Uproar over what some are calling an anti-Semitic stencil that showed up at a Nov. 7 San Francisco State University campus event has prompted the school’s president to issue a stern statement against advocating violence and hate.Commenter and researcher Bob Knot looked a little more at the writings of Mohammad Hammad.
Tables had been set up close to the event by an array of organizations. One allowed people to make their own placards using a stencil that read, “My heroes have always killed colonizers,” noted the president’s statement.
The term “colonizers” may have been referring to Jews who came to Palestine in large numbers after World War II and subsequently founded the state of Israel in 1948 after fighting a successful war that caused the displacement of many Palestinians.
the General Union of Palestinian Students SFSU called the whole affair a smear campaign against their group.
“We are appalled at this blatant attack against the integrity and principled position that GUPS has maintained throughout its history. We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late professor Edward Said,” wrote Mohammad Hammad, president of GUPS, on the group’s Facebook page.
Hammad has three Tumblr accounts, which have all recently become password protected: palestinianliberator, canttouchthisnuhnuhnuh, and astrangerdanger. Between the time that the disgusting signs were publicized and the time that the GUPS realized that they have a public relations problem, Hammad described to his friends on Tumblr exactly who the target of the signs are - and his opinion does not refer only to to Jews who lived in Israel in the 1940s:
You know what?
Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it
And you know what else?
My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers
I literally see nothing wrong with this
and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed
HMM
Now re-read Hammad's defense the GUPS actions in the article quoted above. It sure looks like he says one thing in public and another thing to his friends on Tumblr, doesn't it?
More fun stuff from Hammad:
A photo he uploaded of (presumably) him flipping the bird to a US Marines office (with a "Palestine" banner):
Here is an essay Hammad wrote last April (again, from his recently taken down Tumblr account) where he explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel, with violence if necessary:I will no longer support the two-state solution, and will vie for the liberation of Palestine through the reclamation of the lands that are rightfully ours through any means necessary. If the Israelis want to live in peace with us, so be it, but this peace will NOT be on their terms. It may be Palestinian freedom fighters who pull the triggers, but whatever lives are lost in the battle for liberation rest squarely on the shoulders of Israel.The president of GUPS has made it crystal clear, in his own words, that he interprets the "MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS" sign as a call to kill Israeli Jews (he is not calling to kill Israeli Arabs!)
Until return, and until liberation, one-state for Palestinians through any means necessary.
Let's see GUPS try to spin this. I predict they will go on a wild attack, because misdirection is the last refuge for people caught with their pants down.