Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
Two leading pro-Palestinian groups in the United States - American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) - are a propaganda front working to recruit “uninformed, misguided, and impressionable college students to serve as foot soldiers for Hamas” according to federal lawsuit filed 01 May 2024. Nine survivors of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel brought a federal lawsuit by major U.S. and global law firm Greenberg Traurig. “They are not innocent advocacy groups, but rather the propaganda arm of a terrorist organization operating in plain sight,” according to the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, VA. The lawsuit alleged that AMP and NSJP are in continuous active dialogue with Hamas to amplify propaganda on social media or help craft it from America. The lawsuit alleges that NSJP’s messaging and communications tailored to student groups constitute material support for a foreign terrorist organization.
“AMP’s message to college campuses through NSJP is unambiguous: violent attacks are a justified response to Zionism as an idea, to Israel as an entity, and to Zionists as people,” the lawsuit says. “The purpose of this messaging is not only to justify the terrorism of Hamas and its affiliates in Gaza within Western academia and society at large but also to establish an environment where violence against Jews and anyone else associated with Israel could be construed as acceptable, justified, or even heroic.”
Richard A. Edlin, Vice Chair of Greenberg Traurig, notes: “It is deeply ironic that the same people carrying signs saying ‘Death to America’ and ‘Death to Jews’ claim they are protected by free speech. They are not. Free speech has never included the active support of terrorism, and it has never protected the destruction of private property or the brutalization of innocent men, women, and children of many faiths, not just Jews. In the defendants, we confront an American problem, as well as a Jewish problem. We cannot—and through this lawsuit, we are saying we will not—allow the infiltration of Hamas-directed hatred, violence, and intimidation anywhere we can prevent it.
AMP’s chairman, Hatem Bazian, rejected the lawsuit as an assault on students’ rights to free speech and protest. “We will defend ourselves,” Bazian said. “The lawsuit is an Islamophobic text reeking in anti-Palestinian racism and resorts to defamation to deflect from the live-streamed genocide in Gaza.”
Activists supporting Palestinian human rights are also frequently falsely accused of supporting terrorism. This can have severe consequences, often bringing undue law enforcement scrutiny upon individuals and groups. For example, Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group with many chapters around the country, has been accused of having ties to Hamas, a group designated as a terrorist organization by the US. The movement for Palestinian rights is growing steadily in the United States – from the mushrooming of campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine, to the rise in boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaigns, to everyday people moved to change the status quo in the region. Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, said that the heavy-handed law enforcement approach to the Gaza solidarity protests has undercut Democrats’s argument that electing Biden would protect the nation from Trump, whom they accuse of authoritarianism. “The reality is the Democrats have been telling us that young people need to save democracy and that people of colour need to save democracy and that any quibbles with this current administration needs to be put aside in order to save democracy,” she told Al Jazeera. “But where’s the democracy when you have state troopers beating up students and faculty for protesting, and the White House saying nothing about that?”
The echoes of the Gaza war moved from Gaza to the corridors of American universities, and student organizations played a pivotal role in public mobilization and organizing massive demonstrations and marches in solidarity with the Palestinian people, calling for a ceasefire, and denouncing the United States’ support and financing of the aggression launched by Israel against the Gaza Strip. As a result, student groups supporting the Palestinian cause were dissolved and their student activities were banned. Among these groups was “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP), which is considered the most prominent and active movement against Israel and the Zionist occupation in the United States of America.
US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who is Jewish, accused the student movement of being influenced by the interests of foreign governments, and non-governmental groups carrying programs and ideas that conflict with the interests of America. Mayorkas wrote on 14 November 2023 that “DHS reporting has illuminated the evolving risk of foreign malign influence in higher education institutions.” He said that foreign governments and nonstate actors such as nongovernmental organizations are engaged in “funding research and academic programs, both overt and undisclosed, that promote their own favorable views or outcomes.”
On 13 December 2023 the Homeland Security Academic Partnership Council (HSAPC) School and Campus Safety Considering the Conflict in the Middle East (SCSCME) Subcommittee, co-chaired by Chief John Ojeisekhoba and Dr. Cynthia D. Shapira, submitted a report to DHS Secretary Mayorkas. THe report recommended "Instruct OSLLE [Office for State and Local Law Enforcement] to work externally with IACLEA [International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators] and NASRO [National Association of School Resource Officers] to ask Congress to address laws prohibiting DHS from providing certain resources, such as training and information, to private universities and schools. Current limitations serve as a barrier to yielding maximum optimum results."
Founded in 2012, Palestine Legal is an independent organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom. Palestine Legal is the only legal organization in the United States exclusively dedicated to supporting the movement for Palestinian rights. Attorneys are based in Chicago, New York City and the Bay Area, and their work spans all 50 states and Washington DC. It works closely with several organizations, including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild and others, to provide legal support to activists around the country. Palestine Legal is a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.
The Campus Support Coalition (CSC) is a collective of organizations supporting students fighting for Palestinian liberation on university campuses. The CSC can offer many types of support: whether just starting a chapter and need resources, facing campus backlash, or need campaign materials, they are here to help. Any campus-based Palestine liberation organization is welcome, regardless of the organization’s name. A request made to the Campus Support Coalition does not guarantee that support will be granted.
An open letter to universities was released on April 21, 2024. "We, the Student Movement for Palestinian Liberation, demand institutional accountability and immediate divestment from israel and its genocide of the Palestinian people of Gaza. As our Palestinian counterparts face the systematic eradication of their homes, holy sites, and universities, the assassination of their professors, peers, and families, and the seizure of their homeland, we stand resolutely with their struggle for liberation."
On 20 April 2024, SJP stated "Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters across North America have risen in defense of the Palestinian people, establishing autonomous zones on several university campuses to assert their strength and demands in the face of severe university repression. Today, April 20th, 2024, National Students for Justice in Palestine announces the Popular University for Gaza, a coordinated pressure campaign against university administrations and trustees to immediately divest from the israeli state. After hundreds of student government resolutions, meetings with administrators, and protests on campus, and following months of increased targeting, harassment, and arrests, the students are ramping up the pressure. We will not back down; we will reclaim our universities until administrators comply with our demands."
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