Rula Rashid

Overview

Rula Rashid has expressed support for a terrorist and was the president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (UMN) when the group disrupted a campus event.

She has also promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Rashid was featured in a March 2016 tweet by SJP at UMN, as the group’s President.

Rashid was an at-large representative for the Minnesota Student Association from May 2015 to May 2016.

As of November 2019, Rashid’s LinkedIn page said she was a Financial Analyst at Medtronic in the Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Area, since July 2019. She has worked at the company since August 2017.

Also as of November 2019, Rashid’s LinkedIn page said she graduated from UMN in 2017, with a bachelor’s degree in Finance.

Expressing Support for Terrorists

On March 12, 2015, Rashid tweeted: “She doesn’t deserve this. What’s the point of the 18 months in jail? If she’s going tobe deported then just deport her. #Justice4Rasmea.”

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]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 [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.

In 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.

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

SJP UMN Disruption

On November 3, 2015, Rashid attended and subsequently praised a protest which was endorsed and “sponsored” by UMN SJP. The protest disrupted an event on ethics and the law of war that featured Israeli law professor, Moshe Halbertal.

At the event, Halbertal spoke about the moral challenges of asymmetric warfare. Nora Abdelal, who was Vice Presidentof SJP at UMN when the group disrupted the event, reportedly said that Halbertal: “‘justifies the killing of thousands of Palestinian civilians…supports mass murder of civilians in Gaza’ by the IDF.”

The SJP UMN-sponsored disruption was hosted by the Anti-War Committee (AWC), whose campaigns mainly to end US aid to Israel.

On November 4, 2015, in a statement to palestineinamerica.com after the protest, Rashid explained how the disruption functioned: “Our [SJP] members and members of the Anti-War committee were sitting inside the lecture that Halbertal was speaking at. One by one, even before he started to speak, members stood up and disrupted the event.”

Also on November 4, 2015, In a separate statement to the Star Tribune, Rashid proclaimed that protesting Halbertal “was the most patriotic thing you could do” and called Halbertal “an apologist for war crimes.”

FightBack News said: “The lecture was scheduled for one hour, but most of that time was taken up by interruptions.

FightBack News reported that after protesters were removed from the hall by university police, they continued disrupting the event by shouting [00:00:01] chants including “free, free Palestine” and [00:01:55] “Israel is an apartheid state” in the hallway, which were audible from inside the lecture hall.

Three activists were reportedly arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and trespassing.

The actions of the protesters were condemned the following day by the Dean of the UMN Law School, David Wippman who stated that it is “unacceptable that they should seek to deny other students and community members their own opportunity to hear an invited guest speak.”

On March 1, 2016 when the issue of the November 2015 speech disruption was broached during a SJP UMN Divest presentation, Rashid stood beside Abdelal as she denied [00:18:53] that SJP UMN had endorsed the November 2015 verbal assault on Israeli Law Professor Halbertal.

Abdelal then professed [00:19:05] that she didn’t “believe there were any [SJP UMN] members there, anyway…”

Promoting BDS

On February 23, 2016, Rashid tweeted: “No, I will not drink coffee with you. Because Palestinians do not have the luxury to wait over coffee tables. They are oppressed. #UMNDivest.”

Proponents of the “anti-normalization” policy seek to police all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians and shut down all conversations and interactions perceived as being ideologically unaligned with their own agenda. They believe “liberal Zionist” dialogue with Palestinians “normalizes” entrenched power dynamics. This policy was originally dictated by the BDS National Committee (BNC), which prioritized the “Monitoring & Rapid Response” against interactions that recognize or cooperate with “Israel’s regime.”

Rashid featured [00:01:25] in a March 2016 UMN Divest campaign video, where she said: “UC Berkeley, UCLA, Irvine, Northwestern and numerous other campaigns have passed divestment while many others are ongoing.”

On March 1, 2016, SJP UMN published a video to YouTube titled: “UMN Divest Presentation.” The video featured Rashid and Abdelal. In the video, Rashid and Abdelal presented SJP UMN’s divestment resolution at the “student government forum.”

At the divestment presentation, Rashid claimed that the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism did not apply to SJP UMN’s resolution. (16:21).

