Saliem Shehadeh

Overview

Saliem Shehadeh [Saleem Wakeem Shehadeh] has promoted a terrorist leader, targeted a Jewish group and engaged in anti-Israel activism.

Shehadeh was an organizer with the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) at San Francisco State University (SFSU). GUPS is an affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). In 2017, he graduated from SFSU with a master’s degree in Anthropology and his master’s thesis was on the “Social History” of GUPS.

At SFSU, he was a teaching assistant to anti-Israel professor Rabab Abdulhadi, the GUPS faculty advisor.

Shehadeh attended the 2018 National SJP Conference. He was also a member of SJP at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) in 2014 and served as “organizing chair” of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement activism run by SJP at UC Davis.

As of October 2022, Shehadeh worked as co-host and producer of the Middle East Minute + (MEM+), a radio program on KPFK in Los Angeles, airing Monday through Friday. MEM+ is co-produced by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) activist Estee Chandler.

As of July 2022, Shehadeh said he was a PhD student in Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He was an anthropology PhD student at UCLA as early as May 2018, and in July 2020 he reportedly taught anthropology at UCLA.

Prior to the 2015-2016 academic year, Shehadeh said he graduated from UC Davis with a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Middle East & South Asian Studies.

Promoting a Terrorist Leader

On September 24, 2020, Shehadeh was part of a “team of graduate and undergraduate students” who participated in an event featuring terrorist Leila Khaled. The full GUPS board and Abdulhadi attempted to live stream the event, which Zoom canceled out of concern that hosting a terrorist like Khaled on its platform might have been a felony.

Leila Khaled is a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and El Al Flight 219 in 1970. As of 2017, Khaled was a member of PFLP's Political Bureau. Khaled has said that the second intifada failed because it was not violent enough, advocated [00:36:07] for the use of children in terror activities and compared Zionists to Nazis.

The U.S. State Department has listed the PFLP as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) since 1997, given its history of attacks against civilians, airplane hijackings and suicide bombings.

Abdulhadi and SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program organized the Khaled event. GUPS promoted the event on social media, including distributing a petition to “support academic freedom on Palestine and against the vilification of Palestinian freedom fighter, Leila Khaled.”

On May 5, 2021, Shehadeh co-authored an article with Abdulhadi and others, titled: “We Will Not Be Silenced!: In solidarity with Palestinian sumoud [steadfastness] and intellectual integrity.” The article was published on the anti-Israel site Mondoweiss and it defended the “right to academic freedom” regarding the Khaled panel being canceled.

On June 4, 2021, Shehadeh spoke [00:04:44] in an Electronic Intifada podcast about the canceled Khaled event, saying: “A lot of these Zionist organizations started…smearing Leila Khaled.”

Targeting a Jewish Group

In February 2017, Shehadeh was reportedly an organizer of a Know Your Rights (KYR) campus group fair at SFSU, which intentionally excluded the Hillel chapter at SFSU (SF Hillel) from participating.

Hillel International is a Jewish campus organization serving college students at 850 universities worldwide.

According to an August 2017 JWeekly article, “Know Your Rights” was for “vulnerable populations who may be feeling targeted in the new political climate.” The article reported that SF Hillel was denied admission because the fair was “at capacity.”

On July 13, 2017, Shehadeh wrote an article on Mondoweiss reaffirming his decision to exclude Hillel from the student fair. He wrote: “GUPS and other Arab groups noted that they would pull out of the Fair if Hillel was given a table.” He also wrote: “Hillel not receiving a table at the event was a unanimous and consensus decision based on Hillel’s conduct and table capacity.”

Shehadeh claimed: “The organizers of the Fair understood that many students, faculty members, and organizations have been victimized by Hillel’s lies. To force us to sit side-by-side to our oppressors cannot be done in clear consciousness, violates principles of restorative justice, and would vastly endanger students and faculty members.”

