Kaela Sanborn-Hum

SFP is an alternative name for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

Sanborn-Hum received the 2022–23 Graduate Fellowship in Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto (U of T) Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance.

As of October 2023, Sanborn-Hum’s LinkedIn profile said she had been a “Geography Masters Student” at U of T since September 2021. 

Also as of October 2023, Sanborn-Hum’s LinkedIn said she graduated from Oberlin with a bachelor’s degree in history and Africana studies in 2015. Sanborn-Hum studied political science and international relations at Boğaziçi University (BOUN) in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2014.

As of October 2023, Sanborn-Hum’s LinkedIn “Experience” section said she was an education intern at the anti-Israel Democracy Now! Productions in New York City from September through December 2015, where she “reached out to over 150 New York City public schools and 20 community organizations to introduce DN! educational resources.”

As of October 2023, Sanborn-Hum’s LinkedIn profile said she was located in Oakland, California.

Support for a Terrorist

On November 17, 2014, Sanborn-Hum and other SFP members hung banners at Oberlin that read: “Free Rasmea Odeh and All Political Prisoners.”

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, she masterminded a supermarket bombing that killed two college students and attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem. In 1970, Odeh was sentenced to life imprisonment for her role in both bombings, but was released after 10 years. She later moved to the United States but was stripped of U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned for life from reentering the U.S. for immigration fraud.

On November 7, 2014, Sanborn-Hum and SFP members Jacob Ertel and Chris Gouldtraveled to Detroit to support Odeh as she faced trial for immigration fraud.

Anti-Israel Activism (SFP, BDS, SJP) 

In 2015, Sanborn-Hum and Ertel co-authored an anti-Israel divestment application on behalf of Oberlin SFP calling on Oberlin’s Board of Trustees to divest from a number of companies doing business with Israel. 

On November 11, 2015, Ertel wrote in anti-Israel publication Mondoweiss that SFP had originally submitted the application on February 12, 2015, and submitted a revised version on April 24, 2015. Ertel also wrote that the application targeted the same six companies found in a divestment resolution passed by Oberlin’s student senate in 2013.

The SFP application alleged [p. 3] Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) was an “attack,” claiming “[t]he Israeli government rationalized the attack as retribution against Hamas for rockets fired into civilian Israeli areas and the alleged kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers.” 

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

Hamas was responsible for the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers from a bus stop on June 12, 2014. The abducted boys were murdered by their captors, and their bodies were found buried in Palestinian-controlled territory on June 30, 2014.

On October 27, 2015, the Board rejected SFP’s divestment application.

In 2015, Sanborn-Hum was a member of Oberlin’s Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellows 2015 Cohort. On May 8, 2015, she signed an open letter written by the cohort to the editor of the school newspaper, The Oberlin Review, in support of SFP’s divestment application.

The letter said:[We] vehemently condemn the apartheid state of Israel's occupation of Palestinian land” and “We condemn the Israeli government and stand for the liberation of the Palestinian people and all occupied lands around the world.”  

On March 10, 2015, Sanborn Hum joined SFP members who displayed a pile of stonesin Oberlin’s Mudd Library to protest the arrest of Palestinian activist Lina Khattab.

Khattab was detained on December 13, 2014, and sentenced to six months jail time on February 16, 2015 for throwing rocks, while celebrating the 47th anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)’s founding.  

At the display, SFP members distributed a pamphlet urging students to support the BDS movement.

On February 10, 2015, Sanborn-Hum appeared in an Oberlin SFP group photo with anti-Israel activist Steven Salaita. The photo was taken following a SFP event featuring Salaita titled: “Silencing Dissent: Steven Salaita on Academic Freedom, Palestine/Israel, and the War on Campus.”

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped 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.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

On October 24-26, 2014, Sanborn-Hum attended the 2014 SJP National Conference at Tufts University.

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.

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 Web Links

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/kaelashum

https://www.facebook.com/kaelasanbornhum [Deleted]

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaela-sanborn-hum-878390b5

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaela-sanborn-hum-7600b737