Ashley Toenjes

Overview

Ashley Toenjes [Ashley Pelzer] was a graduate mentor of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at Ohio State University (OSU) from 2015 to 2017. She was also reportedly an organizer of a Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign on campus called OSU Divest.

She has published two theses and delivered presentations that demonized Israel and appeared to justify Palestinian terrorism. She has also defended disgraced anti-Israel former professor Steven Salaita.

As of March 19, 2019, Toenjes was a member of the University of Arizona’s Facebook group “Students for Justice in Palestine (UA Chapter),” since April 2014. She graduated from UA in 2011 with a masters degree in Near Eastern Studies. She also graduated from Illinois State University (ISU) in 2014 with a masters degree in Politics and Government.

As of March 2019, Toenjes was listed as a professor in the Department of Geography at OSU, which lists “Palestine-Israel” as one of her areas of expertise.

As of March 2019, Toenjes used the name “Ashley Pelzer” on Facebook.

SJP Activism

From 2015 to 2017, Toenjes served as a graduate mentor for SJP at OSU, which coordinated with OSU Divest to launch a BDS divestment campaign in late January 2015. In January 2018, Toenjes was a member of the Facebook group “Divest Organizing 2017-18” for OSU Divest organizers, since September 18, 2017.

On March 9, 2016, Toenjes urged [page 19] students at OSU’s Undergraduate Student Government General Assembly to vote for the “Resolution to Support the Withdrawal of OSU’s Investments in Corporations Complicit in Human Rights Violations.”

The resolution targeted three companies that it accused of enabling Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights.

On October 26, 2016, Toenjes gave a talk for OSU Divest, in which she argued [00:01:00] that divestment from Israel was a feminist issue. She also blamed [00:01:50] Israel for creating “a crisis of masculinity” among Palestinian men and alleged [00:04:58] that “Zionists… established the Israeli state on Palestinian land.”

She went on to argue that feminists should ideally view the Israel/Palestine issue through the lens of [00:07:45] “Israeli-settler colonization of Palestine.”

From 2015 to 2017, Toenjes indicated on Facebook that she “went” to multiple SJP events, including a workshop promoting BDS, an event to vote yes for the OSU Divest campaign and events that solicited feminists and Christians to support the campaign.

She was also an organizer for an April 6, 2016 SJP event, called “R2E: Right to Education,” which demanded “unimpeded access for all Palestinians to their academic institutions,” opposing “Israel’s illegal occupation and attacks on Palestinian educational rights.”

The Right to Education Tour brings Palestinian students to U.S. campuses to promote a claim that Israel arbitrarily obstructs the rights of Palestinians to higher education. The organization has demonized Israel for its security sweeps made to shut down terror cells operating from Palestinian campuses.

Demonizing Israel

In 2014 Toenjes wrote a thesis for her master’s in Politics and Government at Illinois State University, titled “This wall speaks: graffiti and the location of transnational space in Palestine.”

She compared Israel to Apartheid South Africa and described Israel’s security barrier as the “Apartheid Wall in Palestine” with “colonial functions.” She accused Israel of using security as a pretext for the barrier, claiming that “the wall is a strategy of Israeli spatial control over Palestinian space and Palestinian life, and less a barrier for the security of Israeli Jews.”

In 2011, Toenjes wrote a thesis titled “The Role and Status of Palestininan [sic] Women in the Struggle for National Liberation: Static or Dynamic?” for her master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona.

That thesis framed Palestinian terrorism as a justified means to fighting Israel’s “occupation” of “historic Palestine.” It further implied that only Palestinians, not Jews, are indigenous to the land, portraying the conflict from even before Israel’s founding as one where Jewish “settlers or colonizers attacked indigenous people, or vice versa.”

From 2011 to 2014, Toenjes gave various conference presentations and guest lectures on the subjects of her theses at Illinois State University and the University of Arizona.

Supporting Steven Salaita

On December 14, 2014, Toenjes posted her approval of anti-Israel Professor Steven Salaita, on Facebook, writing “... it was a special kind of satisfying to submit to U of IL at Urbana-Champaign in which I proposed to research comparative indigenous resistance movements in North America and Palestine. If accepted, I'll ask Steven Salaita to be an external member of my diss committee.”

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.

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.