Amid ongoing tensions at SF State surrounding Jewish and Palestinian relations, a petition questioning the University’s partnership with a Palestinian university has garnered nearly 1,300 signatures since Wednesday.
The partnership with An-Najah National University, in the form of a memorandum of understanding – a document that signifies mutual respect and collaboration – is one of SF State’s 106 partnerships with universities in 35 countries, according to University spokesperson Elizabeth Smith.
“The purpose of an MOU with each of these international universities is to provide our students and faculty the opportunity to broaden their own intellectual landscape and develop opportunities for expanded creative activity,” Smith said. “The university supports the academic freedom of its faculty. Partnerships are initiated by faculty members based on their own academic interests, either for their own particular scholarly pursuits or to advance learning opportunities for their students.”
The petition on change.org was created just days after President Leslie E. Wong released a statement apologizing for the University’s handling of student protests during Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat’s visit to the school in April.
Xpress was unable to reach General Union of Palestinian Students, the group that led the protests, by the time of publication, but the group put out an earlier statement on the University’s response to the events.
Middle East Forum, the group that created the petition, requested that California State University investigate the MOU and make the terms of the memorandum public and called on Wong to terminate the University’s relationship with An-Najah National University. Two SF State alumni, Teri Blumenfeld and Cinnamon Stillwell, are Middle East Forum Staff. Stillwell wrote a blog post in February condemning SF State’s relationship with An-Najah.
Xpress was unable to reach Middle East Forum by the time of publication.
The petition also accused SF State College of Ethnic Studies Associate Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of being an “anti-Israel activist and an apologist for Palestinian terrorism.”
“The accusation that I support terrorism is both false and extremely dangerous in a post-9/11 climate that criminalizes advocacy and casts suspicion on even the most tenuous of associations with groups and individuals described as terrorists.” Abdulhadi said, responding to similar accusations in 2014.
The Palestinian university has been accused by the Anti Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy organization, of having links to Hamas and other terrorist organizations. The ADL was also critical of the April protests at SF State.
“The agreement was made with the desire to expand scholarly ties including staff and student exchange, scientific research, and co-teaching especially in the field of Political Science and American Studies,” according to the An-Najah National University website.
Arafat • Sep 12, 2016 at 6:41 am
Page 1.
ast April students from the San Francisco State University (SFSU) chapter of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) called for “intifada” directly in the face of Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat.
Barkat dropped by at the invitation of SFSU Hillel and subsequently found himself subject to cries of “Intifada! Intifada! Long live the Intifada!” within the venue, itself.
Because Israel is the dhimmi that got away, the Qur’an is very clear on Muslim obligations to Allah concerning those intransigent former social inferiors:
Death.
Or, in the current vernacular, “intifada.”
It is unclear just what type of intifada SFSU GUPS was calling for, however.
The most recent intifada in Israel took various forms. For awhile the press referred to the “Stabbing Intifada.” That is, young Arabs – inspired by what is ultimately a Qur’an-based call to murder Jews who refuse dhimmi status – grabbed kitchen knives or hand-axes and rushed into the streets attacking pretty much any Jews that they met, including old ladies and small children.
/And please make no mistake, the source of the conflict is a malicious seventh-century theocratic-political ideology that insists that any bit of land, however small, that was once grabbed by the Ummah, the Muslim community, must always, and forever, remain part of the Ummah./
Shortly thereafter, however, the Stabbing intifada merged into what they started calling the “Car Ramming Intifada” in which Arabs of driving-age sought to plow their vehicles into perfectly innocent people standing on the sidewalk or at bus stops within Israel.
This style of murder, it should be noted, may represent the inspiration behind the Bastille Day Massacre in Nice, France (July 14, 2016), where a jihadi rammed a 19 ton cargo truck into a crowd of celebrators slaughtering 86 people in the name of Allah.
But whatever type of intifada SFSU GUPs might have had in mind, one thing is clear:
They were calling for the murder of Jews.
Arafat • Sep 12, 2016 at 6:41 am
Pg. 2
As far as I know, I am the only person to even acknowledge this undeniable fact in print.
If there is no murder, or attempted murder, it is not an intifada. If it is an intifada, that means murder and attempted murder.
This is not a matter of interpretation, but a matter of fact.
Thankfully, Bay Area Jewish leadership successfully encouraged SFSU President Leslie Wong to take some action on the matter.
Finalized on August 29 of this year, the SFSU approved document, in response to the official investigation (pdf) of the Barkat fiasco, is entitled, “Initiatives and Interventions in Response to Incidents at Mayor Nir Barkat Event, April 2016”. (pdf)
This is the document that tells the world just what SFSU intends to do about the fact that not only was the Barkat event disrupted by childish barbarians, but that the childish barbarians doing the disrupting called specifically for intifada which is exactly equivalent to the call for the murder of Jews… thereby transmogrifying themselves into childish barbarians.
{I am sure that their mothers are very proud.}
The Squishiness Factor
The primary action that SFSU is taking on this issue, according to that document, is to install new protocols for reacting to student disruptions of campus political events. If you read the “Initiatives and Interventions” pdf file above you will see that from now on when GUPS calls for intifada, while disrupting Jewish student events, they will only get four opportunities to do so before being removed by campus police.
