Sharifah Abdallah

Overview

Sharifah Abdallah was an activist within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement at Loyola University Chicago (Loyola), where she was the 2014 treasurer of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the 2015 president of the Muslim Students Association (MSA).

She has also expressed support for terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

In March 2014, Abdallah was reportedly a junior at Loyola, majoring in Biology and a Unified Student Government Association (USGA) senator. She graduated from Loyola in 2015.

BDS Campus Activism

In March 2014, Abdullah presented a divestment initiative written by SJP at Loyola —  titled “Loyola Divest” —  that called “for the university to withdraw investments from corporations in compliance with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, if the university has invested in any such companies.”

On March 18, 2014, Abdullah posted on Facebook that she had orally presented the SJP divestment resolution to the student senate.

The resolution passed with 26 votes in favor, zero against and two abstentions, and passed again, several days later, with 12 in favor, 10 against and nine abstentions.

Nine of the student senators who voted for the resolution were reportedly SJP members. The resolution vote was ultimately vetoed by the president of the USGA. 

In March 2015, Abdallah wrote a letter in her capacity as MSA president, endorsing another Loyola Divest resolution and the Loyola Divest Coalition. In her letter, Abdallah claimed to take no political stance and stressed an Islamic religious obligation to stand up for social justice, which she linked to supporting the BDS resolution.

The resolution passed on March 24, 2015, after an initial tie vote. In response, Loyola University President Michael J. Garanzini wrote an open letter to the student body in decrying the divestment campaign as divisive, harmful and ineffective.

He concluded that Loyola “is not interested in taking up the matter of divestment in this instance” and noted that it was the first time in his 14 years in office that he wrote “an open letter to the entire community except to wish all the best for an upcoming holiday.”

On March 2, 2016, Abdallah promoted on Facebook the 2016 Loyola Divest campaign.  

Support for a Terrorist

On February 25 and 26, 2015, Abdallah promoted on Facebook a campus event to support "the beloved community member" Rasmea Odeh. The event was co-sponsored by SJP Loyola.

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.


Loyola SJP Harassing Jewish Students

In November 2015, Loyola SJP was sanctioned with probation and “dialogue training” after the group surrounded and disrupted a Hillel student group tabling for Birthright heritage trips to Israel. Hillel was processing applications for the trip at their table. 

Loyola SJP members formed a human wall in a reported attempt to block Hillel’s tabling to advertise the trip and reportedly accosted Hillel students with “a variety of insults,” asking: "How does it feel to be an occupier?" and "How does it feel to be guilty of ethnic cleansing?" 

Loyola SJP was later “found responsible” for not adhering to the university's free expression and demonstration policy, was put on probation for the rest of the academic year and was directed to attend “intergroup dialogue training.” 

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.



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.


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.  


Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/506763660