Students for Justice in Palestine - Organization
Operating through an organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Hamas is the most significant and influential supporter of SJP. SJP has been accused of receiving funding from the organization “American Muslims for Palestine AMP”, belonging to the Islamic Resistance Movement “Hamas”, and promoting its ideology in universities. On 15 November 2023, the US House Committee on Ways and Means held a full committee hearing called "From Ivory Towers to Dark Corners: Investigating the Nexus Between Antisemitism, Tax-Exempt Universities, and Terror Financing." Tax-exempt charities operating in the United States have close links to terrorist financing, the Ways and Means Committee learned in a hearing examining the nexus between these so-called “charities” and the explosion of antisemitism on college campuses since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. Witnesses testified about the pattern of tax-exempt charities being shut down for funding terrorism and then re-establishing under a different name.
One prominent example is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), an organization founded by several senior leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, a tax-exempt charity that funneled $12.4 million from Americans to fund Hamas before it was shut down by the U.S. government in the early 2000s. AMP helped start and continues to provide support for Students for Justice in Palestine, a student organization banned on several campuses for intimidating and bullying Jewish students. The refusal to condemn antisemitic intimidation, harassment, and violence fits into a broader pattern of colleges protecting speech preferred by left-wing administrators and professors rather than the actual principles of free speech.
The AMP blog wrote "AMP has been actively engaged in supporting student-led on-campus organizing for Palestine which is causing a major shift in public discourse on the issue. In fact, in the past five months, AMP has sponsored student-led delegations to Palestine from four major universities including Harvard, Georgetown, University of Michigan, and Tufts. Hundreds of students participated in these delegations with nearly 150 students participating from Harvard alone!"
Formally SJP does not exist. There is no non-profit organization or national organization that bears his name. According to the website "The Canary Mission" established by activists against the boycott movement, SJP was founded in 2001 by Prof. Hatem Bezian of the University of California, Berkeley. Baziyan is a central figure in the movement. In the past, Baziyan raised funds for KindHearts, a Hamas front organization that was shut down in 2008 after being convicted of raising money for a terrorist organization. He also raised funds for the Islamic Organization for Palestine (IAP) - which was also forced to close due to Hamas funding.
AMP works in partnership with the American for Justice in Palestine Education Fund (AJP), which is registered as a charity. The two organizations share an office in a suburb of Chicago and the positions overlap. Hatem Baziyan, who founded AMP, serves as AJP's chairman. The members of the organizations include people who were personally involved in transferring money to Hamas in the past. Contrary to the provisions of the law, although AFP admitted in its tax returns that between the years 2010-2014 it raised more than 3.2 million dollars, the organization does not disclose the sources of the money and its use.
In 1999, Bazian said, for instance: “In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that’s in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.”
Jonathan Schanzer served as a terrorist financing investigator at the US Treasury during the Bush Jr. administration, and currently serves as vice president for research at the "Foundation for the Defense of Democracies". The “personnel, mission, goals, donors and infrastructure” of AMP and SJP, Schanzer argued, bear “striking resemblance” to the earlier Hamas-supporting charities. He questioned whether they are again “providing support for Hamas under a different name.” Schanzer alleged that U.S. authorities had taken their “eye off the ball” regarding Hamas and domestic financing of foreign terrorist groups — despite open admissions by some U.S.-based groups that they had sent funds to Hamas-linked entities.
AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for [SJP],” writes Jonathan Schanzer. “AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and [financial] grants to SJP activists. AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other anti-Israel campus groups across the country. According to an email it sent to subscribers, AMP spent $100,000 on campus activities in 2014 alone.
When SJP formed at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2001, the group organized a Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) conference to coordinate divestment efforts among anti-Israel groups around the country. In the years that followed, PSM served as a national umbrella organization for various chapters of SJP and other anti-Israel groups around the country. When PSM dissolved in 2006, however, SJP chapters ceased to collaborate with one another and were no longer officially connected through any national coalition.