Shehadeh also wrote: “Tabling space at the Fair was reserved for organizations whose intersectional social organizing aligned with its social-justice focus. The KYR Committee was clear in noting that Hillel’s conduct emboldens injustice and should not be given a platform in a Know Your Rights Fair for Arabs and Muslims, Latinx communities, undocumented peoples, and LGBTQ communities.”

On July 21, 2017, Shehadeh was quoted in a blog post on the Palestine Legal website as saying that SF Hillel was deliberately barred from the the fair because “Hillel collaborates with law enforcement targeting anti-colonial political organizing and black and brown bodies. This directly undermines the mission of the Fair.”

After five months of investigation, SFSU officials concluded: “The exclusion of San Francisco Hillel from the ‘Know Your Rights Fair’ was unacceptable and inconsistent with the values of open, wide-ranging debate and critical dialogue that ought to be core aspects of higher education.”

On December 4, 2017, Shehadeh spoke at a Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) conference on the topic of “Zionist Harrassment [sic] and Legal Warfare,” where he again defended the exclusion of Hillel from the KYR event.

Shehadeh labeled [00:12:56] Hillel as an organization “that harasses and bullies students,” and said that their behavior was “antithetical to the purpose of the event.”

At the FOSNA conference, Shehadeh also suggested [00:14:28] that Hillel and other Zionist organizations were “working and colluding with the university…so that Zionism on campus goes unchallenged and unprotested.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

Shehadeh then claimed [00:14:40]: “This is their ultimate goal and they will do whatever it takes to achieve that goal, which means harassing the professors who teach critical pedagogies, harassing the students that are doing the grassroots fight...They will work with universities, push the universities, pressure them and use investigatory processes of the university in order to…attempt to achieve that goal.”

Anti-Israel Activism

In 2017, Shehadeh graduated from SFSU with a master’s degree in Anthropology. His master’s thesis was titled: “Social History of the General Union of Palestine Students- San Francisco State University.” The thesis was described as “a compilation of the oral histories of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) at San Francisco State University with focus on the organization from 2000-2017.”

In May 2018, Shehadeh was listed as a speaker at the annual conference for Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition. The conference was titled: “70 Years of Dispossession + Apartheid, Mapping our return,” a reference to the “right of return.”

The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

2018 National SJP - Celebrating Violence

In May 2018, Shehadeh moderated an SJP UCLA panel featuring anti-Israel professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Robin D.G. Kelley. Robin Kelley is a leader within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and an advisory board member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).On November 18, 2018, Shehadeh posed for a photo taken during the 2018 National SJP Conference at UCLA wearing a conference name tag.

During the 2018 National SJP conference, anti-Israel activist Mohammed Nabulsi led the attendees in the chant [00:00:52] “Long Live the Intifada! Intifada! Intifada!”

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.

Promoting BDS at UC Davis

Shehadeh was the main author of a student senate divestment resolution at UC Davis in April 2014 and co-author of January 2015 and May 2015 divestment resolutions.

The January 2015 resolution passed. However, it was later overturned as unconstitutional by the university’s Court of Associated Students, on the grounds that it was “primarily a political document.”

GUPS SFSU - Overview

GUPS SFSU has promoted terrorists, participated in anti-Israel rallies, demonized Israel and Zionism, and campaigned for the BDS Movement as part of its anti-Israel activism.

GUPS SFSU was founded in 1973. Hatem Bazian was reportedly GUPS SFSU’s most prominent alumnus, as he co-founded the anti-Israel organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC-Berkeley in 2000. He also founded American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) in 2006. SJP was modeled on GUPS when it was founded.

GUPS SFSU - Supporting a Terrorist 2015-2016

On March 8, 2016, GUPS SFSU posted to Instagram a graphic that portrayed Leila Khaled as a “fierce woman resisting colonial powers and repression.”

GUPS SFSU - Demonizing Zionism 2017-2018

On February 23, 2018, GUPS SFSU wrote on the Medium platform that “Zionism is the violent ideology responsible for the genocide and displacement of indigenous Palestinians and the destruction of Palestinian land," as well as a “form of hate” that is not welcome “in the Bay Area, let alone SFSU.”

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.