Snehal Shingavi
Overview
Snehal Shingavi is a co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Shingavi has silenced pro-Israel students at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and has demonized Israel as a speaker at numerous rallies.He has reportedly been arrested five times for various campus and political protests.
Shingavi is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and has endorsed the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI).
As of July 2018, Shingavi’s LinkedIn page said he has been an Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas, Austin (UT Austin) since September 2009. He was an instructor in Postcolonial Studies at the University of Mary Washington (UMV) from 2008-2009 and a graduate student instructor in English from 1999-2008 at UC Berkeley, where he received his PhD in English.
Silencing Pro-Israel Students
Shingavi’s course description read: “The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance.”
The description continued: “This class takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination. Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections."
University of California Chancellor Robert Berdahl condemned the course description, saying: “It is not appropriate for an academic class to discourage or exclude anyone from attending on political grounds… that is very objectionable. The discourse cannot be constrained by the political perspective of an instructor."
One pro-Israel student who attended the course reported that Shingavi handed out “literature that tries to justify Hamas and Hezbollah” and was “not open to dialogue about the Mideast.”
SJP Campus Activism
On April 9, 2002, Shingavi and numerous other SJP members were arrested for unlawfully occupying a campus building and interrupting classes at UC Berkeley. The occupation of the building, at which SJP activists which demanded “that the University of California divest from all of its assets connected to Israel and the Israeli military,” was intentionally timed to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day.Despite clear pre-action warnings and repeated requests to leave, SJP members pushed past police, entered classrooms and lecture halls, chanting loudly and employing bull-horns while students were taking mid-term examinations.
In an open letter to the UC Berkeley community, Chancellor Berdahl strongly denounced SJP for "interfering with the rights of other students to continue their education" and suspended the group from campus. In response, Shingavi accused the university of "a systematic attempt to silence pro-Palestinian voices."
Demonizing Israel
During a November 2014 talk, Shingavi likened Gaza to the Nazi death camps, claiming [00:13:15] that “This is not me being hyperbolic… Gaza is the biggest open air concentration camp in the world today and the condition of life in Gaza is not dissimilar to life in camps in Auschwitz and Dachau.”On August 2, 2014, during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge (OPE), Shingavi spoke [00:03:56]at a “Texas Stands with Gaza” rally, where he alleged that OPE was based on “vicious lies” and that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “sent out lynch mobs where people roamed the streets and caught any Arab they could.”
Israel commenced Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in July 2014, to stop rocket fire targeting Israeli civilians and to destroy Hamas attack tunnels.
Shingavi also claimed [00:09:11] that OPE had "everything to do with the Zionist project, which has been the ethnic cleansing of Palestine since 1948 to the present… everything else that they have been telling you is a lie."
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.
Social Media and Weblinks
Twitter:https://twitter.com/sshingavi
- Status:
- Professor
- University:
- Texas-Austin,
- more...
- California-Berkeley
- Organizations:
- BDS,
- SJP
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- Last Modified:
- 06/23/2025
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