In 2010, AMP decided to focus specifically on Palestinian advocacy on college campuses and targeted SJP for this effort. AMP organized various panels and conferences on the topic of Palestinian advocacy on campus and invited SJP students to both lead and participate in these discussions. Representatives from more than 40 SJP chapters across the country attended the first national SJP conference from October 14-16, 2011. The conference, titled, "Students Confronting Apartheid," was held at Columbia University in New York. A second national SJP conference took place at the University of Michigan in November 2012. SJP's "unification" efforts are a result of the influence and coordination of a national organization called American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
In the past few years, SJP has been successful at expanding its reach and visibility, which can be somewhat attributed to the organization's use of online social media. Almost all of the SJP groups have fan pages on Facebook and there are a variety of SJP chapters that maintain Twitter profiles as well. The use of these networks enables SJP leaders to interact with other like-minded groups on and off campus, promote events to a larger number of recipients and learn about new campaigns or initiatives.
The organization was accused of fueling the new anti-Semitism and creating a hostile and violent atmosphere towards Jews on campuses in the United States . The 2016 anti-Semitism report of the Diaspora Ministry cites the organization as a major factor in the rise of anti-Semitism on campuses.
AMP’s status as a front for the terrorist organization Hamas is reflected in its organizational make-up. At one time at least eight of its board members, key officials and close allies were previously members or employees of now-defunct Islamic extremist groups that were funders of Hamas. These groups included the Palestine Committee of the Muslim Brotherhood (established by the Brotherhood to advance Hamas’s agendas in the U.S.); the Islamic Association for Palestine (founded by senior Hamas operative Mousa Abu Marzook to serve as the chief U.S. propaganda and recruitment arm of Hamas); the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (which from 1995-2001 contributed approximately $12.4 million in money, goods, and services to Hamas); and KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development (a Hamas fundraising entity). At its annual conference in 2014, AMP showed its true colors by inviting participants to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”
A Columbia University SJP member said in 2002: “We support the right of Palestinians to resist occupation and do not dictate the methods of that struggle. There’s a difference between violence of the oppressed and violence of the oppressors.”
SJP is America’s leading campus promoter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamasinspired and funded (through AMP) initiative that aims to use various forms of public protest and economic pressure to advance the Hamas agenda of Israel’s destruction. As the Anti-Defamation League’s former national director, Abraham Foxman, put it, SJP is “the main organizing force behind the [BDS] campaigns” on U.S. college campuses. Similarly, Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies calls SJP “the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States.”
Although Americans have more positive feelings toward the Israelis than they do toward the Palestinians, most opinion polls indicate a significant increase in the rates of sympathy among American youth for the Palestinians in the recent conflict, especially the age group between 18 and 29 years, as 61% of them view it positively. Palestinians, while the percentage towards Israelis is 56%. The new generation of Arab Americans - who clearly participate in the student movement - is pushing for the linkage of a new and strong critical discourse that refutes the notions of the inevitability of the American alliance and full, unconditional support for Israel.
American universities turned into a hot arena for competition between students who support the Palestinian side and those who support Israel, at a time when the principle of “freedom of expression” guaranteed under the First Constitutional Amendment is being subjected to a difficult test. Scenes of confrontations in universities have become increasingly familiar, as students compete due to the repercussions of the continuing war and the high number of victims of the Israeli bombing inside the Gaza Strip. Faculty members, donors, and donors to educational institutions have entered the front line, and in recent weeks universities have received thousands of letters, statements, and petitions demanding that they denounce, speak out, or remain silent, in response to the campus protests against the backdrop of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood and the aggression against the Gaza Strip.
Jewish advocacy groups and a handful of faculty members criticized university administrations for “failing” to protect students from what they described as “anti-Semitic” incidents, and they quickly condemned the pro-Palestinian protests. Others called on administrators to protect Muslim, Palestinian, and pro-Palestinian student groups from any harassment. “Officials should not say anything at all, as part of their responsibility to protect everyone’s First Amendment rights,” free speech advocates said.
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