Viana Marie Lopez

Overview

Viana Marie Lopez [Viana Marie Lopez Roland] has spread hatred of Israel, promoted conspiracy theories and presented a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) resolution that marginalized Jewish students at De Anza College (De Anza).

Lopez is an advocate for the BDS movement and was the co-chair of De Anza Students For Justice (SFJ). SFJ was praised by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) West, a coalition of West Coast SJP chapters, for being the first community college student group to successfully pass a BDS resolution.

In March 2017, Lopez presented an SFJ divestment resolution to the De Anza Student Body (DASB) Senate.

She is a 2017 graduate of De Anza, where she reportedly majored in Political Science.

As of December 2018, Lopez’s Facebook indicated that she was a student at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), majoring in International Relations, Conservation and Resources.

As of July 2019, Lopez posted on Facebook that she left the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), where she majored in International Relations, Conservation and Resources.

As of the same date, UC Berkeley’s campus directory listed Lopez as an enrolled student.

Spreading Hatred of Israel

On March 21, 2017, Lopez was quoted De Anza’s student newspaper accusing Israel of “apartheid.”

On January 5, 2017, Lopez tweeted: “#BREAKING: House condemns U.N. over Israel settlement vote: The House voted overwhelmingly to rebuke the U.N.... f**k the house.”

On November 8, 2016, Lopez tweeted: “Because Israel is racist as f**k…”

On March 31, 2016, Lopez tweeted: “Doctor admits Israeli pathologists harvested organs without consent.” The tweet shared an article accusing Israel of harvesting organs from dead Palestinians in the 1990s.

On August 20, 2014, Lopez posted a video on YouTube, titled “I see Fire - Ed Sheeran Palestinian Genocide 2014.”

The description for the video used a quote falsely attributed to controversial Israel critic Noam Chomsky. The quote accused Israel of “raining death and destruction on Gaza” as the “final phase in a decades-long campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.”

On November 17, 2012 — during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense (OPD) — Lopez tweeted: “Apartheid in the worst degree #Gaza.”

On November 14, 2012, Lopez tweeted: “Palestine has no army no navy no airforce, there is no war. Modern weapons vs Sticks, Stones and Prayers #GENOCIDE #Israel #Gaza.”

OPD was launched to stop Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilians. From November 14 to November 21, 2012, Palestinian terrorist groups fired more than 1,506 rockets at Israel. The majority of those rockets struck Israel, damaging homes, schools and other civilian areas. Human Rights Watch noted: “Palestinian armed groups made clear in their statements that harming civilians was their aim.”

On October 22, 2012, Lopez tweeted: “F**K ISRAEL FREE PALESTINE.”

Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories

On February 8, 2017, Lopez was featured in a video leading a demonstration and speaking about the undue influence of the pro-Israel lobbying groups over the United States congress and political parties during the 2016 election cycle.

Lopez described [00:00:05] as “super PACS, wealthy individuals, donating $17,356,844.00 in the 2016 election cycle directly to our Congress members and our parties,” claiming [00:00:19] “Their influence is f**kin’ real.”

On February 2, 2016, Lopez tweeted: “The ISIS Islamic Terrorists are Supported by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia https://shar.es/1hNdou via @grtvnews.”

Pushing BDS at De Anza

On March 15, 2017, Lopez submitted and presented an SFJ divestment resolution to the DASB senate. The resolution quoted, almost verbatim, the “Palestinian Civil Society Call” for BDS.

Prior to the DASB senate vote, Lopez accused Israel of apartheid and human rights violations, then described divestment as a “neutral action that did not support either side in the conflict.”

The SFJ bill condemned companies for providing technologies for Israel’s defense such as scanning equipment used at checkpoints.

The resolution specifically smeared Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Motorola Solutions and G4S as companies that profit from “the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territories” and enable “human rights abuses and violence.”

The vote to endorse the resolution passed with 12 in favor, one against and four abstentions.

De Anza SFJ

De Anza Students For Justice (SFJ) is a student group at De Anza that claims to promote “awareness of and involvement in political and social issues.”

SFJ has a closed Facebook group for its 2016-2017 members with a cover image of the West Bank security wall featuring the text “To exist is to Resist.”

The group was praised by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) West, a coalition of West Coast SJP chapters, for being the first community college student group to pass a divestment bill.

SFJ promotes SJP events and shares SJP posts.

The group has also shared Facebook posts from the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization and held events in conjunction with JVP and the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at De Anza.

SFJ - Supporting Terrorists

On May 19, 2017, SFJ De Anza shared a Facebook post with an article supporting Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike in Israeli prison.

The hunger strike was initiated by Marwan Barghouti, who was serving five consecutive life sentences for his role in suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis that killed five people during the second intifada. Barghouti financed the guitar-case bomb used in the Sbarro Cafe massacre. Also among the hunger strikers was Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) Secretary General Ahmad Sa’adat.

More than 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners participated in the hunger strike — most of whom were also convicted for acts of terrorism.

On April 19, 2017, SFJ shared a Facebook post urging support for the hunger strikers.

SFJ - Demonizing Israel

On March 11, 2017, five days prior to the passage of SFJ’s divestment bill, SFJ promoted De Anza MSA’s “Palestine Wall.”

The wall was erected on the De Anza campus two days prior to the divestment vote to raise awareness of “the occupation of Palestine.” Passers-by were invited to paste pictures of “resistance” fists on the 10-feet tall, gray wall.

Anti-Semitism at De Anza

On February 21, 2017, anti-Semitic posters and stickers were found in three locations on the De Anza campus. A message on two of the posters claimed that the Holocaust never happened.

De Anza SFJ denounced the incident and claimed that it stood “in solidarity with Jewish Americans.”

The incident was investigated by campus police, who treated it as a hate crime. De Anza President Bill Murphy denounced the incident and convened a forum titled “De Anza Stands Against Anti-Semitism and Other Hatreds” to address the issue.

Following the passage of SFJ’s divestment resolution in March 2017, members of Hillel of Silicon Valley raised concerns that passing the resolution would increase anti-Semitism on campus.

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.