Maria Diaz-Gonzalez

Overview

Maria Diaz-Gonzalez has spread hatred of Israel and promoted an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign at Stanford University (Stanford) in 2014 and 2015, as a member of Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP). 

In 2015, SOOP was reportedly a coalition of 19 student groups campaigning for Stanford to “divest from corporations profiting from human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.” The Stanford BDS campaign was initiated [00:12:16] by SJP Stanford.

As of May 2020, SOOP’s Facebook page said its mission was “To end Stanford's investments in corporations which profit from the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.”

Diaz was also a member of Stanford’s chapter of MEChA, the national Chicana/Latina student organization and of Stanford Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) in 2015.

As of May 2020, Diaz-Gonzalez’s LinkedIn page said she was “Seeking opportunities in journalism and policy” and had been a Freelance Journalist for PublicSource from “Sep 2019 – Jan 2020.”

Diaz-Gonzalez’s LinkedIn page also said she graduated with a degree in African and African American-Studies and African-American/Black Studies from Stanford in 2018.

As of May 2020, Diaz-Gonzalez used the name “Maria Diaz” on Facebook.

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On March 5, 2015, Diaz-Gonzalez wrote an article for the online Stanford publication STATIC, in support of SOOP, titled: “Why We Fight.” STATIC defines itself as “a site for Stanford activists to connect and create.” In her article, Diaz-Gonzalez claimed: “what is facing the people of Palestine right now, what is facing the Palestinian members of our coalition right now, is nothing short of erasure.”

Diaz-Gonzalez continued: “The reality is… that if the blockade and the collective punishment of Gazans don’t end now, not one Gazan will remain” and suggested that Israel was committing “the murder of an entire people.”

The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces. 

An article published on April 23, 2015 in the anti-Israel publication Mondoweiss quoted Diaz-Gonzalez as defending the Stanford University Students of Color Coalition (SOCC) after they reportedly asked a Jewish-Latina candidate for Stanford’s Undergraduate Senate: “Given your strong Jewish identity, how would you vote on divestment?” The candidate, Molly Horwitz, had sought the SOCC’s endorsement to help her win a seat in the student senate. 

The Mondoweiss article reported that the SOCC denied the question was even asked and quoted Diaz-Gonzalez as saying the controversy was part of “an attempt to perhaps silence Palestinian solidarity efforts on campus...These allegations are false… But I do see this as part of this larger movement to equate divestment movements with an attempt to harm the Jewish community.”

Promoting Divestment at Stanford

Diaz-Gonzalez was the 70th person to sign SOOP’s 2015 petition accompanying a SOOP divestment resolution. The petition called on the Stanford University Board of Trustees to divest from companies that it claimed were “complicit in the infrastructure of occupation, collective punishment, state-sponsored repression, and unjust incarceration in Palestine.”

On January 28, 2015, Diaz-Gonzalez set her Facebook cover photo to an image promoting SOOP’s campaign. On the same date, she also set her Facebook profile picture to an image promoting the campaign.

On February 9, 2015, Diaz-Gonzalez featured [00:00:16] as a part of MEChA de Stanford in a video of various Stanford student groups expressing their support for SOOP’s BDS campaign. 

That same day, Diaz-Gonzalez set her Facebook profile picture to an image promoting SOOP’s campaign and the details of the Stanford Undergraduate Senate hearing where the senate would vote on SOOP’s resolution. She also linked to the SOOP Facebook event for the hearing and wrote: “COME OUT TOMORROW!!!
#StanfordDivest.”

SOOP’s BDS resolution called for Stanford to divest from companies it claimed “violate international humanitarian law by: maintaining the illegal infrastructure of the Israeli occupation…facilitating Israel and Egypt’s collective punishment of Palestinian civilians…[and] facilitating state repression against Palestinians.”

On February 10, 2015, the SOOP resolution initially failed [00:00:42]but was later brought forward in a motion calling for a re-vote and passed on February 17, 2015.

