During this year’s May 4 Commemoration, returning alumni witnessed students protesting against the war in Gaza, prompting them to wonder how they could support the students’ cause.
Ken Hammond, an alumnus and history professor at New Mexico State University, said while he and other alumni were at a local restaurant around May 4, they began to talk about Students for Justice in Palestine’s petition for Kent State University to divest from companies “profiting from war aggression.”
Hammond said the alumni decided signing the petition would be the best way for them to support SJP’s cause. In addition to signing the petition, the alumni created a letter written by Hammond and Carolyn Knox, a university alumna, on student activism and the war in Gaza, he said.
“We just wanted to say something to be encouraging to young people who are getting politically engaged today, to say these are long struggles, you have to hang in there and to express, in immediate contact, our opposition to the war going on,” Hammond said.
The letter was signed by about 50 individuals as it circulated online and through an alumni email list, Hammond said.
Yazun Issawi, a junior computer systems major and president of SJP, said the organization created the petition because they felt the university should invest money in other ways.
“As an institution of higher education, I’m not sure why we are exactly putting our money into weapons when we could be using that money for other things to benefit our own people, our own university, our own students,” he said.
Issawi said the petition calls for the university to divest in weapon manufacturing companies like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as well as other companies like Amazon.
The university did not provide a detailed list of companies it invests in.
The petition was created to show that students are not alone in their desire for the university to divest in these companies, Issawi said. He added the petition not only focuses on Gaza, but also countries like Sudan, where there is an ongoing civil war.
“We’re not just a handful of students,” Issawi said. “We’re hundreds of people that want to see divestment happen.”
This is not the first time SJP has called for divestment of Israeli companies. In 2013, the organization signed an open letter calling for Ohio to cease investing $80 million in Israel bonds.
Eric Mansfield, the university’s assistant vice president for content strategy and communications, said Ohio law prohibits the university from divesting from Israeli companies because the university is a public, state institution.
“The Ohio Attorney General is the chief legal officer for all state of Ohio entities, including universities,” he said. “As a public, state institution, Kent State University follows Ohio law.”
Section 9.76 of Ohio’s Senate Bill 135 prevents universities from divesting in Israeli companies, which Ohio State Senator Jerry Cirino, who represents the 18th district, sponsored.
Cirino said the revised code does not give universities and state colleges the authority “to limit commercial relations” with Israel or Israeli controlled companies.
“[Israel is] our only really close ally and only democracy in the Middle East,” Cirino said. “They’re also very special in the sense that they are surrounded by neighbors, as we found out on October 7 last year, that are intent upon eliminating them completely.”
Because Cirino said Israel is an ally needing to be protected, Section 9.76 made note of them in particular. He added the provision prevented Ohio State University students and faculty from divesting in Israeli companies earlier this year.
Jeffrey Rockland, an associate professor of dance, said in a statement on behalf of the Jewish Faculty, Staff and Friends Association that divestment will not help the conflict in Gaza.
“Know well that any activist supporting the BDS, and all who are part of SJP, are actively contributing to an effort to eliminate the state of Israel,” Rockland said.
Issawi said SJP and international law consider the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people illegal. The International Court of Justice, which all UN member states are party to, found that Israel’s continued presence in Palestine was illegal.
“We call for a Palestinian state in which Jews, Muslims and Christians as well as all other people live side by side in peace,” Issawi said.
Rockland said the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is antisemitic and petitions like the SJP one strengthens Hamas’ agenda and can hurt victims of the Hamas attacks from October 7.
“If universities participate in these unfair practices, they will promote more hate, more racism, more dehumanization, more ignorance, less peace, less humanity and less prosperity for all concerned,” Rockland said.
He added positive actions students can take include researching activists like Vivian Silver, a Canadian-Israeli peace activist killed in the October 7 massacre, and listening to the stories of survivors of the Hamas attacks.
Issawi said he sees his effort as similar to ones students have advocated for in the past. Because of this, SJP made an effort to reach out to alumni who attended this year’s May 4 Commemoration.
“A lot of them were sympathetic towards our cause and what we’re fighting for,” he said. “Similarly to what they were fighting for in the ‘60s and ‘70s, it’s the same thing that we’re also fighting for in 2024.”
