Sadia Saifuddin

Overview

Sadia Saifuddin co-sponsored an anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement resolution at the University of California Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 2013.
She was acting in her capacity as a student senator of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC).

Saifuddin was reportedly a member of UC Berkeley's Muslim Students Association (MSA) chapter.

As of August 2018, Saifuddin’s LinkedIn page said that she worked at Salesforce since May 2018. She received a bachelor’s degree in Social Welfare from UC Berkeley.

BDS Campus Activism

In 2013, Saifuddin co-sponsored SB-160, a BDS resolution calling on UC Berkeley to divest from “companies that have an active role in materially aiding Israel’s illegal occupation and the resulting human rights abuses.”

During a campus debate on SB-160, Saifuddin reportedly stated that she didn’t want “one cent of my money to go toward fueling the occupation of my brothers and sisters.”

The resolution passed on April 18, 2013, by an 11-9 vote.

On May 26, 2013, the ASUC Judicial Council ruled that SB-160’s clauses requiring the ASUC to divest from companies affiliated with the Israeli military were unconstitutional, since the ASUC had no constitutional power to craft specific investment policies.

Shortly thereafter, George Kadifa, who co-sponsored of the divestment bill with Saifuddin, reportedly thanked her and the other ASUC senators who supported the BDS resolution — and admitted none of the companies targeted for divestment were actually held by the ASUC.

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.

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.