Shafeka Hashash

Overview

Shafeka Hashash was the co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), New York University (NYU). In that capacity, Hashash endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In a May 2014 speech, appealing to the Palestinian community to be more welcoming to individuals with disabilities and women, Hashash (who is blind, herself) exhorted her audience to stop discriminating against the disabled, because —as she put it: “The one thing that does not discriminate against man, or woman, or disability, is the [Israeli] Occupation.”

Hashash leveraged animosity toward Israel extensively throughout her talk, urging: “As much as our community needs to change some aspects, a large reason we have to do this is to become a stronger community against Zionism.”

Hashash listed as one of her stellar achievements as SJP co-president, the slipping of “fake eviction notices — saying we were going to destroy students’ rooms” under 2000 doors. She stated her pleasure that this “made Zionists very upset,” that the school was in “uproar” and that she “even had the Vice-President of the University call her” on her cell phone.

The salient points of the incident in which Hashash took such pride are further described below.

She was profiled by Washington Square News as one of the most influential NYU students in 2013.

As of July 2018, Hashash’s LinkedIn page said she was a women's advocate at New American Pathways since May 2017. Her LinkedIn also said that she graduated NYU in 2015 with a dual bachelor’s degree in Political Science, Middle East Studies, and Islamic Studies. In 2016, she graduated from NYU with a master’s degree in Political Economy.

On September 1, 2018, Hashash’s Facebook said she started a new job at New American Pathways as a Senior Program Coordinator in Atlanta, Georgia.

SJP NYU

In the early hours of April 24 2014, SJP members slipped fake eviction notices under the doors of over 2000 students living in two student residence halls at NYU. The notices ordered the students to leave their dorm rooms, declaring that their suites were "scheduled for demolition within three days."

NYU spokesman John Beckman released a statement saying that the tactic crossed the line, because the manner in which the flyers were distributed was not consistent with the university’s tradition of professional discourse. Instead, according to NYU, the flyers were meant to "simply provoke":

"A flyer titled ‘eviction notice’ anonymously slipped under doors at night is not an invitation to thoughtful, open discussion...It is disappointingly inconsistent with standards we expect to prevail in a scholarly community," Beckman said.

Hashash defended the stunt, opinin g that the fliers "are very, very obviously fake- looking," despite not actually seeing them herself.

One year later, SJP doubled-down and celebrated the anniversary of the eviction notice incident on its Facebook page, proclaiming "We continue to be proud of this action."

In May 2014, Hashash and SJP members staged a "die-in" protest on the NYU campus with the stated goal of “calling attention to Israel’s ongoing project of ethnic cleaning in the occupied Palestinian territories.” The group called for the destruction for the State of Israel, chanting “tear it down, occupation, tear it down, Zionist state!”

In April 2015, SJP hosted an event called "Israeli Racism and Apartheid: An Insider’s View." The talk featured Haneen Zoabi —a member of Israel’s parliament — who has been investigated for inciting violence on a number of occasions.

Haneen Zoabi, a former member of the Israeli Knesset, has a long history of inciting violence. In 2014, she was suspended from the legislature after defending the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers by the terror group Hamas, and who were later found executed in a field. In 2015, a criminal investigation was opened against Zoabi after she reportedly condoned anti-Israel violence and called for a new intifada.

Pushing BDS at NYU

Hashash collected signatures to call on the pension fund TIAA-CREF, NYU’s retirement fund, to divest from corporations that profit from Israeli operations.

In an April 15, 2015 letter Hashash co-authored in the NYU student newspaper, she also endorsed NYU Out of Occupied Palestine (NOOP), a campus coalition of students, student organizations and faculty that urges the university "to divest from companies that fail to meet their ethical standards. This includes divesting from corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine and fossil fuels." NOOP’s messaging connects efforts to stop the global harm caused by fossil fuel extraction to SJP’s attack on Zionism through the boycott of Israeli universities, Israeli scholars and companies.

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.