Neha Bhatia

On Thursday April 6, 2017, the Tufts Community Union Senate (TCU Senate) announced that an anti-Israel divestment resolution — authored by Tufts SJP — would be voted on at the TCU Senate’s Sunday, April 9th meeting.

Monday evening, April 10th, marked the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Passover Eve is a time when many Jewish students are traditionally at home with family. Many Jewish students who had long-standing plans to spend the weekend with their families in anticipation of the holiday, were unable to attend the vote.

On the day of the vote, Tufts Hillel executive director Rabbi Jeffrey Summit noted: “The Hillel Jewish community is deeply disturbed by this vote, and by the way the resolution was brought so close to Pesach [Passover], at a time when many of our students are home with their families, readying themselves for the holiday.”

On Sunday April 9, the TCU Senate voted on the divestment resolution which passed with 17 in favor, six opposed and eight abstentions. Amid protests against the resolution’s timing, the TCU Senate voted down a motion to table the resolution. Six out of the 37 TCU Senators eligible to vote in April 2017 were absent from the final vote.

In a marked departure from protocol, photography and video recording of the divestment resolution’s proceedings were banned, due to “safety” concerns. The TCU Senate livestreamed a video of a vote taken on another issue at the same meeting.

An audio-only broadcast of the divestment resolution proceedings was livestreamed on the TCU Senate Facebook page. During the 3.5 hour-long session, TCU Senate members and speakers avoided referring to one another by name and identified (1:15:35) one another, instead, via references to physical characteristics and clothing.

One Senator asked (36:00) Tufts SJP activist and TCU Senator Parker Breza if his group consulted with any campus groups other than Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) at Tufts (Tufts JVP) during the drafting of the divestment resolution. Breza answered (36:20): “So, we didn’t, um, actually, like, talk to any other groups, like, while we were drafting this resolution.”

The TCU Senate parliamentarian and Tufts SJP leaders Hannah Freedman and Noah Habeeb all agreed (41:11 and 44:40) on Wednesday, April 5th, to make a Google doc available for anyone unable to attend the vote, to submit comments that could be read “at some point” during the April 9th meeting. Immediately prior to the vote, the parliamentarian urgently requested the attendees to approve 10 minutes of time to read out the submitted comments, so he would not be put in an “awkward situation” (53:37).

Eventually, the parliamentarian read out write-in comments for a total of 15 minutes. The parliamentarian read out 22 (about 25%) out of the 81 student comments that were submitted to the senate via the Google doc.

In choosing which comments to read, the parliamentarian prioritized student comments over non-student comments and read them at random. Of the 22 randomized student comments read, at least 10 opposed the resolution. Another four comments were in favor of tabling the resolution to a later date. In sum, over 63% of comments read out by the parliamentarian either opposed the resolution or called for its tabling.

One anonymous Jewish student, at home for Passover said (1:17:12): “My freedom to appear and speak for myself and stand up for something I believe in was taken away. As you might imagine, this feels like a personal blow to me and also to students who are at home preparing for Passover who are being blatantly left out … the timing it was released gives the impression that this was intentional.”

In an April 11, 2017 interview with the Tufts Daily, Habeeb denied that Tufts SJP intentionally scheduled the vote to coincide with Passover. The TCU Senate meeting was the last of the semester.

During the debate preceding the vote, one Senator questioned (40:12) the “specific intent” behind the resolution’s timing “when many students cannot attend this meeting simply because they are observing their holiday, Passover.”

In answer to the question, Freedman revealed the resolution’s authors decided to not schedule the vote for the previous week’s meeting because “many of us were away at a conference last weekend when we had had [sic.] the resolution ready — and so we decided to put it this weekend” (40:43). Freedman omitted that the conference was the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) National Member Meeting (NMM), where Tufts SJP had sent a delegation of at least seven members and met with senior JVP officials.

Tufts SJP leaders Noah Habeeb and Hannah Freedman addressed the question of the divestment resolution’s timing.

When asked, specifically, “Why tonight?” Habeeb blamed Christianity, stating (44:25): “This country is characterized by Christian hegemony, this university is not immune to that. This a choice that Jewish students have to make frequently, to choose between our cultural religious practices and other things that matter to us.”

Freedman, who proudly invokes her own Jewishness in her activism, claimed not to have known about the timing conflict. She stated (41:02), “we were pretty upset when we heard” about the BDS vote conflicting with a time “when many Jewish students, specifically, are travelling for Passover,” and said (41:08): “obviously we want, like, a full dialogue in this room.”

Habeeb stressed the “sense of urgency” (44:05) within Tufts SJP for passing the resolution to mark the “50th year of occupation” (44:07). June 2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War.

