Osama Alkhawaja
Overview
Osama Alkhawaja has defended terrorists, expressed support for terror financiers, promoted anti-Israel agitators and is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.Alkhawaja was an activist with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the 2014 -2015 president of SJP at SDSU (SJP SDSU). Alkhawaja reportedly organized with SJP “throughout college” while at SDSU from 2011-2016.
Alkhawaja attended the 2018 National SJP Conference.The 2018 National SJP conference was held on November 16-18, 2018 at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The conference was themed “Radical Hope: Resistance in the Face of Adversity.” The conference website stated: “[t]he reason we can have hope is that Zionism...can be destroyed.”
As of January 2018, Alkahawaja’s LinkedIn page listed him as the co-president of the Muslim Law Students Association at UChicago.
In July 2016, Alkhawaja indicated on LinkedIn, as well as in an article he authored for Palestine in America (PIA), that he was the vice president of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at SDSU.
In 2019, Alkhawaja volunteered as a law intern with Palestine Legal and from 2015-2017 Alkhawaja served as an advocacy intern at the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR).
As of February 2019, Alkhawaja was a member of the “Al-Awda San Diego” Facebook group, the “Americans Against Genocide In Gaza (AAGG)” Facebook group and the “PYM [Palestine Youth Movement] - San Diego” Facebook group.
Also as of February 2019, Alkhawaja’s LinkedIn page said he was a law student at the University of Chicago (UChicago) Law School, slated to graduate in 2020.
Alkhawaja’s LinkedIn page also said he was a Summer Law Clerk with the San Diego Public Defender’s office since August 2018 and said he was a “Staffer on the Chicago Journal of International Law.”
In December 2018, Alkhawaja was reportedly the editor of the Chicago Journal of International Law.
Alkhawaja graduated from SDSU in 2016, with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science.
Defending Terrorists
Alkhawaja continued: “Israel is a racist state. Zionism is a racist ideology. There is no middle ground.”
Ahmed Manasra (sometimes spelled Mansara) and his 15-year-old cousin Hassan went on a stabbing spree in Jerusalem on October 12, 2015, during the Knife Intifada. They critically wounded a 13-year-old boy and moderately wounded a 25-year-old man. The spree ended when police shot Hassan and a passing motorist hit Ahmed. Ahmed was taken to an Israeli hospital. He admitted to investigators: “I went there to stab Jews.” He was later tried and convicted on two counts of attempted murder.
On October 14, 2015, Alkhawaja tweeted in support of convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
Odeh was a key military operative with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a PFLP supermarket bombing that killed two college students. She also attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem. Odeh later moved to the United States but was deported to Jordan in 2017 for immigration fraud.
He also retweeted an October 10, 2015, Columbia SJP tweet that claimed: “‘The whole system of incarceration is designed to destroy people & make them feel hopeless’ -RO #Justice4Rasmea."
Expressing Support for Terror Financiers
The HLF5 were five individuals associated with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) indicted for funneling funds to Hamas in the guise of humanitarian aid. The men were were all convicted and sentenced in 2009 to federal prison terms ranging from 15 to 65 years.
Defending Anti-Israel Agitators
During the meeting, Hill reportedly whitewashed Palestinian violence and accused Israel of “state violence and ethnic cleansing.” He also called for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
In September 2018, during a U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) conference, Hill insinuated [00:31:01] that Israel poisons Palestinian water and seemingly approved [00:30:34] of violence against Israelis.
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
On August 6, 2014, Alkhawaja signed a Change.org petition which demanded “corrective action on the scandalous firing” of Steven Salaita.
In 2014, The University of Illinois (U of I) withdrew an offer of employment to Steven Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted 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."
Supporting BDS
In 2014, SJP at SDSU submitted a divestment proposal to the Associated Students (A.S.) University Council. On April 28, 2014, the resolution failed after sixteen members of the council voted against the proposition, three voted for it and three abstained from the vote.
In 2015, SJP at SDSU again submitted their divestment resolution directly to SDSU’s student body as a referendum, to be voted on via a special ballot. The resolution proposed that SDSU “divest from companies involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” (including Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and Lockheed Martin).
On April 9, 2015, the resolution failed to garner the two-thirds majority required for the measure to pass, with 53% of the students voting in favor and 47% voting against.
On April 11, 2015, Alkhawaja demonized SDSU students who did not vote for divestment on Facebook and accused them of “callously allow[ing] your hands to be soaked in the blood of innocent people’ and “being complacent in genocide.”
Alkhawaja also wrote: “I hope that a day comes when the hours of the night are as uncomforting to you, on account of your guilt.”
SJP Activism
In April 2016, Alkhawaja’s name appeared on posters around SDSU campus that named seven SDSU students as having “allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred” on campus.After the posters were discovered, Alkhawaja and other students participated in a protest directed against the university administration for what the groups deemed an inadequate response by the University to the posters.
