assassination of the Israeli tourism minister.
On May 25, 2017, SJP UH rallied behind convicted Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails on hunger strike, by organizing a “symbolic hunger strike” and participating in a Saltwater Challenge. The event organizers wrote on the Facebook event page: “we demand that Israel end its policies of apartheid, colonization, military occupation, displacement, dispossession, and mass incarceration.”
The hunger strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, who was serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in suicide bombings — and shooting attacks that killed five Israelis during the second Intifada. Barghouti led the the Palestinian Authority (PA) terrorist Tanzim force and founded the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Barghouti also financed the guitar-case bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe massacre where 15 civilians were killed and 130 injured.
More than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners participated in the hunger strike — most of whom were also convicted for acts of terrorism.
According to CNN , the “Saltwater Challenge” appears to have been started by Aarab Marwan Barghouti, the son of Marwan Barghouti.
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.
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.
MSA
The MSA was established by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in January 1963 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with the goal of "spreading Islam as students in North America." A 2004 FBI investigation uncovered an internal Muslim Brotherhood document in which a brotherhood leader identified the MSA as "one of our organizations."
The MSA reportedly has “nearly 600 chapters” located in the United States and Canada, and is “the most visible and influential Islamic student organization in North America,” boasting conferences, special events, publications, websites and other activities.
The organization includes a number of previous chapter presidents with explicit links to terrorist groups. Included are al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (Colorado State University), Somali al-Shabaab militant leader Omar Shafik Hammami (University of South Alabama) and Pakistani Taliban recruiter Ramy Zamzam of the MSA's Washington, D.C. council.
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.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook: www.facebook.com/593155977Twitter: https://twitter.com/hodaelhaj [Deleted]
_(1)_203x172_7UPYTg.jpg "Hoda El-Haj")
- Status:
- Student
- University:
- Houston
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- MSA,
- more...
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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