GUPS Fights Back and Say "Hello" to the AMCHA Initiative (Updated)

Michael L.

In a recent petition to the office of San Francisco State University president, Les Wong, the General Union of Palestine Students is having its say, as it surely deserves.

Dear President Wong, 

We are writing in response to the email sent to you and others by Tammi Benjamin, AMCHA initiative. We are appalled at this blatant attack against the integrity and principled position that GUPS AMED has maintained throughout their history. We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS, AMED, and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late Professor Edward Said.

We are proud to continue the rich legacy of justice-centered student activism at SFSU. GUPS has historically stood for justice in/for Palestine and has linked our struggle with that of all people’s struggles for self-determination, justice and peace.

We are concerned over our own safety and the safety of our friends, allies, and all those standing in solidarity with our movement, especially when their photos and names have been posted online as if to make them a moving target for violence.

This belligerent smear campaign meant to slander the Palestinian movement on campus has directly created a hostile environment that makes it impossible for us to express our views and exercise our academic freedom.

We call upon you, President Wong, to:


Condemn this smear campaign

Uphold our academic freedom as a core value of SFSU

Ensure our safety and the safety of all 

List of Endorsers and Signatories:

Student Kouncil of InterTribal Nations (SKINS)

Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztlan (MEChA de San Pancho)

The letter written by Tammi Benjamin, the co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative and a lecturer in Hebrew at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is here, dated November 18.

Dear President Wong,

We are the co-founders of AMCHA Initiative, an organization dedicated to investigating, documenting, educating about and combatting campus antisemtism.

We are writing to you regarding an event that took place at SFSU last Thursday as part of the General Union of Palestine Students’ 6th Annual Palestinian Mural Celebration entitled “We Speak for Ourselves; Honoring our Forebearers”.

During the afternoon, as part of the day’s programming, there were tables set up in Malcolm X Plaza for art projects. On the tables were cans of spray paint and stencils. One stencil was an image of Leila Khaled, a member of the U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP was responsible for several plane hijackings, suicide bombings that killed several Jews, and the assassination of a Jewish member of the Israeli Knesset.

Another stencil bore the words ”MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS“. In the context of the day’s events honoring the Palestinian Mural’s subject Edward Said, who notoriously accused the Jewish state of being “colonialist”, the stencil clearly refers to the killing of Jews.

These stencils were used to make signs carried by students in the plaza. (You can see pictures of a stencil and sign below).

Rhetoric that glorifies and honors the murderers of Jews is antisemitic.

GUPS received several thousand dollars to mount this program from the Associated Students, Inc. and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, as well as the co-sponsorship of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative in the College of Ethnic Studies.

We would like to ask you the following questions:

1) Is it acceptable behavior for GUPS, a University sanctioned and funded student organization, to run an antisemitic on-campus activity that encourages students to glorify the murder of Jews?

2) Is it acceptable behavior for AMED, an official academic unit, to sponsor an event that includes an antisemitic on-campus activity that encourages students to glorify the murder of Jews?

Your reply is of interest to many in the Jewish community.

Please note that Jewish community leaders from across the state have been copied on this email.

We look forward to your reply in the near future.

Sincerely,

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative

Leila Beckwith Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative

CC: CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White CSU Board of Trustees CSU Interim General Counsel Andrew Jones Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, Senior Scholar, AMED Kenneth Monteiro, Dean of College of Ethnic Studies Andrenike Hamilton, President SFSU Associated Students, Inc. Guy Dalpe, Managing Director Cesar Chavez Student Center California State Senator Leland Y. Yee (San Francisco) California State Senator Mark Leno (San Francisco) California Assembly Member Philip Y. Ting (San Francisco) California Senator Carol Liu, Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Education California Assembly Member Joan Buchanan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee California Jewish community leader.

What I find most unusual about this exchange is the fact that, on the one hand, we have Tammi Benjamin, an academic in the California University system alerting the SFSU administration to violent threats against Jewish people on its campus and GUPS, those making the threats, suggesting that Jewish objection to anti-Jewish violence is somehow unfounded.

It's fascinating, really.

Let's take a gander at the central assertions of each party.

Tammi Benjamin says this:

Another stencil bore the words ”MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS KILLED COLONIZERS“. In the context of the day’s events honoring the Palestinian Mural’s subject Edward Said, who notoriously accused the Jewish state of being “colonialist”, the stencil clearly refers to the killing of Jews.

Does anyone suppose that when the General Union of Palestine Students refers to "colonizers" that they don't mean the Jews of the Middle East?  In what other way can this possibly be taken?  Furthermore, of course, even if "colonizers" refers to say, Anglos in North America, or Arabs outside of Saudi Arabia, surely calling for the murder of any despised group, even Jews, is not appropriate on American university campuses.

This is Benjamin's concern and it is my concern, as well.

The Jews of the Middle East represent 6 million people and control .5 percent of the landmass.  They are surrounded by 400 million Arabs who, for the most part, do not want them there and who do not accept Jewish sovereignty on Jewish land despite 3,500 years of history on that land.

In response, GUPS writes this:

We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS, AMED, and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late Professor Edward Said.

How can these criticisms be baseless when we have a photograph of a student holding up one of GUPS signs calling quite specifically for murder?

"My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers."



