Najib Hamideh

Overview

Najib Hamideh was a student activist with Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine, (SJP) in 2015. He was involved in an altercation with an Israeli professor at Claremont College in 2013, whom he allegedly threatened to "hunt down."

In 2017, Hamideh was listed on Facebook as having attended several events held in conjunction with Claremont SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) including the assembly of a mock apartheid wall. Claremont SJP’s Facebook page announcing the wall urged students to "Come visit the wall during Israeli Apartheid Week to learn more about zionist violence and Palestinian resistance!" Previously, he participated in Claremont SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW), including installing a mock apartheid wall in 2015.

Hamideh is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of April 30, 2017, Hamideh’s Facebook page listed him as a 2012 graduate of Chaffee College in Rancho Cucamonga, CA and as a 2015 graduate of Pitzer College, in Claremont, CA.

Hamideh’s Facebook page says that in 2016 he moved to Al-Mazraa al-Sharqiya, a town located 15 kilometers northeast of Ramallah.

Threatening A Professor

On March 4, 2013, Hamideh participated with Claremont SJP in blocking the entrance to a campus dining room and threatened an Israeli Professor who had alerted campus security.

As part of their planned disruption, Claremont SJP student activists demanded that students and faculty produce their IDs — purportedly to simulate an Israeli security checkpoint.

The Claremont Independent reported that during the event, Hamideh singled out Israeli Professor, Yaron Raviv — who asked the demonstrators to stop blocking the dining hall entrance and move ten feet away — and called campus security when the demonstrators continued to block the entrance

According to Raviv, when a campus safety officer arrived and Raviv approached him, Hamideh accosted Raviv, demanding: "Who are you? Show me your ID! Are you faculty or a visitor? If you are a visitor, you cannot be on campus after 5:00 p.m. Show me your campus pass!" Raviv responded: “I will never show you my ID. It’s not your business who I am. I can be a faculty or a visitor; it’s not your business.”

When Raviv continued toward the campus safety officer and produced his faculty ID, Hamideh reportedly threatened Raviv, saying: "Oh, you are faculty! I will hunt you down!" Raviv then reacted, saying: “What? You will hunt me down? You’re a f**king, little cockroach,” Hamideh followed up: “Oh! Now I’ve got you!”

Following the incident, The Claremont Independent reported that Raviv was targeted by several anti-Semitic and threatening emails, such as one that read: "Hitler had the right idea, he was just an underachiever. I thought you might enjoy that since you seem to be such a huge supporter of genocide. Cheers."

Another email directed to Raviv read: "I am one of your students. What right do you have to call one of my colleagues a ‘cockroach,’ you filthy Israeli c**t? Please, could I ask you to leave the U.S. and return to the land of Zion-Nazis where you can slaughter innocent cockroaches at whim? See you in class you wasted inbred."

Hamideh eventually filed a formal grievance to the college against Raviv — which the administration dismissed, after Hamideh and another professor supporting him "made clear by their words and actions that they would not respect nor abide by CMC’s confidentiality requirements."

Claremont SJP also accused Raviv of seeking to shut down its demonstration and of using a racial slur against Hamideh.

On March 28, 2013, the Jewish Press revealed that earlier on the day of the demonstration, Claremont SJP student activists also blocked the entrance to a classroom and "yelled ‘F[expletive deleted] off Jews!’ to Hillel students who tried to enter the building."

Per an April 9, 2013 e-mail to the Claremont community from the Claremont McKenna College (CMC) President, Pamela Gann, SJP’s interference with students’ entry to the dining hall "was not in compliance with CMC’s Demonstrations Policy and the Claremont Colleges Demonstration Policy, both of which prohibit disruptive and/or non-peaceful events."

On April 26, 2013, The Peel reported that on March 16, 2013, Claremont SJP had proposed to CMC administrators a number of "remedies." SJP suggested that Professor Yaron Raviv “cease to have a role in CMC admissions process” for a minimum of three years. Claremont SJP also demanded that report on this grievance be made “a permanent part of Professor Raviv’s personnel file at CMC” and that, in 2013-2014, Raviv be required to “‘participate robustly in a SJP [or… other organization designated by SJP’] organized public forum on the importance and value of welcoming political dissent and free speech on college and university campuses....”

Claremont SJP also proposed that the CMC’ administration "give SJP a lead role in programming a minimum of three Athenaeum events per year for the next three years, with a budget commensurate with the average for all other Athenaeum speakers."

The Peel article reported that the CMC administration did not accede to any of SJP’s requests.

Promoting Anti-Semitic Hate Speech

On August 17, 2014, Hamideh shared a petition on Facebook demanding the "immediate reinstatement’ of Steven Salaita.

In 2014, The University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted on June 19, 2014, 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."

A month later, Salaita tweeted, "Zionists: transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948." On July 8, 2014, he tweeted: "There's something profoundly sexual to the Zionist pleasure w/#Israel's aggression. Sublimation through bloodletting, a common perversion."