At the time of the article’s publication, the petition has collected over 620 signatures and individuals are still able to sign the petition, Issawi said.
The alumni, Issawi said, saw themselves in the students advocating for Palestine, which made them eager to sign the petition
“They were on the right side of history, Issawi said. “They knew that by doing this, they will again be on the right side of history.”
Hammond encouraged people to sign the petition even if they may not agree with every point the petition makes.
“Everything that we do is a contribution. Not everyone is going to be able to do the maximum program,” Hammond said. “But whatever people can do, we should encourage that, we should support, we should reinforce that.”
According to an Instagram post, on July 24, SJP members attended a protest in Washington D.C. in response to Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, visiting the capitol.
Adriana Gasiewski is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].
Barry Dunietz • Aug 29, 2024 at 4:27 pm
I am responding to this news story on the BDS to benefit well
meaning liberals whose values got twisted to end up supporting this
antisemitic movement.
Please find the details in a Kent wire letter I authored and published
on 8/26, titled: “Letter to the Editors: The boycott divest and
sanction movement against Israel violates authentic liberal values”.
Here I will add, I was too interviewed by AG along with Prof. Rockland
for this news story. Indeed as included in the news story, we pointed
out Vivian Silver, a human rights activist. Please know, what she did
for the Palestinian people during her lifetime dwarfs the
so-called pro-Palestinian voices quoted in this story.
In fact, this is more than 100% true! Because supporting movements as
BDS harms the Palestinian people.
Now, quoting our reference to her in this news story as “being killed”
unfortunately misrepresents our message, and in fact contributes to
the whitewashing (hopefully not intently) of the atrocities that
took place on 10/7.
Words and phrasing matter!
For the benefit of interested readers, find our phrasing during the
interview referring to authentic efforts that truly help the
Palestinian people. We were hoping that through the interview readers
can learn about, so to complete this piece, see our original phrasing:
“Here are some positive actions students can take: Go and learn about
the academic institute of the “Arava” school, a joint venture of
Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians. Look into the actions of peace
seeking individuals such as Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli
activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the
Palestinians. She was one of the victims of October 7. Go listen to
Gazan people as Hamza Howidy who begs the world to help remove Hamas from point of power.”
(Note added — in the news it appears that Hamas has manipulated
surveys, most Gazan wish to see Hamas removed. There is still hope.)
Jeffrey Rockland • Aug 4, 2024 at 9:13 am
• What are your thoughts on the Students for Justice in Palestine petition for the university to divest in entities they find complicit in genocide?
We are alarmed by the calls of divest by the BDS movement as we are of the allowance of the SJP student organization on our campus. Both the BDS and SJP are antisemitic in their core agenda.
The BDS movement is the current incarnation of the antisemitic Arabic boycott movement that started well before 1948 the year Israel was re-established in modern times as an independent state. The Arab global boycott movement started in 1945 with the formation of the Arab league, where its first action as a collective was to boycott products by the Jewish population in the territory referred to by the British mandate as Palestine. The timing is quite disturbing given it was only five months after the end of the World War II and of the holocaust, the mass murder of two thirds of Europe’s Jews. This boycott was the first action of the league while its formal mandate, however, was to make sure that Arab countries do not fight each other. This goal of the league is achieved by demonizing the local Jewish population. We recognize this demonization of our people because we are children of the diaspora who are alive today because some of our relatives survived while others were murdered.
The current incarnation of the antisemitic boycott of the Jewish state products, the BDS movement, fits the conditions to be deemed as antisemitic as opposed to ‘just’ being anti-Israel. To understand the BDS as an antisemitic movement we will use the criteria as put forward by Natan Sharansky, a human rights activist who spent nine-years in a soviet prison. NS is the fourth ever non-American to receive the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. NS created standards to exactly identify antisemitism and separate it from legitimate criticism of Israeli policies and actions. These standards were adopted by the US department of State in 2010 and are called the 3D standards: Delegitimize, Demonize, and Double standard. Any set of beliefs or actions that express any one of these 3Ds, wins the title of being antisemitic. We will show that BDS scores on all three accounts:
Delegitimize. BDS openly and clearly delegitimizes and denies Israel’s right to exist. BDS goes beyond rejecting the creation of Israel as a state by the UN and denies the factual history of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. Leaders of the BDS movement openly express their opinion that Israel should not exist. This is exemplified by the founder, Dr. Omar Barghouti, who is a PhD graduate of Tel-Aviv University (we will return to the irony here when noting the double standard criteria), who is quoted as follows: “I am completely and categorically against bi-nationalism because it assumes that there are two nations with equal moral claims to the land.”