On April 27, 2016, SJP SDSU and MSA SDSU organized a protest rally. Alkhawaja along with dozens of protesters followed SDSU President Elliot Hirshman as he walked from a swearing-in ceremony of new A.S. officers to a waiting police cruiser.
The students surrounded Hirshman as he sat in the police cruiser and prevented him from leaving campus for two hours.
Following the confrontation, protesters said [00:00:25] that Hirschman “has 48 hours to deliver that condemnation [of the posters] — or else.”
Dropping Evacuation Leaflets
On November 6, 2014, Alkhawaja organized with SJP SDSU to drop approximately 500 leaflets from the top of the student hall, ordering students to evacuate immediately and warning that “Those who fail to comply with the instructions will endanger their lives and the lives of their families.”According to the student newspaper, the Daily Aztec, the dropping of the leaflets “was seen by university officials as a violation of the student code of conduct. Several police officers and administration arrived before the leaflets were dropped.”
Leading a Die-In
On October 3, 2014, following Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Alkhawaja led an SJP SDSU “die-in” to “bring awareness and as a memorial for victims of the violence in Gaza this summer.”Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Members and supporters of SJP SDSU simulated dying as Alkhawaja “read 35 to 40 names” of Palestinians who had died.
SJP SDSU Hosting Alison Weir
On October 22, 2014, SJP SDSU hosted an event featuring anti-Israel agitator Alison Weir. Weir is the founder and executive director of the anti-semitic site If Americans Knew (IAK) and president of the Council for the National Interest (CNI).On August 8, 2009, Weir wrote an article supporting a blood libel published by a Swedish newspaper — advancing lies about Israeli harvesting of Palestinian organs.
In 2012, an Anti Defamation League (ADL) primer titled “The Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America” exposed (p.5-6) Weir’s propagation of numerous anti-Semitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories. ADL noted that Weir wrote several articles promoting claims of organ harvesting by Jews.
Weir was condemned in 2015 by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), for being “a repeat guest of white supremacist Clay Douglas on his hate radio show, the Free American” during 2010 and 2011.
SJP SDSU Hosting Propagandist Bassem Tamimi
On October 22, 2014, SDSU SJP welcomed Bassem Tamimi to SDSU. 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 U.S. tour when Tamimi encouraged 3rd graders in Ithaca New York to become “freedom fighters for Palestine.”
SJP SDSU Hosting Remi Kanazi
On November 19, 2014, SDSU SJP held an event featuring anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi. Kanazi is notorious for aggressively anti-Israel poetry and spoken-word performances.Attending the 2018 National SJP Conference
On November 19, 2018, Alkhawaja posed for a group photo taken during the 2018 National SJP Conference.2018 National SJP - Celebrating Violence
Since the early 2000’s, the term “intifada” has carried the connotation of violence. The second intifada was characterized by more than 120 suicide bombings targeting Israeli civilians on buses and in cafes.
Anti-Israel activist Omar Zahzah also reportedly [00:00:07] led National SJP attendees in chanting, in Arabic, “With our bodies and our blood, we will free Palestine.”
As of November 2018, the 2018 National SJP website glorified “radical hope and upfront defiance of Zionism,” citing as examples the “early revolts through the Intifadas to the Great Return March.”
The Great Return March of 2018 was organized and funded by the terror group Hamas as a campaign of violent protests along Israel’s border to spotlight the demand of Palestinians to “return” to Israel.
Tens of thousands of rioters gathered on Israel’s Gaza border, attempting numerous breaches of Israel’s border fence, with leaders andparticipants declaring their intention to harm Jews.
National SJP originally promoted a conference logo featuring a keffiyeh-wearing bear, looking toward a kite bearing the colors of the Palestinian flag.
On October 27, 2018, National SJP said the kite signified “the power in the Gaza March of Return.”
Since March 2018, March of Return participants and Hamas’s “Kite Unit” have sent hundreds of kites bearing incendiary devices and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) across the border into Israel to terrorize Israelis. The kites are often marked with swastikas.
By the time National SJP produced its 2018 conference logo highlighting the kites in October 2018, Gazan terror kites and balloons had ignited more than 1,300 fires in Israel, over seven months.
2018 National SJP - Undermining U.S. Support for Israel
On November 18, 2018, the US Palestine Community Network (USPCN) posted on Facebook the 2018 National SJP keynote speech by Hatem Abudayyeh, USPCN’s co-founder.Abudayyeh has supported [00:08:45] convicted terrorists, praised terror organizations, called for Israel’s destruction and is an activist in theBoycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
In his 2018 National SJP Keynote, Abudayyeh said [00:53:01] that the “specific role” of Palestinian and Arab students was to organize [00:53:42] in order to weaken “Zionist Israel” and force [00:54:23] the U.S. to “no longer provide it with diplomatic, political, financial and military cover and support.”
Abudayyeh predicted [00:55:37] that once U.S. support to Israel ends, National SJP attendees would return to Palestine as “conquering heroes,” end [00:54:38] the “occupation and colonization of all Arab lands including the Golan Heights” and replace “Zionist Israel” with a Palestinian state.
