Mahdi Abdel
Overview
Mahdi Abdel has promoted violent agitators, spread hatred of Israel and was an activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the College of Staten Island (CSI), part of City University of New York (CUNY) in 2013.As of July 2019, Abdel was a member of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) CSI Facebook page. As of the same date, Abdel was a member of the Al-Awda-NY Facebook group.
In November 2018, Abdel was a member of the Americans Against Genocide In Gaza (AAGG) Facebook group.
As of July 2019, Abdel used the alias “Mahdi Pali” on Facebook.
Promoting Violent Agitators
On December 21, 2017, Abdel changed his Facebook cover photo to a photo of Ahed Tamimi.On May 12, 2010, Abdel shared a link on Facebook to a video by the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, Hassan Nasrallah, threatening to attack Israel.
In 2013, Nasrallah referred [00:00:19] to Israel as a cancerous tumor and in 2002,
Spreading Hatred of Israel
On December 9, 2017, Abdel shared a video on Facebook featuring anti-Zionist Neturei Karta members protesting alongside anti-Israel demonstrators,In the video, one member said [00:01:40]: “Zionists are using the Holocaust… Don’t use the Holocaust! Don’t use the Holocaust to do war crimes against the Palestinians.”
Neturei Karta is an anti-Israel Jewish fringe group whose leader, Yisroel Dovid Weiss, was excommunicated from many Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups for participating in a 2006 Holocaust denial conference in Iran. The group opposes Zionism on religious grounds and has called to dismantle Israel.
On December 8, 2013, Abdel shared a photo on Facebook of a Neturei Karta member and a masked Palestinian militant holding rocks.
The picture was taken during a violent protest opposing a 2010 Israeli march in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. At the protest, Palestinians clashed with Israeli police, throwing stones and firebombs at them.
On June 25, 2010, Abdel shared a cartoon of someone urinating on an Israeli flag.
On June 6, 2010, Abdel shared an image on Facebook of someone wiping their behind with an Israeli flag.
SJP Activism
On May 9, 2013, SJP CSI shared a photo on Facebook of Abdel and other SJP CSI activists commemorating the “Nakba” during the group’s “Nakba Week.”The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
CSI SJP - Misappropriating Feminism
On March 5, 2016, CSI SJP shared an NYC SJP blog post on Facebook to “commemorate International Working Women’s Day as an inseparable aspect of the fight for Palestinian liberation.”The post declared: “Women who facilitate Zionist aggression in Palestine do not have any common ground with women resisting it.”
The blog post praised international hijacker Leila Khaled for “committing her life to be a freedom fighter in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
Leila Khaled is a leading member 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 [00:36:07] for the use of children in terror activities and compared Zionists to Nazis.
NYC SJP’s blog post went on to praise PFLP terrorists Khalida Jarrar and Rasmea Odeh.
Khalida Jarrar is a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror organization. She has reportedly been the head of the PFLP in the West Bank since 2016. In 2015, an Israeli military court sentenced Jarrar to 15 months in prison for calling to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Israel arrested Jarrar again in 2017 “on suspicion of involvement with terrorist activities and violent public disturbances.” In 2019, she was arrested by Israel with 50 other PFLP operatives following a deadly 2018 bombing attack.
Odeh was a key military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a PFLP supermarket bombing that killed two college students. She also attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem. Odeh later moved to the United States but was deported to Jordan in 2017 for immigration fraud.
The post alleged “Israel is a state that was built on the murder and rape of Palestinian women” and claimed “the state forces women to give birth at checkpoints, where more than half of the babies died as a result.”
The post concluded “Smash the Patriarchy! Smash the Settler Zionist State! Free Palestine, and Free Women EVERYWHERE!"
CSI SJP - Whitewashing Terrorists
On October 6, 2016, CSI SJP posted a photo montage of four Palestinian teenangers, titled “4 Palestinian Teenagers EXECUTED in Cold Blood by Zionist Occupying forces in less than 32 hours. Ages 13-19.”One teenager pictured was 19 year-old Fadi Aloon
Fadi Aloon was shot by Israeli security forces after he stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy. Several hours before the attack, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page.
Another youth pictured was Muhannad Halabi.
Halabi murdered two Israelis and injured two others, including a 2-year-old, during a stabbing spree.
One day earlier, Halabi posted on his Facebook page that "the [t]he third Intifada is here" and wrote "[w]ake up from your slumber and save al-Aqsa. Let the revolution erupt."
Also pictured was Hudhaifa Suleiman aged 18, who participated in a Hamas-organized riot where “hundreds of Palestinians...threw firebombs, rolled burning tires and threw rocks at [Israeli] soldiers.”
CSI SJP - Spreading Propaganda
On February 22, 2015, CSI SJP posted an Al-Jazeera article that claimed “Hundreds of Palestinians flee as Israel opens dams into Gaza Valley.” Al-Jazeera later admitted the story was false , as there were no dams in Southern Israel that could be opened.As of July 2019, CSI SJP still had not removed the post.CSI SJP - Urging Anti-Israel Violence
On October 6, 2015, CSI SJP, shared an NYC SJP “statement of solidarity” with a “Day of Rage” rally held at the Israeli consulate in New York on October 6, 2015. The event was co-sponsored by a number of anti-Israel organizations including NY4Palestine, American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and NYC SJP and urged support for a “Day of Rage” called for by “Palestinian forces.”At the bottom of that statement was a graphic of a keffiyeh- masked Palestinian throwing a rock, with the caption “Let the Intifada pave the way for People’s war!”
The “Days of Rage” in October of 2015 were heralded by Hamas as the advent of a new intifada. They directly resulted in the deaths of Israeli civilians by shootings, stabbings and car rammings.
CSI SJP - Supporting Steven Salaita
On January 29, 2015 , CSI SJP posted an article on Facebook from the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada supporting professor Steven Salaita. The CSI SJP post said: “Down with foreign government lobbies bribing universities to silent dissenters and organizers against settler-colonial states!”.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.
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.
