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Mica Jarmel-Schneider
Mica Jarmel-Schneider donated to the legal fund of a terrorist in 2015 and was an activist with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in 2016 while studying at Tufts University (Tufts).
Jarmel-Schneider was reportedly a freshman at Tufts on May 9, 2015.
Jarmel-Schneider was a member of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Tufts (Tufts SJP) Facebook group as early as February 11, 2015. Facebook recorded Jarmel-Schneider as attending multiple Tufts SJP events in the first half of 2016, including Israeli Apartheid Week and an event featuring propagandist Nada Elia.
As of August 9, 2017, Jarmel-Schneider listed himself as living in San Francisco, California.
On October 15, 2015, Jarmel-Schneider contributed to the legal fund for terrorist Rasmea Odeh. One day earlier, Tufts SJP posted numerous photos on Facebook of its members supporting Odeh.
Odeh was a key military operative with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.
Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind.
In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.
On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
On February 26, 2016, Odeh’s immigration fraud case was sent back to the district court, to examine whether trauma-related repressed memories contributed to Odeh’s failure to disclose her prior conviction.
On March 23, 2017, Odeh accepted a plea deal where she would be initially deported to Jordan and lose her U.S. citizenship in exchange for avoiding jail time.
On January 4, 2016, Jarmel-Schneider was featured in a photo on the JVP website accompanying an article titled, “JVP STUDENT NETWORK STATEMENT ON INTERSECTIONALITY.”
The statement affirmed JVP’s commitment to support “the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation, apartheid, and racism” and demonized pro-Israel organizations.
On August 10, 2016, Jarmel-Schneider shared a petition on Facebook that said that Israel was “founded on Palestinian land.”
The petition went on to say: “Whether intentionally or otherwise, Google is making itself complicit in the Israeli government's ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Please join us in calling on Google to recognize Palestine in Google Maps, and to clearly designate and identify the Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel.”
On October 23, 2016, Tufts SJP, on Facebook and in the Tufts Daily, stated: “We will not be silent when extra-judicial killings occur regularly in the West Bank.” The link attached to the word “killings” took readers to a discredited Amnesty International report that accused Israeli soldiers of murdering Sa’ad Al-Atrash and then planting a knife next to his body in October 2015. Al-Atrash had attempted to stab the soldiers who shot him.
October 2015 saw an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” saw young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab scores of Israeli civilians.
Many Palestinians killed during the Knife Intifada were shot after attempting to murder Israeli Jews and refusing to lay down their weapons. For instance, Fadi Alloun [Aloon] — referenced in the Amnesty International report — was shot by Israeli security forces after he stabbed a 15-year old Israeli boy in his chest and back. Several hours before his attack, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page.
Tufts SJP added, in its above-mentioned October 23, 2016 Tufts Daily piece: “We will not be silent when Palestinian poets like Dareen Tatour are imprisoned for their writings.”
Dareen Tatour was placed under house arrest for inciting violence in the fall of 2015, during the “Knife Intifada.” Tatour posted a Facebook status reportedly “calling for intifada on behalf of al-Aqsa mosque.” Tatour also posted on Facebook “I am the next shahid [martyr],” under a picture of attempted-stabber Asraa Zidan Tawfik Abed. Tatour also posted a Youtube video, narrated with a poem that glorified violence and called for the eviction of Jews from “Arab Palestine.”
On October 5, 2016, Tufts SJP activists appeared in a Tufts SJP Facebook photo where they were building a parade float that expressed their desire to “tear down” Israel’s security fence.
The fence was built as a non-violent deterrent to Palestinian terrorist attacks like suicide bombings. The SJP activists referred to Israel’s barrier as “the Apartheid Wall” and likened it to the “US Mexico border wall.”
On March 9, 2016, Tufts SJP demonstrated against the “illegal Jewish occupation on Palestinian land,” according to the Tufts student newspaper. The protest included Gaza — which Israel left in 2005 — and the Negev Desert which is recognized as part of Israel. The demonstration was part of Tufts SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW).
At the demonstration, Tufts SJP distributed its 2013 publication titled “The Zintifada” — a play on the word “Intifada.”
The publication showcased another Tufts SJP activist, Sophia Goodfriend, who claimed (p. 8) Israel was a “construction of simulated reality upon a foundation of genocide and delusion.” The pamphlet also featured Tufts SJP co-founder Lucas Koerner, who claimed (p.17) that pro-Israel Jews felt “the imperative to dominate” as a symptom of “internalized oppression.” Koerner is infamous for reportedly biting an Israeli police officer in 2011.
In March 2015, Tufts SJP profiled some of its activists on Facebook. Tufts SJP activist Nicole Joseph, in her profile photo, decried the “influence of the Zionist lobby and the US-Israel special relationship.”
March 4, 2015, Tufts SJP hung a banner in the main dining hall that claimed: “Israeli weapons tried and tested on Palestinians.” The banner promoted a film screening of “The Lab.”
On November 10, 2014, Tufts SJP held a “die-in” to protest a speech at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) legal advisor Lt. Col Dr. Eran Shamir-Borer. Shamir-Borer’s talk addressed Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014.
