Stephanie Navarro

Navarro was named in the “Current Students (2017-2018)” list in the Keck-Caltech MD-PhD program at the Keck School of Medicine at University of Southern California (USC). She graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in Human Biology in 2015.

In 2015, Navarro helped organize [00:11:00] a BDS divestment campaign with SOOP that was initiated [00:12:16] by Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).

SOOP was formed by Stanford SJP, reportedly as a coalition of 19 student groups, with the goal of pressuring Stanford to divest from companies that SOOP claimed: “profit from the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinian Territories.” 

That same year, Navarro was a co-chair of MEChA de Stanford and reportedly a member of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), both groups that participated in SOOP’s BDS campaign.

SOOP promotes the BDS movement and promoted an anti-Israel video that solicited donations for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC). The BNC’s membership includes the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine, as well as Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).

 
On July 2, 2015, Navarro gave a speech [00:11:00] at the Socialism 2015 conference, at a panel event, titled: “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Grassroots Movement Against Israeli Apartheid,” alongside anti-Israel activists Nashiha Alam, Sid Patel, Mohammad-Abou-Ghazala and Remi Kanazi. 

Before she began her own speech, Navarro complimented Patel’s address, which he ended by saying: [00:10:37] “who here doubts that the Israeli military has already drawn up the next list of the remaining homes, mosques and civilian infrastructure in Gaza to bomb for the next campaign.” 

In her speech, Navarro said [00:11:11] SOOP’s divestment campaign was “the D in BDS” and proceeded to outline the progress of the Stanford divestment campaign during the time she was involved in it as an organizer. 

Navarro also accused [00:15:08] pro-Israel students of leveling “false accusations” and “irrelevant claims” against SOOP and celebrated [00:21:27] the passage of the divestment resolution by the school’s student senate as a“new normal” to be duplicated on other campuses.

Navarro signed SOOP’s 2015 petition accompanying a SOOP divestment resolution, that called on the Stanford University Board of Trustees to divest from companies that it claimed were “complicit in the infrastructure of occupation, collective punishment, state-sponsored repression, and unjust incarceration in Palestine.”

On February 17, 2015, the Stanford Undergraduate Senate voted in favor of the SOOP divestment resolution. However, on April 14, 2015, the Stanford Board of Trustees announced that Stanford would take no action on the SOOP campaign, which was initiated by Stanford SJP, nor consider it further. 

The Stanford Board of Trustees stated that their evaluation of the campaign focused on “questions of divisiveness and negative impact.” The Board of Trustees concluded that divesting would be “likely to impair the capacity of the University to carry out its educational mission,” for example by causing divisions within the university community.

Stanford’s President, John Hennessy, said at a Faculty Senate meeting: “I have never seen a topic that has been more divisive…As a university, we must remain committed to civil and rational discussion, especially when the issues are highly controversial. An atmosphere of intimidation or vitriol endangers our ability to operate as an intellectual community.”

On February 9, 2015, Navarro appeared [00:02:51] in a SOOP Divest campaign video supporting divestment, as an activist with the ISO and on behalf [00:00:21] of MEChA de Stanford.

On January 30, 2015, Navarro participated [00:03:30] in a SOOP Divest video, titled: “The Wall,” alongside Ramah Awad and Malcolm Lizzappi. 

The video demonized Israel’s security barrier and portrayed [00:00:26] it as “de facto annexation…of Palestinian land.” Navarro helped to narrate the video, where she accused [00:03:32] Israel of “separating families just as the militarized U.S.-Mexico border does.” 

Israel’s security barrier, 97% of which is a low chain link barrier, was built as a deterrent to Palestinian terror attacks. The concrete portions of the fence were built in response to Palestinian sniper attacks. 

On October 26, 2014, Navarro signed a SOOP op-ed in The Stanford Daily student newspaper, titled: “Stanford must divest from the occupation of Palestine” that suggested Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE) was not self-defense. 

Israel commenced OPEin July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.

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

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