Katherine Berjikian

Disrupting LGBT Event

Supporting BDS

Promoting Steven Salaita

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.

UCSC SJP/ CJP Spreading Fear and Hate on Campus

On March 7, 2015, UCSC SJP members dressed up in mock Israeli Defense Forces uniforms and set up four mock "checkpoints" on UCSC’s campus. UCSC SJP physically blocked students entering one of the main campus libraries before final exams until they produced “proper identification.” UCSC SJP’s disturbance of student life purported to illustrate how Palestinians experience military checkpoints.

On March 12, 2015, UCSC’s Chancellor and Campus Provost sent an email to the UCSC community that the administration had received "hate/bias" reports filed against the mock-checkpoint demonstrators and acknowledged that other students felt “particularly targeted” by the UCSC SJP tactic.

On December 2, 2013, UCSC CJP members distributed fake eviction notices to more than 400 UCSC students in campus dorm rooms. Those notices ordered the students to leave their rooms, threatening that they would be demolished within four days.

In January 2015, UCSC SJP members violated the safe space of an LGBT campus event hosted by "A Wider Bridge". Hoisting a placard reading “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA!” the demonstrators invoked,with approval, the wave of Palestinian Arab violence occurring in Israel that month. UCSC SJP members moved to the front of the room and imposed their message upon the audience while delaying the invited speaker from talking. UCSC SJP later posted a video inadvertently showing that its members lied when agreeing not to disrupt the event, as a condition of their admittance.

Hours before the event, unidentified callers harassed the UCSC’s LGBT center threatening to block students’ entry to the event — and demanded its cancellation. A flyer advertising the LGBT event was defaced with "F**k Zionist Pinkwashing Free Palestine." Eventually, the LGBT Center’s environs, intended to be a safe place for students, became so hostile and threatening that the program was relocated.

UCSC CJP/SJP Campus Activity

In November 2015, UCSC SJP members held a die-in, in opposition to another student group’s showing solidarity with Israelis murdered during a wave of Palestinian terror attacks that surged that Fall. UCSC SJP members lay down directly in front of the student group’s table for the protest.

In April 2015, UCSC SJP members disrupted a talk given by former Israeli officers, trying to dialogue with students on-campus. One demonstrator covered his face and bellowed from a prepared text at the visiting Israelis.The Israelis welcomed the protesters’ voices and beseeched them to engage in civil dialogue. However, UCSC SJP member Wessam Awadalla shrieked: "You can’t tell me that you value life and you lost people and that hurts you...You can’t talk to me like this!" 

Awadalla called additional requests for dialogue “an act of terror and the violence of colonization.” Meanwhile, the masked disruptor continued his rant — accompanied by fellow UCSC SJP members chanting “Free Free Palestine,” before walking out.

UCSC SJP Applauds Terror-supporting Professor Steven Salaita

In February 2015 UCSC SJP co-sponsored an event that brought Steven Salaita to UCSC’s 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.

UCSC SJP/ CJP Pushing BDS on Campus

At a May 2014 UCC Student Union Assembly (SUA), CJPproposed a non-binding resolution, urging UCSC to divest from corporations that "support the Israeli occupation."

The resolution initially failed to garner the necessary two-thirds majority. However, following a complicated procedural battle, during which UCSC SJP members argued that SJP members would feel "unsafe" on campus if the vote did not go in their favor, SUA voted on November 18, 2015 to validate the divestment resolution.

Two days prior to the November 18 vote, a Jewish SUA representative, Daniel Bernstein, received a Facebook messagewarning him to abstain from voting on the resolution because he was the president of the schools’ Jewish Student Union. The message said that his College Council determined that he was motivated by "a Jewish agenda," and was unfairly biased against the resolution.

On November 19, 2015 UCSC’s Chancellor George Blumenthal sent an email to the campus community announcing that he would be convening a Chancellor's Diversity Advisory Council to discuss the climate for Jewish students on campus. Chancellor Blumenthal also noted that the resolution "may create an environment in which some of our Jewish students feel alienated and less welcome on our campus."

On December 6, 2015, SJP responded via a Facebook post to the Chancellor’s email —which demanded his resignation: "We are disgusted with you and your ‘chillingly’ racist email to the campus community...we recognize the opportunistic nature of your email and it is clearly a part of the University of California’s continued systematic attempt to silence activism around Palestine...“In recognition of your absolute incompetence and steadfast defense of white supremacy, we demand your resignation."

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.