Rashid also defended [00:19:25] the chant “From the river to the sea Palestine will be free” as a call [00:19:31] to “end Apartheid,” saying she didnt know [00:19:37] how it could be considered a call for Israel’s destruction.”

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is a chant calling to dismantle the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.

On March 16, 2016, Rashid was interviewed by the anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada, where she denied [00:02:36] that SJP UMN’s resolution exclusively singled out Israel.

Rashid said [00:02:50] that push-back to the proposed student legislation caused it to end up being a “two-sided” resolution. She also mischaracterized [00:03:31] the “3D Test” of anti-Semitism, saying: “if you criticize Israel, you are anti-Semitic.

The “3D Test,” was adopted by the U.S. State Department in 2010 and stands for delegitimization and demonization of Israel and holding Israel to double standards. The “3D Test” is meant to differentiate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism.

Rashid further added [00:07:35] that UMN President Eric Kaler made “false accusations,” by claiming that the passage of the resolution would [00:07:40] “divide campus and create an unsafe space for students which is not true at all.”

SJP UMN Honoring Terrorists: 2015 - 2016

On January 27, 2016, SJP UMN posted on Facebook support for Muhammad Al-Qiq. Al-Qiq was detained by Israel for his involvement in Hamas terror activity.

On October 14, 2015, SJP UMN held a “die-in” in support of Palestinians who were conducting a wave of stabbing attacks on Israelis, known as the “Knife Intifada.”

During the die-in, SJP UMN activists lay on the ground, while SJP UMN activist Motaz Nashawaty, spoke accusing [00:00:05] Israel of an escalation in “state violence” and [00:00:32] of “extrajudicial murders.”

Nashawaty continued: [00:00:41] “We will pay respects to the Palestinian martyrs executed by Israeli forces” and recited [00:01:57] the names of Palestinian terrorists, such as Fadi Aloon and [00:02:03] Muhannad Halabi, who he described [00:02:07] as “young Palestinians whose lives were unjustly taken away from them by Israeli security forces.”

Aloon stabbed a 15-year-old Israeli boy after posting “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page, and Halabi murdered two Israelis and injured two others, including a 2-year-old, during a stabbing spree. Halabi posted on his Facebook page “[t]he third Intifada is here…Let the revolution erupt.”

Nashawaty continued [00:02:43] “our people are dying in streets now in Palestine, but they are not helpless - they are resisting.”

On October 14, 2015, SJP UMN posted to Facebook photos from a rally in support of Rasmea Odeh and wrote: “Thank you to our friends for keeping us updated with some pictures from Rasmea's appeal today.” Participants in the rally held signs that read:“I support RASMEA” and “Minnesota stands with Rasmea Odeh.”

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.

One of the photos of Odeh that SJP UMN shared on Facebook was captioned: “This is what you call a #Warrior.”

On October 12, 2015, SJP UMN shared on their Facebook page a video that claimed Ahmed Manasra (sometimes spelled Mansara), purportedly “bled to death” and suffered abuse by Israeli soldiers.

Mansara was wounded while he engaged in a stabbing spree in Jerusalem, critically wounding a 13-year-old Israeli boy and moderately wounding a 25-year-old man.

Manasra was successfully treated at the same Israeli hospital as his victims and later convicted of attempted murder.

SJP UMN wrote in their Facebook post: “We cannot ignore these constant, heinous crimes, acts of racism, hatred, and inhumanity Palestinians are subjected to by Israeli settlers.”

SJP UMN Spreading Incitement: 2015

On November 1, 2015, SJP UMN tweeted: “Israel is a colonial bully, trying to take Al Aqsa under the guise of ‘sharing.’”

The allegation that Jews will destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, has been applied to Jews as a pretext for attacks by Arabs, even before the existence of Israel.

Such propaganda was the excuse for an upsurge in Palestinian violence in the fall of 2015, with Palestinian leaders fueling violence by promoting the libel that Israel intends to desecrate the Al Aqsa Mosque.

Hamas called on Palestinians to “take up arms” to defend Al Aqsa and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas praised those willing to martyr themselves. He also declared Jews would not be allowed to “desecrate” Al Aqsa with their “filthy feet.”

In October 2015, SJP UMN posted a photo on Instagram of their section on the Washington Avenue Bridge. One of their panels featured a map that erased Israel, portraying the whole country with no internal borders and entirely covered by a keffiyeh.

