Alborz Ghandehari
Overview
Alborz Ghandehari participated in a 2016 anti-Israel delegation and is affiliatedwith Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).He has also been affiliated with SJP West, a coalition of West Coast SJP chapters.
Ghandehari is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of March 2019, Ghandehari was a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)’s Facebook group, PYM-San Diego, since 2014.
Ghandehari was a representative of UAW2865, a labor union representing Academic Student Employees (ASEs), including teaching assistants, tutors and graders, at the ten teaching campuses of the University of California from2014 until June 2018. He served as Anti-Oppression Committee Coordinator. He also served as Recording Secretary for the local San Diego of UAW 2865.
As of March 3, 2019, Ghandehari was listed as an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) of Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah since Fall 2018.
Ghandehari is a graduate student at University of California San Diego (UCSD), where he completed a degree in Ethnic Studies in 2018. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a bachelor’s degree in drama.
As of March 3, 2019, Ghandehari used the name “Alborz Kooh” on Facebook.
Anti-Israel Delegation
Al-Najah (alternatively, An Najah) University is the largest Palestinian university in the West Bank and is notorious for its triumphal exhibit lauding the August 9, 2001 Sbarro cafe suicide bombing. The blast killed 15 civilians, including 7 children and a pregnant woman and wounded 130.
Al-Najah’s exhibit featured a mock-up of Sbarro’s, including gnawed pizza crusts and bloody plastic body parts suspended from the ceiling, as though blasting through the air.
The 2013 An Najah graduating class was named for terrorist Abu Jihad at an appreciation ceremony for the class’s outstanding students. Abu Jihad (Khalil Al-Wazir) planned the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre that killed 37 civilians, 12 of them children, and wounded 71 others.
The delegation was led by Rabab Abdulhadi, an associate professor of Ethnic Studies and Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU).
Abdulhadi has cultivated ties with Hamas-dominated universities, glorified terrorists, trivialized the kidnapping and murder of Israeli high-schoolers and endorsed hate speech.
On May 4, 2016, Ghandehari was featured on a panel, moderated by Abdulhadi: to discuss “the 3rd Report Back from the US Prisoner, Labor, and Academic Delegation to Palestine.
On October 7, 2016, Ghandehari signed an open letter to SFSU’s President titled: “Uphold the MOU with An-Najah University and Support Professor Abdulhadi!”
Abdulhadi reportedly organized and led a 2014 SFSU-funded "Academic and Labor Delegation to Palestine,” which Abdulhadi reportedly referred to as a “political solidarity tour.” Following the 2014 delegation’s visit, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was reached between An-Najah and SFSU.
Anti-Israel Activism
Ghandehari produced a documentary titled: “Steel Dove: Stories of Art and Occupation” which was described as “the culmination of an undergraduate research project exploring the work of Palestinian artists.”Ghandehari’s documentary was featured in an exhibitiontitled: “Mavi Marmara Memorial Exhibit” held in New York from May to June 2011.
The exhibit commemorated: “nine peace activists (Turkish citizens, including Furkan Dogan, also an American citizen) who were killed by Israeli soldiers when they sailed on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on May 31, 2010.”
The Mavi Marmara was the lead ship in the “Freedom Flotilla” that attempted to sail to Gaza in May 2010. Activists aboard the ship agitated for violent confrontation and chanted a slogan glorifying the killing of Jews. When Israeli security forces boarded the Marmara, protesters attacked them with iron bars, metal chairs, knives, stun grenades and firearms, rocks and bottles. A United Nations report found that the flotilla agitators initiated an organized, violent confrontation with Israeli forces, and that the Marmara was carrying no humanitarian aid, only weaponry.
On July 26, 2014, during Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Ghandehari attended an anti-Israel rally called: “Stop the Genocide in Gaza.”
