Sophia Hansen-Day

Overview

Sophia Hansen-Day is a member and organizer of the Anti-War Committee (AWC), an organization that "works against direct US intervention around the world" and whose mission statement announces “ending US aid to Israel is at the top of our agenda.”

Hansen-Day is active within the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Hansen-Day is a 2015 graduate of Macalester College, where she majored in American Studies and minored in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She is currently an organizing intern of the Take Action Justice 4 All Campaign which aims to develop leaders from the Minnesota community to achieve criminal justice reform.

Arrests

On November 3 2015, Hansen-Day was arrested and charged with 2 misdemeanors: disorderly conduct and trespassing at the University of Minnesota Law School. She was incarcerated along with two other protesters, Jordan Scott Kushner and Melissa Rowan, and released the next day.

Hansen-Day was protesting a talk on ethics and the law of war to be given by Israeli law professor, Moshe Halbertal. Kushner accompanied several protesters who prevented Halbertal from speaking for 30 minutes — by constantly interrupting his attempts to begin. One young woman - possibly Hansen-Day - came screaming back into the lecture following her ejection by campus security. Outside the lecture hall, other protesters — members of the AWC, Students for a Democratic Society and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — chanted "Free, free Palestine," so loudly that it was difficult to hear Halbertal.

The next morning, David Wippman, Dean of UMN Law, sharply criticized the nature of the protest: "As members of a university community...we should condemn any efforts to silence free speech through protests of the sort that took place at the law school yesterday," he said. He added that it was "unacceptable" for protesters to deny others the right to hear a guest lecture.

Wippman’s statement was followed up by Minnesota University President Eric W. Kaler and Provost Karen Hanson, who released this joint statement: "We all have a responsibility to ensure an open and non-threatening environment for education, research and dialogue — for all our students, faculty and staff, and for the general public."

On November 18, 2015, Rowan and Hansen-Day appeared in Hennepin County District Court, where both face trespassing charges for interrupting the November 3rd event. Their pretrial dates are set for early 2016.

In July 2014, Hansen-Day was one of 15 individuals arrested for civil disobedience at Senator Al Franken’s campaign headquarters, where she led a group of protesters demanding that Franken change his pro-Israel stance.

Supporter of Terrorism and Convicted Terrorist Rasmea Odeh

In 2015, Hansen-Day justified a wave of terror attacks against Israeli civilians as "popular resistance against Israeli apartheid, military occupation and settler colonialism."

Hansen-Day supports and raises funds for the convicted terrorist-murderer Rasmea Odeh.

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.

Advancing BDS

On April 19, 2015 Hansen-Day gave a speech delegitimizing Israel’s existence — lauding the infamously anti-Israel 2001 Durban Conference — and implicitly calling for its destruction, by initiating a chant of the anti-Israel mantra: "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!" Hansen-Day made this speech in a BDS-Forum that she organized and led — called #BoycottCoke, in order to encourage and plan a boycott of Coca-Cola.

In September 2014, Hansen-Day taught a workshop at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation's National Conference on the Mainstreaming of BDS. Her workshop was called "Advocacy and Action with Youth."

In March 2014, Hansen-Day wrote an op-ed in the Mac Weekly, a student-run publication at Macalester College, entitled ‘Why is Macalester Silent about Israeli Apartheid?" The piece was written in reaction to the American Student Association (ASA)’s decision to boycott Israeli academics. Hansen-Day expressed disappointment in the President of Macalester’s statement about the decision, that "academic boycotts subvert the academic freedoms and values necessary to the free flow of ideas." Hansen-Day described the President’s statement as “shameful.”

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.

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/sophia.hansenday [Deleted]

Twitter:https://twitter.com/shansenday

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/pub/sophia-hansen-day/42/65/a49