Iymen Chehade

Overview

Iymen Chehade [Hamman Iymen Chehade] is an adjunct professor of Humanities, History and Social Science at Columbia College Chicago (COLUM) and a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago (SAIC). Chehade is the faculty advisor to both Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) chapters at COLUM. He has also been a speaker at the National SJP Conference.

Chehade supports the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and uses his classroom as a platform to promote BDS. He also frequently uses his Facebook account to promote anti-Israel content and BDS campaigns.

Chehade has also promoted BDS "in front of congressmen and diplomats" on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Accusations of Bias

Since 2010, Chehade has taught a course about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at COLUM. A number of students have accused Chehade of teaching the course in a biased manner, reportedly causing COLUM’s administration to request a more “balanced” teaching style from Chehade.

According to Chehade, “The demand for ‘balance’ is simply a tool to muzzle.”

Chehade has also written on Facebook that "Asking for a ‘balanced’ discussion in the context of the Palestinians and their Zionist oppressors is absurd."

During a talk in the spring of 2014, Chehade stated: "to present this conflict as balanced would be absurd. It would be a lie. And so I don’t do that."

In the spring of 2014, one of Chehade’s two fall class sections at COLUM was cancelled. According to COLUM’s administration, the section was cancelled due to "scheduling and enrollment demands" but according to Chehade, the cancellation was due to a student’s complaint of bias. Chehade subsequently launched a successful campaign to have his class section reinstated. In November of 2015, one of Chehade’s spring class sections was once again cancelled.

Demonizing Israel

On August 2, 2016, Chehade disseminated an article on Facebook that twisted a decontextualized quote from the incoming Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Col. Eyal Karim, to claim that the rabbi called for raping non-Jewish women to improve troop "morale." Despite Rabbi Karim’s clear statement that Jewish Law “never permitted the rape of women” and that the Biblical verse about female captives was meant to prevent rape during war, Chehade persisted in his demonization of Karim and commented: “Share this article if you want the U.S to stop giving Israel $5 billion a year.”

Chehade has also frequently claimed that Israel practices “apartheid” and committed an “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.

Speaking at the National SJP Conference

On October 24-26, 2014, Chehade spoke at the 2014 National SJP Conference hosted by SJP at Tufts University.

The event hosted International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) founder Sara Kershner, who accused Israel of committing “genocide.”

One workshop reportedly trained participants to confront and intimidate pro-Israel students.

Clothing was sold at the conference, including a shirt with the image of airplane hijacker Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) with the text “resistance is not terrorism.”

Although the event was listed as “free and open to the public,” at least one student journalist was refused press credentials.

Conference attendee Ofek Ravid said that he was “booed and hissed at” — and told by “several members in the crowd to f**k off” — for suggesting that “Israel needs to be looked at as a complex nation through a dialectic lens, not as a black and white fragment.” Ravid was also asked to leave the building by an SJP representative.

Support for Student-Killer Rasmea Odeh and PFLP members

On April 28, 2015, Chehade tweeted “support these extraordinary Palestinian Women at Columbia...@Justice4Rasmea,” and linked to an event featuring convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

Odeh was a key military operative [00:02:08]with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated [00:10:53] Odeh as the mastermind.

In 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On November 10, 2014, a Michigan federal jury convicted Odeh for immigration fraud because she failed to disclose her prior conviction and life sentence on her immigration application. On March 12, 2015, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In 2017, after an appeal and a lengthy court battle, Odeh admitted to immigration fraud, was stripped of her U.S. citizenship, deported to Jordan and banned from re-entering the U.S.

Odeh was a key military operative with the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). In 1969, Odeh masterminded a PFLP bombing that killed two college students in a Jerusalem supermarket. Odeh also attempted to bomb the British consulate.

Odeh confessed, in a highly detailed account, the day following her arrest. In a 2004 documentary, one of Odeh’s co-conspirators directly implicated her as the mastermind.

On 1970, an Israeli court tried and convicted Odeh for her involvement in both bombings and sentenced her to life imprisonment. However, Odeh was released 10 years later, in a prisoner swap and emigrated to the United States.

On February 26, 2016, Odeh’s immigration fraud case was sent back to the district court, to examine whether trauma-related repressed memories contributed to Odeh’s failure to disclose her prior conviction.

On March 23, 2017, Odeh accepted a plea deal where she would be initially deported to Jordan and lose her U.S. citizenship in exchange for avoiding jail time.

On December 26, 2015, Chehade posted a petition on Facebook to protest the arrest of Mohammed Faisal Abu Sakha, who was arrested in December 2015 for his activity and membership in the PFLP.

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.

JVP

JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.

JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).

Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”

JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”

The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”

According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”

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.