2018 National SJP - Whitewashing Terror Organizations
During his keynote speech, Abudayyeh also painted [00:14:01] terrorist organizations as “liberation movements” and “resistance organizations,” stating [00:14:21] “what we also know is that the majority of the resistance organizations in Palestine are on the U.S. state department list of foreign terrorist organizations.”Abudayyeh also celebrated [00:52:00] that all of the “armed resistance” organizations in Gaza are part [00:52:14] of a “unified resistance in Gaza, that includes all of the resistance organizations, working together under a unified military command.”
2018 National SJP - Defending Terrorist Rasmea Odeh
During his keynote speech, Abudayyeh claimed [00:08:28] that pro-Israel organizations “go after students like you,” adding [00:08:20] “just like they went after my friend and colleague, Rasmea Odeh.”2018 National SJP - Demonizing Israel and Jews
During his keynote speech, Abudayyeh defended [00:27:25] the “Irvine 11” — eleven Muslim Student Union (MSA) members who were arrested in 2010 for repeatedly shouting down former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren during an address at the University of California at Irvine (UC Irvine).Abudayyeh referred [00:27:37] to Oren as a “racist fascist speaker, representative of a racist, fascist country.”
Abudayyeh went on to claim [00:29:48] that “today, even in the United States, Israel is finally being seen as the criminal, apartheid, racist state that it is.”
Abudayyeh also called for increased action in the face of President U.S. Donald Trump, and referred [00:48:41] to Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and senior advisor, as “that pig son-in-law of his.”
2018 National SJP - Excluding Students
The 2018 National SJP Conference welcomed only students who were verified and vouched for by an SJP (or otherwise named campus Palestine solidarity group). Media requests needed to be “approved by the NSJP press team” prior to the conference.A November 7, 2018 Columbus Jewish News article reported that the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a resolution calling on UCLA to cancel the 2018 NSJP conference, stating that a “public university should not allow any group to implement a litmus test for event participation on their campus.”
On November 12, 2018, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times that criticized National SJP’s exclusion of members of pro-Israel student groups.
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.
PYM
In 2012, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM USA) released a statement saying: “Our liberation...will be gained with the path that was written with the blood of our martyrs. We reaffirm that the only path that we are concerned with is the path that explicitly heads towards the liberation of our land and the return of our people to Palestine.”
PYM organized rallies demonizing Israel where it displays propaganda posters supporting the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
On October 25, 2015, PYM called to support “intifada” during a period when Palestinian radicals across Israel stabbed and hacked to death scores of Israeli civilians. PYM alleged that “Al-Aqsa Mosque has been the target of particularly brutal assaults” and that “... arbitrary killings are committed daily by the Zionist military and settlers.”
On November 10, 2015, the PYM Facebook page displayed a photo of masked Palestinian radicals throwing rocks and firing rocks from slingshots. That photo was used to promote at least 25 anti-Israel rallies across the globe on or around November 29, 2015 under the banner of “Transnational mobilization for Palestinian resistance.”
On November 30, 2015, PYM displayed a photo on Facebook from one of the rallies showing a sign in support of PFLP member Khalida Jarrar, who confessed to inciting violence and calling for terrorists to abduct Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
Another sign showed support for PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sadat, who was convicted for the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
MSA
The MSA was established by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in January 1963 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with the goal of "spreading Islam as students in North America." A 2004 FBI investigation uncovered an internal Muslim Brotherhood document in which a brotherhood leader identified the MSA as "one of our organizations."
The MSA reportedly has “nearly 600 chapters” located in the United States and Canada, and is “the most visible and influential Islamic student organization in North America,” boasting conferences, special events, publications, websites and other activities.
The organization includes a number of previous chapter presidents with explicit links to terrorist groups. Included are al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (Colorado State University), Somali al-Shabaab militant leader Omar Shafik Hammami (University of South Alabama) and Pakistani Taliban recruiter Ramy Zamzam of the MSA's Washington, D.C. council.
CAIR
CAIR describes itself as a “grassroots civil rights and advocacy group” and “America's largest Muslim civil liberties organization, with regional offices nationwide.” Its official mission is “enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.”
CAIR reportedly has “significant ties” to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as Hamas. A number of former CAIR employees have been convicted on fraud and terrorism-related charges that resulted monetary fines, jail terms and, sometimes, deportation.
CAIR was founded in 1994 and opened its first office in Washington, DC, with the help of a $5,000 donation from the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), a charity founded by Mousa Abu Marzook.
Marzook, who was listed as a "Specially Designated Terrorist" by the U.S. Treasury Department in 1995, is reportedly a senior member of Hamas.
In May 2007, CAIR was listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in a U.S.-filed action against the HLF for providing funds to Hamas.
CAIR was also listed as a terrorist entity by the United Arab Emirates, in 2014.
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- Lynn Hassoun,
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- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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