Demonize. The BDS movement as projected by its propagators demonizes Israel and the Jews, where Israel is described as “brutal,” “murderous” and as performing “ethnic cleansing.” The readers must recognize the irony here given the repeated attempts throughout the history of Arab world entities to eliminate Israel, and where at current times Israel is at the front fighting Islamist terror organizations set to spread the Sharia law. See the antisemitic slurs put forward by related organizations. Here we point out the pro-Hamas toolkit put forward by SJP following few days after the October massacre. (This toolkit can be found online, where we also provided a copy for KW records). And now we are seeing that SJP, an openly antisemitic organization, through its local chapter here at KSU is propagating the BDS agenda.
Double Standard. BDS is quite the expert in double standard agenda. BDS avoids in its written literature any mentioning or criticism of Hamas, Sharia law, terror attacks, and any actions that place Gazan people at the eye of the storm as the manufacturing of weapons within civilian installations as widely done by Hamas. Furthermore, most striking the BDS leadership never addresses the FACT that Israel is the only consistent democracy in the Middle east, while surrounded by some of the most vicious, theocratic, autocratic, dictatorial, oppressive Islamist regimes, including some failed states. Still BDS singles only Israel out for divesting. The plight for human rights of Palestinians across the region and the world is COMPLETELY ignored. BDS (as the SJP) does NOT care at all for the Palestinians — if they did, they would have pushed for improving the horrifying conditions in the overcrowded refugee camps in Arab countries, or for reforming UNRWA. However, the BDS movement prefers to cement the refugee status for generations, three and counting.
We shall point out the uniqueness of the refugee status inherited by birth, where else do we see such unique refugee status? Our families immigrated from Poland, Russia, Yemen, and Ukraine, all under duress, yet there is no history of any of us retaining refugee status and having children in American who then become refugees of a country we had to leave. The Jewish people have been kicked around the world for 3,000 years. We were the first nation of Israel. This fact is shared multiple times in the books of the two religions that evolved from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And while we are the indigenous people of Israel, we still want Palestinians to develop their own country next to ours. We are ready to work toward peaceful coexistence, but Hamas and by association, SJP and the BDS are committed to our genocide.
• The petition has gained over 620 signatures, what would you say to those who signed or what advice would you offer them?
Well-meaning liberals who bear good intentions must recognize that supporting pro-Hamas SJP and their genocidal agenda does not help the Palestinian people nor Israel to find a peaceful solution. What message are those who signed willing to give to the victims of the Oct. 7 attacks? Does a call to divest from Israel following October 7th helps this region to evolve toward a fully balanced humanistic future? Not even close! It is discriminatory and supports the mechanism of suffering.
Look, the well-manicured BDS text and agenda (as opposed to that by SJP) is not coincidental. Nevertheless, it must be called out for its destructive and antisemitic character. BDS is motivated to attract well-meaning liberals and does so by covering its true agenda, where it replaces referring to “Jews” and “death to Israel” by calls for “justice” and “human rights.” However, know well that any activist supporting the BDS, and all who are part of the SJP, are actively contributing to an effort to eliminate the state of Israel. Look into the slogans “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” It is literal. Other slogans hail terror actions, “Long live the intifada” and “75 years of occupation” (please do the math to understand the call to eliminate Israel as a state).
Ironically, such propaganda as put forward by the BDS and SJP only adds to the bloodshed, where the victims are not only the Israelis but in bigger numbers the Palestinian people themselves.
• There is a section of Ohio law against boycotts similar to such. Do you think there are other ways the students could have approached such?
Yes, students should be well informed before engaging in activism, demonstrations and in calls for divesting from Israel. Are these actions helping any worthy cause, are these actions well founded in facts?
