David Horowitz's FrontPage Magazine has a piece entitled, San Francisco State: A Haven for Supporters of Terrorists.Whatever anyone might say about Horowitz he definitely does not pull punches. I always think of the guy as a general marshalling his troops and setting them forth to ideological warfare. But I feel reasonably certain that he, himself, would agree with that assessment.
The editors at FrontPage tell us:
Last night, the David Horowitz Freedom Center brought its Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus poster campaign to San Francisco State University, a campus that is notorious for its glorification of anti-Israel terrorism and anti-Semitism...The posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and expose the financial and organizational relationship between the terror group Hamas and Hamas support groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine. As part of the campaign, the Freedom Center has placed posters on several campuses including San Diego State University, the University of California-Irvine and the University of California-Los Angeles. The campaign also recently released a report on the “Top Ten Schools Supporting Terrorists” which may be found on the campaign website, www.StoptheJewHatredonCampus.org. San Francisco State University is among the campuses listed in the Top Ten report.
I do not know what effect this kind of "guerrilla politics" will have on the way people think about either the rise of Political Islam or the Arab-Israel conflict, although it may get a few people talking on that campus... either that or they will ignore the whole thing entirely.
One or the other.
My guess is that many Jewish students at SFSU will roll their eyes and turn away. Some will want to keep their head down out of fear for their social standing. Others will feel a degree of relief in recognizing that at least some people genuinely are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish, even if it does come from the much berated American right-wing. And maybe there will even be a few other Jewish students inspired to stand up and organize on behalf of their own people.
We shall see.
I feel a strong connection to this story in part because I am an alumnus. It is also because the university put up a mural of Edward Said, one of the most prominent anti-Semites working in academia in the United States during the twentieth-century.
There should be two caveats in discussing SFSU anti-Semitism, however..
The first is that Jewish parents who send their kids to that university should know that if their kids keep their heads down they'll be just fine. When I was there at the end of the 1990s, I honestly did not care that much about Israel and I had a terrific university experience at SFSU.
Of course, there was the day where I witnessed a bunch of black students holding up a poster with an American flag wherein the stars were replaced by 50 little Stars of David. That was a sort-of "wake up call" but all it elicited from me was a strongly worded letter to the editor. As I recall, the letter was not so much about condemning the poster itself, as it was about its potential for alienating Jewish students from left-leaning coalitions.
The second caveat is that this is obviously not a distinct SFSU problem. Sure, SFSU is prominent among American universities in its advancement of hatred toward the Jewish State of Israel - and thus inevitably toward Jews, in general - but it is hardly alone.
The current ongoing kerfuffle around SFSU is primarily about the rise of an anti-Israel / anti-Jewish political culture on that campus nurtured by, among others, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, faculty advisor to the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) and Associate Professor of "Race and Resistance Studies."
The development of these interrelated stories was organic. I wrote about it. Dusty at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers wrote about it. And, most significantly, both Cinnamon Stillwell (West Coast Representative for the Middle East Forum's Campus Watch) and Tammi Benjamin (AMCHA Initiative founder and UC Santa Cruz instructor) covered the stories, as well.
Most recently even Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Studies Forum has written about SFSU anti-Semitism, so the broader story appears to have legs.
For me it started with the guy below, Mohammad G. Hammad, former president of GUPS, holding his trusty blade back in 2013.
If you are reading this it is fairly likely that this face may look familiar. Mr. Hammad posted the photo above on his Tumblr page with this message:
I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier…
That was the moment that I got hooked on the story, mainly out of well-founded concern that the university - while expelling an advocate for outright murder in Mr. Hammad - nonetheless continues to support GUPS even as members of GUPS call for Intifada which is nothing less than a call for the genocide of the Jews in the Middle East.
This is what must be understood by university administrators around the country. When students cry out for Intifada they are crying out specifically for Jewish blood and university administrators from around the country (and Europe, and Australia) need to account for why they are just dandy with student calls for genocide.
Someone like Jerusalem mayor, Nir Barkat, must have an amazingly strong stomach to endure hate-filled students screaming in his face for his own murder as we saw last spring when he was invited by the local Hillel to speak on campus.
The man got ambushed.
Then, of course, we have Abdhuladi's attempt to normalize anti-Jewish hatred on university campuses though her successful efforts to partner SFSU with that "greenhouse" for Jihadis, An-Najah University in Nablus.
And finally - for the moment - there was the Edward Said mural festivities that featured GUPS members, and others, holding aloft signs calling for the murder of "colonizers." I do not know about you, but when Arab or Muslim students from organizations like GUPS - or, say, the Muslim Student Association, or, say, Students for Justice in Palestine - hold aloft signs calling for the killing of "colonizers" my guess is that they are not referring to the Polish. On the contrary, I get the sneaking feeling that they may be discussing my friends and relatives in places like Haifa, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem.
In any case, stay tuned because as long as the President of San Francisco State University can say, as President Wong did not so long ago, that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university" then Jewish people associated with that campus, if they care about Israel and their fellow Jews, have a fight on their hands whether they like it or not.
My first recommendation is to encourage Jewish SFSU donors to divert their generous offers to AMCHA or Campus Watch, rather than to an openly anti-Semitic university.
My next recommendation is to keep a close eye on the writings and investigations of:
And, indeed, I will have my say, as well.
I don't think that any of us are much in the mood to allow this virulent hatred of Israel and Jews - based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda - to continue without response.
What we need, however, is for the mainstream press to pick up the larger story of the camouflaging of campus anti-Semitism under a veil of anti-Zionism and drive it home to the peoples of North America, Europe, and Australia.
That and a little Krav Maga for your kids might be good.
Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.