The event’s Facebook description said: “The recent Israeli attacks on Gaza by air, sea and land have resulted in the deaths of over 750 Palestinians with over 5000 injured. Nevertheless, Israel continues with its criminal strategy of ethnic cleansing and the occupation of Palestine. Protest against this Genocide! Stop The Carnage Now!”
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
BDS Activism
After the BDS vote was proposed in July 2014, UC’s Office of the Provost circulated a cautionary letter to all Chancellors. The letter clarified the University’s position on ASEs advocating for BDS in class, stating: “the university should remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interest.”
In October 2014, Ghandehari reportedly commented before the vote that the union was “not singling out Israel.”
On November 12, 2014, at a “BDS Caucus event,” the UAW 2865 BDS Caucus brought BDS advocates, including Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) organizer Lara Kiswani, to UC Berkeley to promote the vote.
Kiswani declared: “BDS is about isolating Israel economically, politically and culturally.” She also claimed [00:00:20]: “bringing down Israel will really benefit everyone in the world, everyone in society, particularly the workers”.
In November of 2014, UAW International issued a letter reiterating its firm opposition to BDS and the California Teamsters Union, representing nearly 250,000 workers statewide, sharply criticized UAW 2865 Executive Board’s involvement with BDS.
The Teamsters said: “we cannot conceive of an action more hostile to the interests of our [Teamsters] members and more antithetical to the most basic principles of the union movement.”
UAW 2865’s BDS proposal, voted on December 4, 2014, stated: “UAW 2865 should call on the University of California (UC) and UAW International to divest their investments, including pension funds, from Israeli state institutions and international companies complicit in severe and ongoing human rights violations as part of the Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.”
The proposal also called upon the U.S. government to end military aid to Israel.
The divestment proposal passed. However, in December 2015, UAW International overturned the UAW 2865 boycott resolution.
On November 7, 2014, Ghandehari co-authored an article published in Mondoweiss, titled: “Unionizing solidarity with Palestine: Support grows for BDS among grassroots labor movement.”
The authors accused Israel of massacre and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They also praised the Block the Boat protests and UAW 2865’s proposal.
On January 8, 2015, Ghandehari signed a letter by SJP West, titled: “The University of California Community Calls on the University of California Student Association to Support Divestment.”
The letter called on UCSA (University of California Student Association) Board Members to divest from: “companies intricately involved in Israel’s ongoing system of military occupation” and companies who “willingly enable and profit from such atrocities.”
On July 8, 2015, Ghandehari was a presenter at a U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) panel webinar titled: “BDS@10 Webinar.”
On February 27, 2013, Ghandehari promoted an SJP UCSD-sponsored anti-Israel divestment campaign on Facebook. Ghandehari was reportedly involved in the SJP UCSD 2013 campaign.
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.
PYM
In 2012, the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM USA) released a statement saying: “Our liberation...will be gained with the path that was written with the blood of our martyrs. We reaffirm that the only path that we are concerned with is the path that explicitly heads towards the liberation of our land and the return of our people to Palestine.”
PYM organized rallies demonizing Israel where it displays propaganda posters supporting the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
On October 25, 2015, PYM called to support “intifada” during a period when Palestinian radicals across Israel stabbed and hacked to death scores of Israeli civilians. PYM alleged that “Al-Aqsa Mosque has been the target of particularly brutal assaults” and that “... arbitrary killings are committed daily by the Zionist military and settlers.”
On November 10, 2015, the PYM Facebook page displayed a photo of masked Palestinian radicals throwing rocks and firing rocks from slingshots. That photo was used to promote at least 25 anti-Israel rallies across the globe on or around November 29, 2015 under the banner of “Transnational mobilization for Palestinian resistance.”
On November 30, 2015, PYM displayed a photo on Facebook from one of the rallies showing a sign in support of PFLP member Khalida Jarrar, who confessed to inciting violence and calling for terrorists to abduct Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
Another sign showed support for PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sadat, who was convicted for the 2001 assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/4811778Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alborz101
