Sophie Pesquidous

Overview

Sophie Pesquidous [Sophie Marie Isabella Yvette Pesquidous] was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at The Evergree State College (TESC) and tabled for the group during its annual Israel Apartheid Week (IAW), in 2014. She was listed on Facebook as one of four SJP members that attended SJP TESC’s Budget Hearing in the Spring of 2014 — where SJP TESC appeared before TESC’s Student Activities board to request funds for its Spring Quarter activities. Pesquidous was also listed as attending SJP TESC’s Winter Quarter interest meeting on January 7, 2015.

Pesquidous is a 2016 graduate of TESC, with a bachelor’s in Ethnomusicology.

SJP TESC

SJP TESC was founded in November 2013 and was formerly known as the Mid-East Solidarity Project.

In February 2014, SJP TESC hosted TESC’s Israeli Apartheid Week. The week-long event featured false claims that Israel is an "apartheid state" and showcased the construction of a mock “Apartheid Wall" to mischaracterize Israel’s security fence.

SJP TESC - Spreading Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories

On August 18, 2014, SJP TESC posted on Facebook that Israel’s Iron Dome Missile Defense System was “ineffective” and actually a “sophisticated public relations stunt” designed to trick Israeli citizens into believing they were under rocket attack from the terrorist organization Hamas. SJP TESC wrote that “the thousands of rockets Israel says Hamas fires at them are fallacies conceived by the state of Israel.” Later that day, SJP TESC doubled down, posting an article on Facebook claiming that the Iron Dome is “a Hoax.”

SJP TESC - Propagating Blood Libels and Anti-Semitic Incitement

On June 16, 2016, SJP TESC shared an article on Facebook falsely accusing Israel of cutting off drinking water to Palestinians during the month of Ramadan.

On October 20, 2014, SJP TESC posted an article on Facebook claiming that an Israeli motorist intentionally ran over Inas Shawkat dar Khalil, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl walking on the highway between Jerusalem and Shechem (Highway 60).

The accident took place near the central West Bank town of Sinjil, located northeast of Ramallah. The driver turned himself in at the nearest Jewish settlement, Ofra and called the police to report the accident. The driver told police he did not stop after striking the girls because he feared for his life due to the crowd that had gathered at the scene of the accident. The police investigated and determined the event was a tragic accident.

The article also mischaracterized Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount as "Jewish settlers storm[ing]" the Al Aqsa mosque. This kind of incitement —propagating the libel that the Al Aqsa mosque is under attack — fueled a deadly upsurge in violence by Palestinian Arabs in the fall of 2015.

SJP TESC - Supporting Financers of the Terror Organization Hamas

On February 26, 2014, SJP TESC co-hosted an event called “Letter Writing Day to Pro-Palestinian Political Prisoners.” SJP TESC encouraged participants to write letters of support to former officers of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) — who were found guilty of funneling $12 million dollars to Hamas. HLF’s founders received sentences ranging between 15 and 65 years in federal prison in the United States.

SJP TESC - Lying to Demonize Israel

On May 15, 2016, SJP TESC shared on Facebook a fraud-laden video by AJ+, that propagated serial lies about Israel and the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The bogus claims were quickly refuted by The Israel Project, in a video highlighting AJ+’s inaccuracies and deceptions.

On September 8, 2014, SJP TESC posted on Facebook that Israel has no right to self-defense — based on a fraudulent misrepresentation of international law.

On July 27, 2014, SJP TESC posted an article on Facebook that perpetrated a series of lies. The article claimed that Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in 2014 was initiated in retaliation for Hamas’ kidnap-murder of three Israeli high-schoolers Eyal Yifrach, Gil-ad Shaar and Naftali Fraenkel. The article then fraudulently claimed that Israel fabricated the kidnapping charge against Hamas, to justify the 2014 Gaza war. 

Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.  

On August 4, 2014, SJP TESC doubled down, posting an article on Facebook called "Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza — Debunked." The article repeated the insinuation that Israel falsely accused Hamas of kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers — and denied that the dramatic increase of Hamas’ rocket attacks from Gaza prompted OPE. The article also denied that Hamas used Palestinian civilians as human shields — in direct contradiction to Hamas’ open admission to the practice several weeks earlier (0:42).

On December 20, 2013, SJP TESC shared a Facebook post mischaracterizing as “ethnic cleansing” a proposed Israeli government plan (the Begin-Prawer Plan) to officially recognize and register the vast majority of Bedouin settlements throughout southern Israel and relocate and compensate the residents of 35 unrecognized villages. SJP TESC also set up on-campus events to protest the Prawer Plan and called on its Facebook followers to attend a “Day of Rage” protest against the plan.

