Natalie El-Hai

In 2019, El-Hai was an organizer of an SJP Oxy BDS campaign called “#OxyDivest.”

El-Hai has also equated Zionism with white supremacy, spread hatred of Israel and expressed support for an anti-Israel agitator.

As of March 2021, El-Hai’s LinkedIn page said she was a Content Producer for soona, an on-line media production company, since February 2021. El-Hai’s LinkedIn page also listed her as a Board Member at Judaism on our Own Terms (JOOOT), since February 2020, and a Supervisor at Green Bean Coffee Lounge in Los Angeles, CA from January 2018 to March 2020.

As of the same date, El-Hai’s LinkedIn page said she received a bachelor’s degree in “English Language and Literature/Letters” from Oxy in 2020.

Also as of March 2021, El-Hai’s LinkedIn page said she was co-founder and president of Oxy’s Jewish Student Union (JSU), an anti-Zionist student group on campus.

Promoting BDS

In April 2019, El-Hai was reportedly a member of the SJP Oxy organizing committee that launched its #OxyDivest campaign with the publication of the “Oxy Divestment Handbook” on April 12, 2019. 

In the Handbook, SJP Oxy called upon the university to divest from 8 companies that “profit from the State of Israel’s violations of international law and Palestinian human rights through its ongoing system of settler colonialism, military occupation, and apartheid...”

In the Handbook, SJP Oxy also demanded that “Occidental must confirm that it will not invest in these companies until they cease their operations in and profits from Israeli apartheid, or until the State of Israel dismantles its apartheid wall and occupations, promotes the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality, and allows Palestinian refugees to return…”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. 

In an April 24, 2019 article in a student newspaper, El-Hai equated Israel with South African Apartheid and claimed: “At Occidental, the two apartheids are linked as well” referring to an earlier failed divestment campaign at Oxy.

The article quoted El-Hai as saying she wanted to make the 2019 divestment campaign “part of the institutional memory.”

The article also reported that “members of SJP’s organizing committee have yet to formally address the college administration to present the divestment campaign because they are focused on generating student interest.” 

Equating Zionism with White Supremacy

On March 26, 2019, El-Hai wrote an op-ed in an Oxy student newspaper, titled: “Letter to the editor: We must acknowledge Zionism’s historical connection to white supremacy.”

In her article, El-Hai wrote: “We need to talk about Zionism in relation to white supremacy if we want to work toward a just society.” El-Hai alleged that Israel was guilty of “actions of a white supremacist state… an ideology that values proximity to whiteness over Jewishness.”

In her article, El-Hai also claimed that the United Nations (UN) ruled "that Palestinians are living under an apartheid system."

In March 2017, a UN commission composed of 18 Arab states produced a report claiming Israel established an “apartheid regime.” Anti-Israel professor Richard Falk co-authored the report. Soon after the report’s release, UN Secretary General Antonió Guterres ordered it withdrawn, claiming the report was published without consultation with Guterres’s office and it did not reflect the UN secretariat’s views.

El-Hai concluded her article by saying: “If we wish to stand in solidarity with others, we must recognize the ingrained racist and white supremacist ideology central to Zionism and stand in opposition to it. Only by seeing Zionism for what it is can we claim any solidarity with others.”

In April 2019, during Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) at Oxy, SJP Oxy and JSU reportedly distributed fliers of El-Hai’s article on campus. 



SJP Oxy hosted IAW 2019 on campus from April 8 -12, 2019, reportedly “to raise awareness and inform the Occidental community about injustices that the state of Israel perpetuates on the Palestinian population.”

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On April 14, 2019, El-Hai appeared in a group photo posted to Instagram by SJP Oxy, posing with fellow SJP activists. The post was captioned: “we hid the wall somewhere on campus. 20 points if you can find it, 100000 points if you put it back up.”

During IAW 2019, SJP Oxy erected a mock apartheid wall on campus in reference to Israel’s security barrier.

Israel’s security barrier, 97 percent of which is a low chain-link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.

Text on one panel of SJP Oxy’s wall read: “Israeli restrictions make it difficult or impossible for Palestinian Muslims and Christians to worship freely” and ”Imagine segregation where the color of your license plate dictates which road you can drive on.”

On April 7, 2019, El-Hai posted on Instagram that she would be moderating an event the following day as part of IAW 2019. The event, hosted by SJP and JSU, was titled: “Alternatives to Zionism: Diversity in Jewish Political Thought.” 

The event reportedly “emphasized the difference between Judaism and Zionism, as the two are often conflated.” 

El-Hai’s Instagram post was captioned: “...please come to learn about the diversity of Jewish political thought and our responses to Zionism.”

On April 5, 2018, El-Hai updated her Facebook cover photo with an image of the Jewish Labor Bund anti-Zionist poster from 1918 with the slogan “Wherever We Live, That’s Our Homeland.” The Jewish Labor Bund was an anti-Zionist socialist movement founded in Vilna, Poland in October 1897.

In her Facebook post, El-Hai commented: “long live the diaspora! long live the jewish anti-zionist tradition!”

On February 27, 2018, El-Hai co-authored an op-ed with fellow members of the JSU E-Board, titled: “Letter to the editor: Failure to Mention Occupation Unsettles Some Jewish Students.”

In the article, the authors stated: “We strive to create Jewish communities that don’t feel the need to rely on Zionist constructions of nationalism and Jewish identity.”

The authors concluded: “In attempting to solve anti-Semitism through the state of Israel, Zionist ideology has separated anti-Semitism from its origins in white supremacy and created a moral crisis in which American Jews view Israel as the only way to ensure their safety. As anti-occupation and leftist Jews, we know we cannot protect ourselves with an ideology that harms others.” 

Support for Anti-Israel Agitator

In October 2016, El-Hai signed a National SJP (NSJP) petition in support of anti-Israel San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi.

Rabab Abdulhadi [Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi] has cultivated ties with Hamas-dominated universities, glorified terrorists, trivialized the kidnapping and murder of Israeli high-schoolers and endorsed hate speech.

The petition read: “ ...we move to emphasize that the attacks on Professor Abdulhadi, AMED, GUPS, and the partnership between An-Najah University and SFSU cannot be delinked from the broader context of Israel’s objective of isolating Palestinians from the rest of the world and erasing the existence and narrative of Palestinians.”

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.

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