Spencer Davis
Overview
On February 11, 2016, Spencer Davis changed his Facebook profile picture to show support for the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and to indicate his solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine at Vassar (SJP Vassar) and Jewish Voices for Peace at Vassar (JVP Vassar).SJP Vassar Spreading Hate and Incitement
SJP Vassar was created in September 2013 and describes itself as striving “for the full decolonization of Palestinian lands” — a call to eradicate the state of IsraelSJP Vassar frequently partners with members of JVP Vassar to host anti-Israel speakers and events.
The month after its creation, SJP Vassar disseminated Palestinian Press propaganda that Israel “threatened” to destroy the Al-Aqsa Mosque. That “threat” has been a traditional pretext for Arab attacks on Jews well before the existence of Israel. Similar propaganda was the excuse for an upsurge in violence by Palestinian Arabs that flared in the fall of 2015. Hamas called on Palestinians to violently “rise up and defend Al-Aqsa.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also praised those willing to “martyr” themselves for Al-Aqsa and declared that Jews would not be allowed to “desecrate” Al Aqsa with their “filthy feet.”
In January 18, 2016, SJP Vassar posted an “urgent call” that its followers “to fight for” their “comrade” Ezra Nawi. In 2015 Nawi was filmed bragging about his entrapping and handing over Palestinians who sold their property to Jews — to be tortured and executed.
SJP Vassar Standing with Terror
In February 2016, SJP Vassar announced that they would be selling “sweet fucking antiZionist gear” at their future events, such as a T-shirt featuring Leila Khaled, a leading member of the Popular front for the Liberation of Palestinian (PFLP) and a convicted airline hijacker. In a 2014 interview, Khaled opined that the Palestinian Intifada of 2000 failed because it was not violent enough.PFLP is recognized as a terrorist organization by theEuropean Union as well as the United States and Canada. Khaled participated in the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 in 1969 and El Al Flight 219 in 1970.
As of 2015, Khaled sits on the PFLP Central Committee. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, the 2011 butchering of the Fogel Family (including a three month old infant, a four year old and an eleven year old) and the 2014 Har Nof Massacre - where Jews were slaughtered at prayer
SJP Vassar also advertised the sale of “Existence is Resistance” T-shirts, which include various designs featuring the words “Straight Outta Fuck Israel” a picture of a masked gunman, as well as the Leila Khaled T-shirt.
On October 6, 2015, following a month of spiraling violence against Israeli civilians, SJP Vassar misrepresented Palestinian terrorist Fadi Aloon as an innocent civilian who was shot while “run[ning] from a racist mob.” In reality, Aloon was shot by Israeli security forces after he tried to stab to death a 15-year old Israeli civilian. Several hours before the stabbing, Aloon posted “Either martyrdom or victory” on his Facebook page.
On November 18, 2015, SJP Vassar promised a continuation of violence, posting that “Violence ends only when occupation ends.”
SJP Vassar Harassing and Intimidating
In late February 2014, SJP Vassar staged a rage-filled protest, with racial overtones, against a proposed class trip to Israel — just outside the classroom of the professor leading the trip. The belligerent behavior of the SJP Vassar members left the professor and her students feeling harassed and intimidated.On March 3rd, Vassar held an open forum to discuss the “ethics” of the class trip to Israel. SJP Vassar members turned out to picket the event. Reports from attendees were that “Jewish kids who spoke were heckled” and drowned out with a finger snapping noise and loudly laughed at” and that “rage against Israel was the theme.”
The event was attended by Mondoweiss editor and usually extreme Israel-critic, Philip Weiss. Even he was shaken by the incident, describing on his blog how he felt it was “too raw,” “truly unsettling,” and that there was “a racial element to the division.”
In February 2014, SJP Vassar shared a video called “This Divestment Hurts my Feelings.”
On March 4, 2014, SJP Vassar mocked pro-Israel students that felt “attacked” and “vulnerable” after receiving fake eviction notices in their student door rooms.
In April 2014, the group posted a cartoon ridiculing pro-Israel college students for feeling attacked and unsafe.
In May 2014, SJP Vassar was forced to issue an apology for posting a Nazi-style, anti-Semitic cartoon on its Tumblr account. Vassar’s President, Catharine Hill, announced a review of SJP Vassar’s status as a student group, and said that Vassar would probe use of the image “as a bias incident under college regulations.”
On June 20, 2015, JVP Vassar shared an article called “Zionist Students Don’t Need Safe Spaces” with its Facebook followers.
SJP Vassar Honoring Human Shields
In November 2014, SJP Vassar co-sponsored a play with JVP Vassar honoring the memory of International Solidarity Movement (ISM) activist Rachel Corrie. The ISM, founded in 2001, is a movement is 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 concerning 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 Vassar called Corrie “a hero” and a “martyr.”
