CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 18, 2025 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COLLEGE
ANTI-SEMITISM BANS DON’T GO FAR ENOUGH”
Make no mistake,
when the college student group Students for Justice in Palestine was banned
from some University of California campuses in mid-February, it was high time.
SJP chapters,
after all, were the primary groups responsible for setting up illegal
encampments in key locations on many campuses last spring to protest Israel’s
retaliation against the terror group Hamas for its murderous Oct. 7, 2023,
rampage through southern Israel. That attack killed at least 1,200 Israelis,
resulted in the kidnaps of more than 250 others and saw rapes and assaults on
many more individuals, even babies.
In proportionate
terms, it was as if one of America’s neighbors killed or kidnapped more than
50,000 persons during a raid on this country. How violent would the American
response be to an attack of that magnitude?
What’s more,
since the protests and occupations began on Oct. 8, 2023, just hours after the
Hamas raid began and a week before Israel fired so much as a single retaliatory
bullet, there was the clear implication that SJP knew about the raid in advance
and had prepped its adherents to move instantly.
Protesters across
America immediately began harassing students who appeared to be Jewish,
blocking their access to some areas and buildings, with university
administrators doing nothing to stop them.
Things are
different this year. Not only did UC agree to prevent on-campus anti-Semitism
as part of a settlement with ex-President Joe Biden’s administration, but new
President Donald Trump issued an executive order threatening to deport foreign
students expressing pro-Hamas views, and hang any First Amendment free speech
guarantees.
That hasn’t
dimmed the fervor of SJP, which was as loud and threatening as ever during a
masked February demonstration outside the Los Angeles home of UC Regent Jay
Sures, one of many regents who have refused protest demands to consider
divesting UC’s endowment money from companies that do business in Israel.
Within days, both
the undergraduate SJP group and an SJP chapter made up of graduate students
were banned from UCLA indefinitely. They cannot use school facilities or get
student government funds as most clubs do. Not to worry, most SJP funding has
long come from oil-rich Qatar.
Similar bans hit
the group’s chapters at UC campuses in Irvine, San Diego and Santa Cruz.
But UC’s bans may
not be going far enough. They leave SJP’s mentor group, Faculty for Justice in
Palestine (FJP) intact. One possible reason: it’s harder to make bans on that
group stick, since faculty members have more rights and avenues for appeals than
students.
Right now, FJP
chapters remain very active. Not only do they mentor SJP chapters – banned or
not -- and help organize protests, but they dominate portions of the websites
of some UC departments.
One national
study last year found colleges with FJP chapters (there are more than 160) are
7.3 times more likely than others to experience violent physical assaults on
Jews. Death threats against Jews were 3.4 times as common at schools with FJP
chapters than elsewhere. The anti-Semitic nature of both SJP and FJP is made
clear by their targeting many Jews not affiliated with Israel or Zionist
causes.
Activities of the
FJP chapter at UC Santa Cruz, not impeded by either the Justice Department
settlement or Trump’s deportation threats, may be typical of the group.
The UCSC
Education Department, where 40 percent of core faculty have publicly allied
with FJP, this winter sponsored a talk subtitled “Centering an anti-Zionist
Commitment in Early Childhood Teacher Education.” So teachers will be trained
in vilifying Israel to kindergartners?
That talk was
touted on the FJP chapter website. Also at Santa Cruz, nearly half the
anthropology faculty and 85 percent of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
faculty, including the department chair, are associated with FJP.
It’s easy to see
why Santa Cruz has become known to many Jews as strongly anti-Semitic.
All of which
makes it plain that rousting SJP from campuses should be only a first step,
with the more difficult act of ending faculty anti-Semitism not yet even
started.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough:
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