U of I defended its decision to withdraw the job offer to Salaita in a January 29, 2015 press release, saying: "These statements [his tweets] and many more like them demonstrate that Dr. Salaita lacks the judgment, temperament and thoughtfulness to serve as a member of our faculty in any capacity, but particularly to teach courses related to the Middle East."

Promoting Conspiracy Theories

On July 18, 2014, Hamideh conjured the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Israel, Zionists or Jews control the American government. Hamideh shared on Facebook a picture of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, captioned with a fabricated quote falsely attributed to Sharon, that read: "I want to tell you something very clear. Don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America. And the Americans Know it."

On July 28, 2014, Hamideh shared a video on Facebook that accused Israel of caring for the lives of only those ‘in the correct ethnic-religious category.” The video also claimed that Israel deliberately murdered Palestinian children in order to sustain its existence and control Palestinian “food-calorie intake.”

Spreading Propaganda

On July 13, 2014, Hamideh shared on Facebook a video produced by Breaking the Silence (BTS). In July 2016, BTS was largely discredited in an hour-long documentary produced by Israel’s investigative Channel 10 show, HaMakor (The Source). HaMakor’s report revealed that a substantial number of BTS testimonies were either unfactual or distortions of the truth.

Claremont SJP - Excluding Pro-Israel Voices

On April 16, 2017 — on the sixth day of Passover, which was also Easter Sunday — Claremont College’s Student Senate held a vote revising the Pitzer College Student Senate Budget Committee Bylaws. Pitzer College student Simone Bishara added an amendment to the Student Activities Funds’ restrictions — to force the student senate budget committee to adhere to a boycott list formulated by the BDS movement.

Bishara’s amendment to the Bylaws, (P.4. Student Activities Funds, Section 2. Restrictions VI.), stated: "Student Activities Funds shall not be used to make a payment on goods or services from any corporation or organization associated with the unethical occupation of Palestinian territories. Products include those products from corporations and organizations as delineated in the boycott list maintained by bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-toboycott."

Upon being informed of the vote, the executive boards of Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance (CPIA) and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges circulated a petition that objected to the vote’s timing —when many Jewish and Christian students, including student senators supportive of Israel were off-campus, celebrating their respective holidays.

Bishara claimed "the timing was merely an unfortunate coincidence."

The petition also criticized the fact that the amendment was not announced before the meeting.

Claremont’s student newspaper, the Student Life, also reported that Bishara did not include the amendment in the first draft of the budgetary bylaws presented on April 9.

Because the BDS resolution was couched as an amendment, Bishara was not required to announce the measure on the meeting’s agenda. Bishara stated: "It's just not procedurally how Senate does things."

Although Bishara did not inform anyone from CPIA and the Alpha Epsilon Pi of the Claremont Colleges of the amendment, The Student Life reported that Bishara did "reach out" to some senators and Claremont SJP, which sent members to speak at the meeting in favor of the amendment.

Bishara told Student Life she did not alert CPIA that she was presenting the amendment "because my intention was to have it pass. I have had enough intellectual conversation about why people disagree with me."

Bishara went on to say: "My opinions are less rooted in academic knowledge or political belief and more in this identity-based concern," she said. “It's emotionally gutting for me to sit here and have to explain why I think these things are the right things to do. ... It's just emotional labor that no one ever should have to do.”

In the same Student Life interview, Bishara claimed the amendment’s timing also made it difficult for her to go home to celebrate Easter.

"...I had to pull myself away from home and I would never, in a million years, ask anyone else to do that, and never in a million years would intentionally target something around somebody's faith. ... I can't even conceive of a world in which I would be okay if I knew somebody was doing that on purpose."

Claremont SJP’s press release on Facebook, celebrating the vote, said it passed by "22 aye, 0 nay, 4 abstentions." The announcement did not mention that the budget committee’s decisions would be tied to the dictates of the BDS movement.

Claremont SJP - Advised by Defender of Hezbollah

Claremont SJP’s faculty advisor is Department of Anthropology Chair at Scripps College (Scripps), Lara Deeb — who has excused Hezbollah's terror activities and anti-Semitism in her scholarly work. Deebs is a member of the Facebook groups Al-Awda News and Al-Awda Los Angeles and a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In the spring of 2011 — in her review of a book about Hezbollah — Deeb trivialized the anti-Semitism of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah. Deeb referenced a 1998 Nasrallah statement that Israel is "the state of the Zionist Jews, the descendants of apes and pigs," claiming that the quote was not proof that Nasrallah was an anti-Semite.

Claremont SJP - Demonizing Israel

On April 12, 2017 — in conjunction with Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) — Claremont SJP held a screening of an anti-Semitic documentary titled: "The Occupation of the American Mind," in order to solicit support for their upcoming campus BDS resolution.

The film claimed to show that Israel controls the American public’s view on Arab-Israeli conflict via the media.