In the first instance, the Dean of Students (or designee) will politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.
In the second instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.
In the third instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will again politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood.
In the fourth instance, the Dean of Students (or designee), accompanied by a campus police officer, will again politely request that they cease screeching for Jewish blood. This time, however, if the barbarian screeching continues they will be removed from the premises by the University Police Department (UPD).
If they return for a fifth peak experience then they may end up in police custody.
Needless to say, GUPS is free to call for intifada at the Malcolm X Student Plaza whenever they please, so long, I suppose, as they do not do so during an actual student event at that venue.
Of course, the document fails to acknowledge that calls for intifada are equivalent to calls for the murder of Jews.
Instead, in their best imitation of the late Edward Said, they tend to think of it as a call to righteous resistance against the unjust and “illegal” military occupation of the “indigenous” Arab population within the Land of Palestine.
The SFSU administration, under President Wong, must believe that the Jews of Israel are a racist, militarist, imperialist, colonialist, apartheid gang – or some mix-and-match thereof – in order to justify funding a student organization, like GUPS, that regularly calls for violence via calls for intifada.
Either Wong, and his fellow bloodless functionaries, do not know what the word “intifada” suggests or they think that childish barbarians have every right to call for the extermination of Jews.
Arafat • Sep 12, 2016 at 6:42 am
Pg. 3
My guess, of course, is that they know very well what the word suggests.
Meanwhile, GUPS feels entirely vindicated.
Writing in Jweekly.com, Rob Gloster tells us:
In a Sept. 1 statement, GUPS said the group felt vindicated by the report, and claimed that the real disruption was caused by Barkat coming to campus.
“Not only were we subjected to this hate monger, but we were investigated for months and publicly smeared as violent and anti-Semitic,” the GUPS statement said, adding that the report “proves that these allegations are false.”
I guess that we are supposed to believe that in the minds of these students that killing is not OK, committing genocide is not OK, but encouraging both is just dandy.
In any case, the administration also intends to hand out First Amendment “resource cards” the next time GUPS gets together for one of their obnoxious little Hate Fests.
I am sure that will make all the difference in the world.
Mohammed
It was not long after, Muhammed Hammad, former president of SFSU GUPs, waved around his famous blade for tumblr, proclaiming his desire to stab an Israeli soldier, that Wong said that “GUPS is the very purpose of this great university” and went forward to forge a relationship with An-Najah University in Nablus, perhaps the most violently racist university in the world.
{Please sign the Middle East Forum’s petition discouraging that partnership.}
I think, therefore, that we can reasonably conclude that Wong is absolutely sincere in his sentiments and his loyalties.
One must wonder, however, just how it is that while the university felt justified in getting rid of Mr. Hammad that it continues to fund Hammad’s friends who likewise encourage intifada?
Oh, and by the way, Dr. Wong?
You did not fail the protesters, as you said in your letter.
You gave them precisely what their little hearts desire most – aside, of course, from stripping the Jews of the Middle East from any means of self-determination and self-defense – and that is legitimacy.
Certainly you took no disciplinary action because that would imply that these students are adults and thus largely responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their own behavior… heaven forfend.
You might as well have patted them on the head, given them some milk and cookies, and shooed them off to bed in their jammies.
Were I a parent with college-age kids I would think twice before sending them off to a place like SFSU, at least not without some formal training in martial arts.
Ben Adelson • Sep 12, 2016 at 11:31 am
You call for the murder of Muslims all the time and you throw Jews under the bus everywhere you post.
This guy Arafat does not speak for us or anyone other than a professional DISQUS troll. Please ignore his hate.
Arafat • Sep 12, 2016 at 2:13 pm
Ben,
It’s not about me and it’s not about you. It’s about facts – something you have no respect for.
Apparently because you either do not have the attention span to read the article I posted and/or do not have the intelligence to understand it the facts escape you and you respond with feelings and instinct instead. Actually you respond by attacking someone who dares disagrees with your “feelings” which is typical of liberals like you.
You and your ilk pretend to be know-it-alls and anyone who disagrees with you (even if they cite facts when doing so) you attack instead of discussing the issues like reasonable grown-ups.
It’s little wonder you attend SFSU. It’s the perfect school for close-minded liberals like you. It’s an institution that embraces all the popular PC, false memes. And make no doubt about it this is true of SFSU’s liberal professor’s message about Israel and the terrorist organizations Hamas and Fatah. So you’ve found your little teat to nurture at. Your false memes will grow and thrive at SFSU and people like me, people who share information that contradicts your false Gods will be treated just as you have done: As bigots when it is you and your professors who are the true bigots.
One day I can only pray you move to Gaza or to the West Bank as that is the only way you will ever be motivated to really open your eyes.
Ben Adelson • Sep 12, 2016 at 2:28 pm
Quit cutting and pasting your hateful drivel and go deal with real anti Semites who are spreading malicious lies or prove yourself one of them.
https://disqus.com/home/discussion/channel-theconservativechannel/this_video_proves_israel_did_911/
This guy is sick and if you’re such a defender of us, then deal with it. Or are you as bigoted as they are? 😡
anbudmor • Sep 12, 2016 at 3:18 am
I’m very disappointed in Israel.