Victoria Velasco
Victoria Velasco has expressed support for terrorists and engaged in anti-Israel activism.
In 2015, Victoria Velasco was an organizer with Students for a Free Palestine (SFP), an affiliate of the anti-Israel campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Oberlin College and Conservatory (Oberlin).
SFP supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Victoria Velasco graduated from Oberlin with a bachelor's degree in May 2015.
Oberlin is located in Oberlin, Ohio.
On November 16, 2014, Velasco was featured in a Facebook photo speaking at an SFP event in support of Rasmea Odeh. Velasco addressed the crowd while standing in front of a sign that said: "Free Rasmea Odeh and All Political Prisoners."
Rasmea Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08] with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization. In 1969, she masterminded a PFLP supermarket bombing that killed two college students. She also attempted to bomb the British consulate in Jerusalem. Odeh later moved to the United States but was deported to Jordan in 2017 for immigration fraud.
On March 9, 2015, Velasco helped organize an SFP event in support of Lina Khattab.
Khattab was detained on December 13, 2014, and sentenced to six months jail time on February 16, 2015 for throwing rocks, while celebrating the 47th anniversary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)’s founding.
Although romanticized as a form of “popular resistance,” rock throwing remains a deadly form of violence.
Velasco said in an interview about the event: "...general news regarding Palestinian resistance is systemically silenced in U.S. mainstream media..."
Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.
On April 26, 2015, Velasco organized an anti-Israel event titled: "Remembering Al-Nakba: A Talk by Abbas Hamideh."
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by drawing a comparison to the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, meaning “catastrophe.”
On February 10, 2015, Velasco participated in an SFP event featuring Steven Salaita.
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.
On October 24, 2014, Velasco participated in the National SJP conference at Tufts University (Tufts).
On December 18, 2014, SFP posted on Facebook a photo of Velasco giving a presentation to an audience. The post was captioned: "Palestine 201 presentation."
SJP is the leading 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, who has spread anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group.
SJP organizes anti-Israel campus campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks and pushing the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, and SJP chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for terrorists.
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.
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 infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. 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 and pro-terror activism on campus.

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