Here is an article that provides more information about Ohio law in regard to hate/antisemitic/antizionist based boycotts which the Hamas offshoot SJP is trying to package as if they are concerned about “human rights” and unknowing students are being lured into supporting. (link not provided as links are not allowed in responses posted)
• Continuing with that, since it is against the laws, what potential harm can come from boycotts like this one?
If universities participate in these unfair practices, they will promote more hate, more racism, more dehumanization, more ignorance, less peace, less humanity, and less prosperity for all concerned. There is also a chance that at some point, governmental funding of universities that support antigovernment (as ultimately, these actions end up being anti-American, as we fight a global enemy using our campuses for activities that tear apart the fabric of our society; the SJP toolkit also refers to the turtle island as occupied land that needs to be liberated) will be eliminated. Did you forget that at least 32 of those murdered by the perpetrators of October 7th were American and eight Americans are still held as hostages in Gaza?
• Do you think there is anything else people should know regarding these boycotts?
As we explained above the BDS movement has it roots with the Arab league boycott declared already in 1945. Right after the holocaust the Arab leadership decided that their best action is to impose an antisemitic policy.
The Jewish people and Israel as a country are both guided by strong principles regarding human rights. South African recently received a hefty sum of money from Hamas to start the blood libel claim that Israel is committing genocide. This is a lie. Israel if fighting a very difficult war of tracking terrorists in tunnels of Gaza, under an area where they have provided no safe harbor for their own people. Hamas has terrorized, beaten, and killed Gazan citizens, intentionally and by using them as human shields. Hamas has promised to commit genocide in Israel and their act of October 7th had genocidal intentions. There has never been a war in history, before this current battle with Hamas to return hostages and destroy this genocidal terrorist organization, where fewer civilians were killed percentage wise and in relation to combatants. If students care about human life and freedom, they should be protesting for the release of the hostages taken from Israel (including Americans) and the surrender of Hamas. This is a step toward a peaceful and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Here are some positive actions students can take: Go and learn about the academic institute of the “Arava” school, a joint venture of Jordanians, Israelis, and Palestinians. Look into the actions of peace seeking individuals such as Vivian Silver, a Canadian-born Israeli activist who devoted her life to seeking peace with the Palestinians. She was one of the victims of October 7. Go listen to Gazan people as Hamza Howidy who beg the world to help remove Hamas from point of power.
Instead, these boycotts aim to hurt the victims of Hamas’s terror, and to strengthen their agenda. Shame on those who want to cause any further suffering to the Nation of Israel.
• Is there anything else you would like KentWired readers to know?
We continue to call good willing readers who have the best of intentions, educate yourself of the facts. Use your voice to call for the eradication of hate and encourage compromise. All humankind deserves the right to live with safety and dignity. If Hamas leadership is removed we can see both sides moving forward toward a sustainable solution.
Currently, we see ZERO pressure on Hamas to act sensibly by international advocacy groups, which claim to be pro-Palestinian. However, if one truly acts to help the Palestinians, the priority must be. to call for removing Hamas from point of governance. This is high priority not only for Israel but first and foremost for the Palestinians themselves. This stand can be critical of Israeli policies as it merely accepts the moral ground of the western world, where a democratic state is expected to act on behalf of its citizens and protect them from violent threat.
As decedents of holocaust survivors who celebrated life and loved Israel, we hold on to the comfort in knowing that these relatives of ours are not here to see the vehement antisemitism that is attempting to dominate college campuses in America.
In expressing these views we acknowledge Noa Tishbi book “Israel” as a useful resource. Also, for the benefit of your readership, we share a link to the Doctrine of Hamas (link not provided as this is not allowed in a response post) put forth by the Wilson Center, a US Congressionally chartered and bipartisan research organization.
And finally, I would like to quote Noted American Civil Rights Leader John Lewis, “I want to make it very clear that I disagree strongly with the BDS movement. Economic, educational and cultural interaction with Israel, America’s democratic ally, is not only in the best interest of Israelis and Americans, but it improves the climate for peace with Palestinians, which is in everyone’s interests to encourage.”