Habeeb went on to attack (45:18) any assumption that those who could not attend because of Passover “are folks who would be against this resolution.” Habeeb said (45:20): “To me that verges on a dangerous anti-Semitic trope that the Jewish people are not loyal to their host societies and that they care more about Israel. There are people on both sides who are affected by this.”

Attempts to table the divestment resolution were overridden. Olivia Dehm, a Tufts SJP member and TCU Senator, explicitly discounted (2:00:58) the exclusion of religiously observant Jewish students and claimed that the Senate had gone “above and beyond” (2:01:17) its obligation to accommodate Jewish students inconvenienced by Tufts SJP’s scheduling.

Dehm insisted that the proposed option for anyone absent “due to religious holidays” (2:01:32) to write in their opinions via Google doc and have them read out would adequately “represent voices that are not able to be physically here in this room.” Dehm then claimed that the vote’s timing was justified, even if it excluded some Jewish voices, because “there are so many Palestinian voices that are not heard constantly in the hegemonic dialogue of the United States” (2:01:35).

After a motion to table the divestment resolution failed, 13-19 (2:11:53) the TCU Senate proceeded to vote for BDS.

Following the vote, Tufts’ President, Anthony Monaco, insisted that the university would not abide by the divestment resolution. Monaco expressed concern over the resolution’s timing and the resistance to tabling it for further discussion.

The bulk of the divestment resolution demonized Israel — in successive “whereas” clauses, laden with half-truths. The resolution outlined Israeli operations — and touched on some U.S. operations — of the four companies targeted for divestment. Tufts SJP admitted in the divestment resolution that it did not know of any Tufts investments in the companies.

The divestment resolution referred to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) against Hamas as “the 2014 Israeli Assault on Gaza.” Israel commenced OPE in July 2014 to destroy stop Hamas’ rocket attacks from Gaza, against Israeli civilians and destroy Hamas’ attack tunnels.

During the debate on the resolution, Tufts SJP leader Noah Habeeb exaggerated the Gazan death toll during Israel’s 2014 conflict against Hamas by ten-fold — and failed to account for combatant deaths.

Habeeb declared (3:11:35): “21,000 Palestinians were killed in Operation Edge [sic.]. That wasn’t in 1964, that was in 2014. You’re here to vote on whether or not you are going to continue materially supporting Israel’s material capacity to kill Palestinians.”

Habeeb did not retract his statement — even when corrected by a Senator, who said (3:12:05): “It was not 21,000. It was 2,100, including combatants.”

Tufts SJP refused to strike or amend the second paragraph of the resolution, which claimed “a recent United Nations report” stated that Israel had “established ‘an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.’”

The so-called “United Nations report” was published by a Beirut-based regional commission of 18 U.N. member states without any input from the U.N. Secretary General’s office. Richard Falk, a report co-author, was expelled from Human Rights Watch in 2012 and censured on three occasions by the UK for his anti-Semitism.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres disavowed the report when it was published on March 15, 2017. The report was formally withdrawn two days later.

An anonymous Senator proposed an amendment to strike the erroneous reference from the resolution. The Senator informed (3:15:02) the Senate that the citation to an outdated Al Jazeera article, rendered the paragraph inaccurate “since the report was pulled” and “the U.N. doesn’t have this position.”

Habeeb acknowledged (3:15:55) that the report referenced by the resolution was not issued by the U.N. General Assembly and was rescinded. However, Habeeb insisted the resolution retain the inaccurate paragraph, since the report “was published” and “the report exists.” Habeeb said (3:16:09): “You can read the press release and this quote is in the press release.” The TCU parliamentarian insisted that Senators had to vote on the amendment without verifying further, since “we don’t have a mechanism for verification” (3:16:30).

The fourth paragraph of the divestment resolution also referred to Israel’s security fence as an “Apartheid Wall.” Freedman, in the discussion leading up to the Senate’s vote on the divestment resolution, likened (34:37) Israeli policies to South African apartheid policies of “racial categorization.”

Tufts SJP leader Mile Krstev, on two occasions during the debate, made the false claim that the BDS movement recognizes Israel’s legitimacy.

Krstev said (2:54:00): “This BDS movement gives legitimacy to the State of Israel by referring to it and the Palestinian citizens that live within Israel.” Later, Krstev said (3:01:47): “The BDS movement itself accepts Israel and recognizes it as legitimate.”

Earlier in the evening, Krstev made the unequivocal — and false — claim that Arab Israelis “do not serve” (21:26) in the Israeli army.

Tufts SJP’s divestment resolution quoted from the official BDS website multiple times.

Lines 12 - 17 of the divestment resolution, as originally presented, included a “block quote” from the BDS website but without any quotation marks or source attribution.

The resolution, as finally passed, added quotation marks around the BDS quotation but never expressly sourced the block quote to the BDS website.