Promoting BDS at Vassar
On February 1, 2016 JVP Vassar and SJP Vassar partnered to form the Vassar Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (VBDS) Coalition, aiming to pass a resolution that would be considered by the Vassar Student Association (VSA) on March 6, 2016.The resolution demanded that Vassar “boycott and divest from the main colonizing force in Israel/Palestine, Zionism," and listed eleven companies “complicit in the occupation” (at 38:15). The resolution also aimed to prohibit using student funds to purchase Ben & Jerry’s ice cream — because it is sold in “settlements” — as well as in supermarkets where “settlers” and Palestinian Arabs regularly work and shop together, despite the tense situation. VBDS organized over a month and a half of anti-Israel events, culminating in Israeli Apartheid Week, to advocate for the divestment resolution’s passage.
VBDS Promoting Hate-Speech
On February 3, 2016, VBDS’ promoted an event sponsored by Vassar's American Studies Program and co-sponsored by seven other academic departments and programs that featured Rutgers Associate Professor — and hate speech purveyor — Jasbir Puar, speaking on “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters.” Puar began her speech by calling for an armed struggle against Israel.She then went on to thoroughly demonize Israel. Puar suggested that Israelis harvest the organs of dead Palestinians and claimed that Israel is maiming and “stunting” Palestinians by food restrictions — despite Gaza having one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Puar concluded that the reason Israeli Jews have not killed Palestinians is “[t]hey need the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”
Demonizing Israel
In March 2015, JVP Vassar and SJP Vassar co-sponsored an event featuring Dr. Sa'ed Atshan, speaking on “resistance in Palestine.” Atshan — a leading proponent of the BDS movement — wants the Jewish state to be dissolved in favor of another democratic state, but stripped of its Jewish majority.In 2012, Atshan wrote an article accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “colonization” — and roundly condemning Native American poet Joy Harjo for rejecting Palestinian calls to boycott Israel. Harjo posted on her Facebook page from Tel Aviv, saying: “Now my social media pages and message boxes are filled with a campaign to force a boycott, with messages of polarization, as if there is one way to poetry, resistance or empowerment.” Harjo went on to mention “an atmosphere of censure now in the ultimatum that I am being given to boycott.”
In February 2014, SJP Vassar brought Israeli Apartheid Week to Vassar’s campus. SJP Vassar erected a mock separation barrier, which the group called the “Wall of Apartheid,” and misrepresented Israel’s security fence as being “made of cement ... 26-feet high, and 275 miles long.” In fact, 97% of Israel’s security fence is a low chain link barrier. The atypical concrete portions of the security fence were built only in response to Palestinian sniper attacks.
On March 27, 2014 SJP Vassar doubled down, likening Israel’s security fence to the Berlin Wall. In May 2014, the Vassar Conservative-Libertarian Union erected a “Wall of Truth” to counter SJP Vassar’s disinformation; this wall was immediately defaced with profanities and defamatory allegations against Israel.
In November 2014 JVP Vassar hosted an event featuring two Israelis, Danielle Yaor and Ivan Karakashian, who refused mandatory service in the Israeli army.
Yaor participates in weekly protests against Israel’s security fence. Karakashian leads the advocacy and communications for Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI). DCI reportedly described deadly terrorists as “innocent children” in 2015. DCI also characterized Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014— initiated to stop Hamas’ relentless bombing of Israeli civilians — as a “War Waged On Gaza’s Children” In 2002, DCI spread malicious disinformation about an Israeli “massacre” when reporting on the Battle for Jenin.
JVP Vassar and SJP Vassar Claiming Zionism is Racism
In December 2015, JVP Vassar and SJP Vassar tried to stop J-Street U, a left-wing Jewish group at Vassar, from receiving student funding to attend the HaaretzQ conference — which focused on peace and democracy in Israel and Palestine. JVP and SJP members asserted the discredited notion that “Zionism is an inherently racist ideology” and argued that since “multiple speakers at the conference identify as Zionists,” supporting J-Street U’s attendance of the conference would “contradict the VSA's [Vassar Student Association] anti-racist stance.” The VSA ultimately approved J-StreetU’s funding for the conference.On November 19, 2015, JVP Vassar promoted an initiative called “Renounce Birthright,” calling on Jews aged 18-26 to renounce a free trip to Israel provided by Birthright. The Renounce Birthright initiative states “We are young Jews living in the diaspora committed to mobilizing for the abolition of Birthright.” According to the site, anybody that visits Israel on Birthright is “willfully taking advantage of [his or her] racial privilege” and “complicit in sustaining the occupation.”
On November 17, 2015 JVP Vassar shared an article called “The way for Americans to take on the Islamic state is to end support for Jewish nationalism” with its Facebook followers, commenting “We are Jewish, we stand against the oppressive Israeli state, and we will not be ignored.”
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.
JVP
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish value.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
- Status:
- Student
- University:
- Vassar
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- JVP,
- more...
- Related Profiles:
- Daniel Sachadonig,
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
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