The event organizer wrote on the Facebook event page that the aim of the week’s events was to: "shed a light on the settler colonial project and apartheid policies of Israel and build the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement..."

On April 11, 2017, as part of IAW, Claremont SJP held an event titled: "Pinkwashing 101 Workshop." The event page claimed “Pinkwashing is a deliberate marketing campaign that Israel uses to project an image of queer-friendliness in order to cover up its atrocities of apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”

On April 7, 2017, Claremont SJP published an article accusing Israel of being an "Apartheid state." The article accused Israel of ethnic cleansing “700,000 Palestinians — Muslim, Christian, and Jewish alike — were violently uprooted and expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948.” The article went on to mislead its readers claiming that “Palestinian citizens in Israel are also subject to racialized laws and regulations that inhibit them from living as equals under the law,” and that “There are over 50 laws that discriminate against Palestinians in Israel.” The conclusion of the article encouraged readers to participate in its IAW events saying: “We call attention to these crimes this year in Israeli Apartheid week.”

On April 3, 2017, Claremont SJP erected a mock apartheid wall on the Pitzer college campus as part of IAW. On April 6, 2017, Claremont SJP wrote a blog post condemning individuals who displayed an Israeli flag behind in opposition to the wall, saying: "This flag shows the ideological underpinnings of Zionism, a settler-colonial project to lay claim to Palestinian indigenous land without acknowledging the human rights abuses, the violence, the massacres, the apartheid, and the walls that are necessary to sustain this project... this 20 foot flag that was hung in an attempt to cover up the horrors of Zionist violence."

Claremont SJP - Harassing Students

On December 12, 2016, Claremont SJP posted a statement on Facebook defending their posting of mock eviction notices on student dorm room doors, in violation of the college’s posting regulations, the notice read: "EVICTION NOTICE: DORM SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION IN THREE (3) DAYS. If you do not vacate the premises by 3/10/2016 8 PM, we reserve the right to demolish your premises without delay." It was reported that following expressions of concern by Jewish students that they were being targeted, Stan Skipworth — Claremont’s Director of Campus Safety — wrote in an email to the student body that “the flyers violated posting regulations at CMC, Pitzer College, and Scripps College.”

The Claremont SJP Facebook post also stated the group's intention to engage in "pursuing boycott/divestment campaigns" at the Claremont Colleges.

Claremont SJP - Supporting Terrorist Rasmea Odeh

Claremont SJP - Supporting Inciter to Violence

On July 12, 2016, Claremont SJP shared a petition on Facebook supporting Dareen Tatour, who was placed under house arrest for inciting violence in the fall of 2015. 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.

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 ethnic cleansing of Jews from "Arab Palestine." The Arabic poem in the video begins: “Resist, my people, resist them. In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows. And carried the soul in my palm. For an Arab Palestine. I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution,’ Never lower my flags Until I evict them from my land.”

The poem also contained the lines: "Resist the settler’s robbery And follow the caravan of martyrs."

Claremont SJP - Hosting David Sheen

On October 25, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted a speaking event co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — and featuring anti-Israel journalist, David Sheen — titled "The Bullet, the Ballot, & the Boycott: Racism in Israel Today."

The Facebook post advertising the event announced that Sheen would "describe how top Israeli political and religious leaders use dehumanizing discourse to inspire vigilante attacks toward Palestinians, Africans and other non-Jews."

Claremont SJP - Hosting a Supporter of Intifada

On October 17, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event that was co-sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) featuring Nada Elia. Earlier that month — as radicalized Palestinians across Israel stabbed scores of Israeli civilians during the "Knife Intifada" — Elia wrote an article titled “Why Be Afraid of an Intifada?” where she claimed: “Intifadas are good.”

Claremont SJP - Spreading Anti-Israel Propaganda

On April 2, 2015, Claremont SJP hosted an event screening the documentary Occupation 101 as part of Claremont SJPs Israeli Apartheid week. The documentary is narrated by anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir, founder of the controversial website If Americans Knew (IAK). Weir is notorious for writing an article that endorsed a Swedish newspaper’s blood libel — claiming Israel harvested Palestinian organs.

On April 1, 2015, Claremont SJP installed of a mock apartheid wall on campus that aimed to "bolster support for the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel." Claremont SJP student activists posed as Palestinians supposedly being oppressed by an Israeli soldier next to the mock apartheid wall.

The mock wall misrepresented Israel’s security fence, built as a non-violent deterrent to Palestinian terrorist attacks — mostly by suicide bombers. The wall featured text that read: "Zionism is Racism." The wall also featured a series of maps that presented lands once controlled by Britain, Egypt and Jordan as autonomous “Palestinian land” purportedly stolen by Israel.

In February of 2016, publisher McGraw-Hill Education recalled and destroyed copies of a college level textbook that contained the fraudulent maps. In October 2015, the United States cable news network MSNBC apologized for airing a similar series of maps and retracted them.

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 Weblinks

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