The BDS website block quote began with BDS’ demand for “ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands.” That language later became the point of fierce debate, since it could be interpreted as a call for Israel’s destruction. Indeed, BDS leaders, like Omar Barghouti, have long insisted (5:50) that there is no room for “Jewish state in Palestine in any shape or form,” claiming that “no rational Palestinian ... will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”

Amira Subaey, a Tufts SJP leader and TCU Senator, admitted that the line “ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” was part of a larger “direct quote from … the BDS website” (2:32:40). Tufts SJP then agreed to place the larger BDS quote (lines 12-17) in quotation marks — but refused to alter the quote in any way. Hannah Freedman, another Tufts SJP leader, said: “We don’t feel comfortable changing the three-fold goal of the BDS movement” (2:33:40).

The divestment resolution further quoted the BDS website, demanding the “dismantling the Israeli-West Bank separation wall known as the Apartheid Wall by many Palestinians.”

The resolution went on quoting, to call for “recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.”

The divestment resolution’s BDS website block quote finally demanded: “respecting, protecting and promoting the inalienable rights of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and properties from which they were expelled in 1948 as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

U.N. Resolution 194 recommended that refugees be allowed to return to their pre-war homes, provided they were “willing to live in peace with their neighbors.” The Arabs unanimously rejected Resolution 194.

Tufts SJP refused to adjust any portion of the BDS language it incorporated into its divestment motion.

During the Senate session preceding the resolution vote, Tufts SJP repeatedly (1:55:05 and 2:38:34) told TCU Senators that the resolution was a “divestment” resolution — not a BDS resolution. However, during the amendment process, questioners forced Tufts SJP to acknowledge (2:32:40) that lines 12 - 17 of the resolution quoted, word-for-word, the three pillars of the BDS movement from the BDS website — but without quotation marks.

One Senator proposed an amendment stripping all BDS language from the resolution, insisting that Tufts SJP either “own the fact” that they were officially BDS or “get rid” of any BDS references (2:40:05). That amendment failed.

Parker Breza, both a Tufts SJP leader and TCU Senator, weighed in: “We are not saying that this is not a BDS resolution. We are clarifying that this is a divestment resolution. So, while we’re talking about boycott and sanction within this broader movement, we are standing in solidarity with Palestinian people — more than 170 Palestinian unions, etc. — who have called on BDS” (2:45:15).

TCU President Gauri Seth observed that “one of the authors” of the resolution said “this isn’t BDS” and asked: “I’m just confused as to how to separate the two when you’re saying it's a part of the movement but, like, it’s not the movement” (2:49:25).

Breza continued to insist that the resolution was not BDS, saying: “I think when people say that this is not BDS, it’s not boycott and sanction in this specific resolution. It is one piece of a larger movement” (2:49:45).

However, when Breza was then challenged (2:50:10) about whether Tufts SJP would later bring “boycott and sanctions” measures to the TCU Senate, Breza dismissed the question as “irrelevant” (2:50:20).

Breza then attempted to defocus attention (2:51:38) from the resolution’s association with the BDS movement and its demonization of Israel. Instead, Breza demanded the Senators focus their attention solely on the resolution’s call for divestment.

On April 10, 2017, after the vote, Molly Tunis, Tufts SJP’s spokesperson, claimed “the resolution wasn’t about Israel” but instead, “it was about these four companies.”

On May 10, 2017, Tufts SJP activists participated in the “Saltwater Challenge,” in solidarity with Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons who were then on a hunger strike.

More than 1,500 Palestinian prisoners participated in the hunger strike — most of whom were also convicted for acts of terrorism.

The hunger strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, who was serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in suicide bombings and shooting attacks — that killed five Israelis during the second Intifada. Barghouti also financed the guitar-case bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe massacre, where 15 civilians were killed and 130 injured.

In a short video of the event produced by Tufts SJP, activist Amira Subaey claimed that Israel practices “apartheid” (0:40) and that Tufts SJP was “protesting the conditions in Israeli prisons” (0:20). Barghouti completed his doctorate in Political Science while in Israeli prison.

Also among the hunger strikers was Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat, jailed for his role in organizing the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister, Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001.

On May 11, 2017, Tufts SJP also promoted another event supporting the hunger-striking prisoners.

On February 28, 2017, Tufts SJP shared a video from the BDS movement that called, in its English language subtitles, for “human rights” (0:28) and “nonviolent resistance” (1:02). However, the video also featured multiple indications (0:03 and 0:47) of support for PFLP militant Bilal Kayed. Kayed was incarcerated for 14 years for terrorist operations committed during the second Intifada.

The video also displayed (0:48) the phrase “Support Palestinian Prisoners in Hunger Strike #Boycott Israel.”

On October 14, 2015, Tufts SJP posted various photos on Facebook of its members supporting terrorist Rasmea Odeh. The photo captions included a donation link to Odeh’s legal fund.

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.

On 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 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.