Reem Fatayerji

Overview

 Reem Fatayerji co-authored and voted in favor of a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement resolution at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in 2014. 

As of June 2023, Fatayerji’s LinkedIn said she served as a student senator in the Associated Students, University of California, Davis (ASUCD) from December 2014 to December 2015.  

As of June 2023, Fatayerji’s LinkedIn page said she had been working at the private equity firm HACP Partners since September 2022.

As of the same date, Fatayerji’s LinkedIn page said that she graduated from Duke University (Duke) with a master’s degree in business administration in 2022. Fatayerji also received a bachelor’s degree from UC Davis in international relations and economics in 2016. 

As of the same date, Fatayerji’s LinkedIn page said that she was located in San Francisco, California.

Anti-Israel Activism (BDS)

In January 2015, Fatayerji co-authored and voted for a student senate divestment resolution at UC Davis titled: “ASUCD Senate Resolution #9 (SR #9),” which called on the University of California (UC) Board of Regents to divest from companies doing business in Israel.

The UC Board of Regents sets UC Davis’s investment policy.

SR #9 was an expanded version of SR #20, an April 2014 divestment resolution authored by Saliem Shehadeh, an activist with the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at UC Davis (SJP at UC Davis). SR #20 failed to pass in the student senate on May 9, 2014.

On January 29, 2015, the ASUCD Senate held a hearing to present resolution SR #9. Following speeches for and against the resolution, the students opposing the resolution, who constituted “about a third of the attendees,” walked out [00:06:48] of the room. 

As those opposing SR #9 left the room, a large group of pro-divestment students chanted [00:00:05]: “Allahu akbar [God is the greatest]!” After the students exited the hall, the leader of the meeting mocked [00:08:43] the walk-out. SR #9 passed with a vote of eight for, two against and two abstaining.

Following the passage of the divestment bill, Azka Fayyaz, a co-author of the resolution, posted on Facebook: “Hamas & Sharia law have taken over UC Davis. Brb crying over the resilience.” On the same date, Fayyaz posted on Facebook: “...Israel will fall insha’Allah [God willing] #UCDDivest.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 2] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. 

On January 30, 2015, UC Davis chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi said in a statement that SR #9 “does not reflect the position of UC Davis or the UC system.” Katehi also supported a UC Board of Regents statement against divestment, writing that she “reiterates the Board’s position that this type of call to action will not be entertained.”

The UC Board of Regents’s statement also said: “This isolation of Israel among all countries of the world greatly disturbs us and is of grave concern to members of the Jewish community.” 

On January 31, 2015, unidentified vandals spray-painted two large swastikas on a house belonging to the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi).

On February 19, 2015, SR #9 was overturned as unconstitutional by the university’s Court of Associated Students, reportedly because it was “PRIMARILY a political document” with no relevance to student welfare on campus. 

In May 2015, SJP at UC Davis responded by proposing a new divestment resolution titled: “ASUCD Senate Resolution #17 (SR #17).”  

The resolution alleged that “enabling Israel’s occupation of Palestine compromises the integrity of students’ education.” The resolution also claimed that divestment “will create a climate of tolerance and open channels of dialogue between different campus communities.”

The May 2015 resolution passed with 10 votes for, none against and two abstaining. However, the resolution was ruled unconstitutional by the ASUCD Judicial Council in May 2019

The ASUCD Judicial Council noted that the resolution violated the ASUCD Bill of Student Rights because its passage “led to the discrimination and harassment of students whose ethnicity, national origin or political beliefs are in opposition to the content of the Resolution.” The judicial council also said that “the verbiage within the Resolution has caused the harassment of many students.” 

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

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/reem.fatayerji [Deleted]