Tufts SJP organized a petition against the speech and what they called “the genocidal logic of the Israel’s so-called ‘defense’ forces.” Tufts SJP, at the die-in, called Shamir-Borer a “genocide apologist.”
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
On April 4, 2017, Tufts SJP hosted anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi, who is known for his aggressive anti-Israel performances. His performance was part of Tufts SJP’s “Israeli Apartheid Week 2017,” which the group hosted from April 3-7, all less than a week before its Passover Eve BDS resolution vote, detailed above.
On November 16, 2016, Tufts SJP hosted former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) spokesperson Diana Buttu. Buttu served in the PLO during the second intifada, when the PLO — via Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — perpetrated terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Buttu was publicly discredited at least twice, in 2014, as a propagandist, who lied to defend terror organizations.
On March 1, 2016, Tufts SJP hosted an event featuring Nada Elia, titled “Refusing to be Complicit: The Question of Palestine and Non-Violent Resistance.” Elia wrote an article the previous fall — during the Knife Intifada — titled “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?” In that article, Elia said: “Intifadas are good.”
On October 6, 2015, Tufts SJP brought Palestinian propagandist Bassem Tamimi to campus.
Bassem Tamimi is notorious for exploiting young children as political props. Tamimi regularly manufactures confrontations with Israeli soldiers, who respond to the rioting that Tamimi instigates. In 2011, Tamimi was jailed for organizing violent rallies and inciting minors to commit violent crimes, such as rock-throwing.
Tamimi’s U.S. visa was revoked in 2015, after a tour when Tamimi encouraged 3rd graders in Ithaca, New York to become “freedom fighters for Palestine.”
On October 28, 2015, Tufts SJP activists attended a Tufts Friends of Israel (Tufts FOI)- hosted cultural event, with the express purpose of bullying FOI members of at the event. Claudia Aliff, a Tufts SJP activist, told The Tufts Daily: “The disruption of this event” was the purpose of SJP’s presence there.
Tufts SJP members mocked Tufts FOI members and their displays while distributing Tufts SJP flyers. The flyers accused Israel of “theft” and “terrorism,” and blamed the deadly “Knife Intifada” — then taking place in Israel — on “Israeli police violence and oppressive policies.” Tufts SJP posted signs accusing Israel of “[p]racticing expulsion, occupation, apartheid & cultural cuisine appropriation” and declaring that Israel was founded on “stolen Palestinian land.”
On April 25, 2014, Tufts SJP staged a “die-in” next to an FOI event celebrating Israeli Independence Day. Hannah Freedman, a Tufts SJP activist, said that Tufts SJP “crashed” the event “with a memorial for al-Nakba,” a term defining Israel’s founding as a “catastrophe.” Tufts SJP activists laid on red cloth meant to symbolize pools of blood.
On March 5, 2014, Tufts SJP carried out three anti-Israel provocations. First, Tufts SJP slipped leaflets into dorm rooms targeting the Jewish heritage program Birthright Israel. Second, Tufts SJP slipped mock “demolition” notices into other dorm rooms, claiming that Israel had a “project of ethnic cleansing.” Third, Tufts SJP held a “mock annexation” that purported to show Israeli soldiers violently arresting Palestinians without cause.
On April 21, 2016, Tufts SJP shared an online zine on Facebook targeting Jewish students considering going on Birthright Israel trips.
Birthright Israel is a heritage trip to Israel for Jewish young adults from across the world.
Sophia Goodfriend, a Tufts SJP activist, wrote a publication titled “Whose Birthright?” undermining the Jewish millennia-long connection to the Land of Israel, including ancient Jewish religious sites like the Western Wall in Jerusalem (pages 9 and 15). Goodfriend claimed that Jews were “creating their own origin stories, or claims to nativism” (page 18). She also claimed that Israel was established on “expropriated land” and that Israel continues to “evict, incarcerate or kill millions of Palestinians” (page 2).
In 2012, Tufts SJP produced a pamphlet targeting Jewish students considering going on Birthright trips. That pamphlet, too, trivialized the Land of Israel’s significance to Judaism.
On October 24-26, 2014, Tufts SJP hosted the 2014 National SJP Conference.
On October 25, 2014, Tufts SJP quoted Sara Kershner, the founder of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN), as saying at the conference: “Zionism has hijacked [Jewish] history and struggle against genocide to justify genocide today.”
On October 25, 2014, Sa’ed Atshan, then the Tufts SJP faculty advisor, blamed Israel for Palestinian honor killings and persecution of LGBTQ+ people within Palestinian society.
Clothing was sold at the conference, including a shirt with the image of airplane hijacker Leila Khaled — a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — with the text “resistance is not terrorism.”
Although the event was listed as “free and open to the public,” at least one student journalist was refused press credentials. Terror supporter Max Geller and agitator Ahmed Hamad both spoke and presented at the conference.
Conference attendee Ofek Ravid said that he was “booed and hissed at” — and told by “several members in the crowd to f**k off” — for merely suggesting that “Israel needs to be looked at as a complex nation through a dialectic lens, not as a black and white fragment.” An SJP representative also asked Ravid to leave the building.
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.
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP."
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.
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 infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. 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 and pro-terror activism on campus.
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