SJP UMN Campaigning Against a Jewish Heritage Trip: 2015

In February 2015, SJP UMN launched a campaign against the Jewish heritage trip to Israel, Birthright. Campaign flyers said: “FREE TRIP TO ISRAEL BUT WHO PAYS THE PRICE?”

The campaign condemned Birthright for presenting “a depoliticized image of Israel” and programming a trip that is “overall tailored to be pleasant experience devoid of conflict.” The campaign claimed that the program “would not discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” and that “topics such as illegal settlements in the West Bank and restrictions on Gaza will not be covered.”.

SJP UMN encouraged Birthright participants to extend their trip and join tours with political groups such as Breaking the Silence (BTS) and The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), whose director Jeff Halper has called for the end of Israel.

Breaking the Silence was discredited by Israeli investigative TV show, HaMakor, in July 2016, in a report revealing that a substantial number of BTS testimonies are untrue or distorted.

SJP UMN Demonizing Israel: 2015-2016

In April 2016, SJP UMN built a “mock apartheid wall” for its “Divest Week 2016,” which the group called a “divestment special edition of our annual Israeli Apartheid Week,” promoting the 2016 UMN Divest BDS campaign.

IAW is a series of events on university campuses that promote Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and claim to “raise awareness of Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system.”

On April 22 2015, SJP UMN wrote on Facebook that “Israel’s ‘birthday’ is established on the occupation and exile of an entire people,” in a post which also denied SJP involvement in the vandalism of a pro-Israel group’s display celebrating Israeli independence.

The next day, Rula Rashid, SJP UMN treasurer, reportedly approached a table set up by a pro-Israel campus group to educate students about Israel’s independence and said “you stole our land.”

On April 9, 2015, SJP UMN tweeted: “‘If it's centered around Judaism, why are only white Jews allowed to live in Israel? It's not a case about religion and Judaism.’ @MnarMuh.”

On March 4, 2015, SJP UMN hosted an event with Dan Cohen, a journalist with the anti-Israel Mondoweiss, speaking about his experiences reporting from Gaza during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE). OPE was launched by Israel to stop Hamas rocket attacks and destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

During his talk, Cohen reportedly said the war was “not an attack on Hamas....it was an attack on Palestinian society.” He also claimed that “Israeli soldiers were allowed to take revenge” and that they intentionally shot civilians.

SJP UMN Opposing Normalization: 2015

On April 23, 2015, SJP UMN posted on Facebook a “definition of normalization.” The definition said that normalization was “gathering (either directly or indirectly) Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis, whether individuals or institutions; that does not explicitly aim to expose and resist the occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.”

The policy of “anti-normalization” aims to ensure that all interactions between Israelis and Palestinians align only their agenda, including ending the occupation and a full right of return for Palestinians, which is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. The policies are shared with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

SJP UMN Hosting Anti-Israel Propagandists: 2015

On October 15, 2015, during the “Knife Intifada,” SJP UMN hosted anti-Israel propagandist Sabry Wazwaz at a vigil for “the Palestinian lives lost in the recent attacks.” The “Knife Intifada,” was an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders.

Wazwaz has spread religious incitement, promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and called for intifada.

On April 20, 2015, SJP UMN co-sponsored an event featuring disgraced anti-Israel professor Steven Salaita on “how critique of American and Israeli colonization might be productively undertaken.” In 2014, Salaita had an offer employment retracted by the University of Illinois, after a series of anti-Semitic tweets he had posted were uncovered.

SJP UMN Promoting BDS: 2016

On February 15, 2016, SJP UMN launched a divestment campaign, calling for the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) and UMN to support divestment from companies that SJP UMN claimed “profit from human rights violations in Palestine/Israel.”

SJP UMN’s statement announcing the campaign said UMN’s investment in the companies targeted by the campaign showed “implicit support for…the killing of civilians, and violations of their basic human rights.”

UMN’s Chief Investment Officer reportedly told The Minnesota Republic, a student-run newspaper at UMN, that the university had “no direct exposure” to the four companies targeted by the campaign.

On March 8, 2016, the MSA voted [00:26:24] to strike down the divestment resolution from the MSA agenda.

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.