On April 14, 2015, however, the Stanford Board of Trustees announced that Stanford would take no action on SJP’s request to divest. 

In accordance with the board’s Statement on Investment Responsibility, the board said in its statement on the resolution that they focused on “questions of divisiveness and negative impact” and determined that acting on the request would be “likely to impair the capacity of the University to carry out its educational mission.” 

On February 14, 2015, Diaz-Gonzalez set her Facebook profile picture to an image promoting SOOP Divest.

SOOP #Stanford Divest 

Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine (SOOP) was reportedly a coalition of 19 student groups campaigning for Stanford University (Stanford) to “divest from corporations profiting from human rights abuses in occupied Palestine.” 

The campaign was initiated [00:12:16] by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and promoted on social media under the hashtag “#Stanford Divest.”

As of January 2020, SOOP’s Facebook page said its mission was “To end Stanford's investments in corporations which profit from the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.”

SOOP - 2015 Divestment Campaign  

In February 2015, members of SOOP presented a petition and a divestment resolution to the Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) Undergraduate Senate to further the agenda of the Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The resolution, titled: “A Resolution to Divest from Companies Violating Human Rights in Occupied Palestine,” was co-authored by Ramah Awad, SOOP leader and co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Stanford (SJP Stanford) at the time and then-members of SOOP, Clayton Evans, Laura Perez and Emma Hartung.

The resolution called for Stanford University Trustees to divest from companies that it alleged: “violate international humanitarian law by: maintaining the illegal infrastructure of the Israeli occupation.”

The resolution also called for divestment from companies it claimed facilitates Israel’s “collective punishment of Palestinian civilians…[and] state repression against Palestinians.” 

On February 8, 2015, The Stanford Review, a student-run political magazine reported that the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings showed no evidence that Stanford has been invested in any of the companies that SOOP targeted for divestment over the last ten years, with the exception of Raytheon, for one filing period.

The resolution initially failed [00:00:42] to garner the required 66% majority senate approval, in a vote held on February 10, 2015. 

Senate Chair Ana Ordonez then brought forward a motion calling for a re-vote. Ordonez reportedly initially abstained from voting and was later quoted in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, as saying: “Now that the noise has subsided, I know that I voted incorrectly.” 

Ordonez voted in favor of the resolution in the re-vote, which passed on February 17, 2015. However, the Stanford Board of Trustees later announced on April 14, 2015, that Stanford would take no action on SJP’s request.

SOOP - Promoting BDS  

On February 10, 2015, SOOP promoted a BDS Youtube video on Facebook, titled: “Stanford Student Groups Support #StanfordDivest.”

The video featured members of student groups, including [00:03:38] SJP Stanford, expressing why they support “#StanfordDivest.” Ramah Awad, SOOP leader and co-president of SJP Stanford at the time, said [00:03:45]: “We recognize divestment as one step on that path to liberation.” 

On January 23, 2015, SOOP posted a photo album on Facebook titled: “Human of ‘Out of Occupied Palestine,’” which featured photos of Stanford students holding posters with anti-Israel messages and showing support for #StanfordDivest.

One photo showed a student holding a sign which read: “I support divestment because collective punishment is a war crime.” Another sign read: “There are better & more commendable ways to fiscally profit that doesn’t contribute to the displacement & exploitation of human lives.”

On January 21, 2015, SOOP reportedly organized a panel discussion to promote its BDS petition, which called for Stanford’s divestment from corporations that allegedly “facilitate human rights violations in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories.”

On January 9, 2015, SOOP published a Youtube video titled: “FilasteenFridays: Collective Punishment in the Palestinian Territories.” The video urged Stanford students to support their BDS campaign as “the only way to show true moral neutrality.”

On January 8, 2015, SOOP hosted an informational event titled: “Case for Divestment from the Occupation of Palestine.”

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.