SJP TESC - Honoring Human Shields

On March 17, 2014, SJP TESC honored the memory of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) member Rachel Corrie on Facebook. The ISM, founded in 2001, is a movement ostensibly “committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles.” However, the group has been accused of supporting terrorism and it encourages its foreign volunteers to act “as human shields in cities, towns and refugee camps.”

ISM has encouraged activists to break curfew and disregard Israeli directives prohibiting access to closed military zones. That policy resulted in the death of Rachel Corrie, who was accidentally killed while interfering with an Israeli military operation in 2003. A wrongful death suit brought by Corrie’s family was dismissed, because the judge ruled that Corrie unreasonably chose to put her own life in danger. SJP TESC wrote in the Facebook post that Corrie, a former TESC student, was “murdered” by the Israeli Defense Forces.

SJP TESC - Spreading Hate and Disinformation

In May of 2014, 2015 and 2016, respectively, SJP TESC held campus events commemorating "al-Nakba day" and propagating the historically and currently false claim that Israelis are committing an “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”

SJP TESC - Demonizing Israel via Racial Stereotyping

On August 16, 2014, SJP TESC misleadingly tarred Israel on Facebook with incidents of racial tension and violence in the United States, posting that law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri "[s]tudied ‘Counter-Terrorism’ in Israel" with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

On August 22, 2014, SJP TESC posted on Facebook that “there was another direct connection between events in Missouri and the West Bank” — the same American company produced the tear gas used by authorities on rioters.

SJP TESC - Embracing Hate Speech and Mocking

On December 9, 2013, SJP TESC posted a video called “Sh*t Zionists Say,” that mocked and ridiculed pro-Israel supporters for feeling attacked and unsafe (0:16).

On February 19, 2014, and again, on April 2, 2015 SJP TESC shared a video called “This Divestment Bill Hurts My Feelings” featuring anti-Israel poet Remi Kanazi. Kanazi is notorious for his aggressively anti-Israel poetry and spoken-word performances. On April 2, 2015 SJP TESC hosted Kanazi on campus and again shared Kanazi’s “Divestment Bill Hurts My Feelings” video on Facebook.

On May 21, 2014, during a student’s speech against a divestment resolution targeting Israel, SJP TESC wrote on Facebook "’hurt feelings’ all I hear is blah blah blah.”

SJP TESC - Lying about Professor Steven Salaita’s Anti-Semitic Hate Speech

On April 4, 2015, SJP TESC on Facebook encouraged students to attend an event featuring Steven Salaita, now the appointed Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB).

In 2014, The University of Illinois withdrew an offer of employment to Salaita after becoming aware of his anti-Semitic tweets. One tweet, posted shortly after Hamas kidnapped three teenage Israeli high school students, read: "You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f**king West Bank settlers would go missing.” In 2017, Salaita posted to Facebook: “People ask if I would go back in time and change anything. I would not…I will die unapologetic.” In February 2019, Salaita stated that he had become a school bus driver in the Washington, D.C., area.

SJP TESC’s announcement of the Salaita event deceptively characterized Salaita’s Twitter posts as merely "critical of Israel's attack on Gaza that summer." The announcement went on to fraudulently mischaracterize U of I’s withdrawal of its offer as an “unprecedented move on the part of the university ... to silence faculty and students ... for speaking in support of Palestinian human rights.”

SJP TESC - Standing With Student-Killer Rasmea Odeh

On November 20, 2014, SJP TESC wrote on Facebook that it was “[s]tanding in solidarity” with unrepentant terrorist-murderer Rasmea Odeh. {"snippet" : "Rasmea Odeh"}

Supporting BDS at the Expense of Palestinian Jobs

On November 30, 2013, SJP TESC called on Facebook for a Boycott of the Israeli company Sodastream.

500 Palestinians eventually lost their jobs when Sodastream moved its factory from Judea and Samaria to southern Israel. Although the company denied that BDS had an impact on the decision, the BDS movement took credit for the factory’s closure and the large job losses for Palestinians.

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.

Social Media and Weblinks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sophie.skydoodle

https://www.facebook.com/sophie.pesquidous [Deactivated]

Twitter:https://twitter.com/sophielectronic [Deleted]

Myspace:https://myspace.com/sophielectronic/

LinkedIn: https://es.linkedin.com/in/sophiepesquidous