Husam El-Qoulaq

In October 2015, there was an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” was characterized by young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians.

The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.

The “Irvine 11” were a group of 11 University of California students, many of whom belonged to the Muslim Student Association (MSA), who were detained by police for disrupting a speech given by then-Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren, in 2010. Ten of the students were charged with and convicted of two misdemeanors of “conspiring to disrupt – and then disrupting” Oren’s speech, and sentenced to three years of “informal probation.” The MSA was also suspended by the university.

SJP is the leading 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, who has spread anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campus campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks and pushing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, and SJP chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for terrorists.