Well, just who are these colonizers in need of killing?

I have to say, the Nazis thought that my family was pretty much in need of killing and they did an outstanding job of it in the Ukrainian town of Medzhybizh in July of 1941.

GUPS writes:

We are concerned over our own safety and the safety of our friends, allies, and all those standing in solidarity with our movement, especially when their photos and names have been posted online as if to make them a moving target for violence.

In other words, this organization calls for violence against Jews and then, given the slightest push-back by a female Jewish academic in Santa Cruz, suddenly feels that it is threatened by violence?

Given the history of hostility toward the tiny Jewish minority at San Francisco State University such a claim is fairly hysterical.  It is nonsense.  The fact of the matter is that it has traditionally been the small Jewish minority at SFSU that has been threatened with violence by young Arab student radicals who do not believe that the State of Israel should ever have come into to being to begin with.

Update:

Dusty from Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers has created a blog called San Francisco State Unbecoming.

She writes:

On November 7, 2013 the General Union of Palestinian Studies at San Francisco State University set in motion a chain of events that served to highlight the intolerance, the bigotry and anti-semitism of their group. This site will be an archive of what transpired afterward.

I would encourage you guys to check it out and use it as an archive and resource for those who want to get involved in this conversation.

"Canned Palestinian Children Meat"

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

I arrived at San Francisco State University in the fall of 1996.

It is getting to be a rather long time, now, but in those days the school just bubbled with politics in a way that I thought was exceedingly positive.  The Caesar Chavez Student Center was always abuzz with students yammering at one another concerning issues of social justice and Malcolm X Plaza would often find students behind tables handing out flyers and discussing significant issues of the day.

Although I have not been on campus for awhile, I assume it is probably much the same today.

I will never forget the afternoon in which I was strolling across campus on a beautiful day, heading to a class, when I found myself confronted by a poster put up by a student organization and a bunch of those students milling around and yelling.  It showed a hand-painted American flag, but instead of fifty little five-pointed stars in the upper-left corner, it had fifty little Stars of David.

{Oh, joy.}

It was surreal to stand there looking at impassioned students "of color" screeching to the heavens that Zionists (i.e., "the Jews") are evil and are committing atrocities in "Palestine."  It was like some alternative universe from the Twilight Zone in which Nazis were replaced by urban students of Middle Eastern and African descent screeching to the heavens for Jewish blood and doing so for reasons of social justice and human rights.

It has to be understood that the Nazis were also idealists and that it is no coincidence that among Hitler's greatest fans were German college students who believed in their souls in the rightness of the cause.  When students of Arab descent go onto American campuses, today, and rally against the Jews of the Middle East they are continuing a tradition of blood libel and hate they goes not only to the history of Nazi Germany, but to Muhammad, himself, in the 7th century.

Apparently, however, I am not the only one who felt that way.  Shortly after I departed SFSU, Laurie Zoloth, Professor of Ethics and Director of Jewish Studies at San Francisco State at the time, had a similar experience.  As noted in a New York Post article by John Podhoretz, dated May 14, 2002:

"I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to walk across campus daily, past posters of cans of soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead babies, labeled ‘canned Palestinian children meat, slaughtered according to Jewish rites.’ "

Canned Palestinian Children Meat, Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License.

If what I saw at SFSU was bad, what Professor Zoloth saw was considerably worse.

As Podhoretz writes:

In an account confirmed by other witnesses, Laurie Zoloth described the disgusting denouement following a “Peace in the Middle East” rally sponsored by the SFSU Hillel. 

A group of students, numbering around 50, had remained to chant afternoon prayers. At that moment, “Counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to ‘Get out or we will kill you’ and ‘Hitler did not finish the job.’ I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the plaza, to maintain the separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone . . .    

“The police could do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and community members who were now trapped in a corner of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for our deaths, surrounded us. . . .  There was no safe way out of the Plaza. We had to be marched back to the Hillel House under armed S.F. police guard, and we had to have a police guard remain outside Hillel.”

The only real question at this moment, however, is what SFSU president Wong intends to do about the fact that the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) incited to violence against the Jewish people?

Here is his statement on the matter.  It does not amount to much other than that he is "disturbed," "dismayed," and has "concerns."  Well, I am a tad disturbed, dismayed, and have concerns, as well.

Thankfully, a variety of outlets have picked up this story.  The popular blog, Israellycool, has a piece entitled, San Francisco State University Student Openly Supports Terrorists, in which they point out that My heroes have always killed colonizers has its own Facebook page.

And, I have to say, I just love this:

Monday, October 14, 2013 Time5:30 pm in PDT 

Description Back by popular demand! 

It’s the Second Annual: “My HEROES Have Always Killed Colonizers: Stories of Global Indigenous REZistance” 

– a night of song, words, and resistance, a celebration of every global indigenous warrior who’s been labeled a terrorist, unpatriotic, and/or savage while defending the land, the people, and our traditional ways. Through storytelling, spoken word and performance we will collectively Re-Indigenize our heroes, such as Leila Khaled, Boukman, Lapu-Lapu, Lolita Lebron, Toy Purina and Geromino so that they may claim their true role in history. October 14, Indigenous Peoples Day, is reclaimed from the genocidal legacy of Colonizer Colombus. Join us this night, as we ask “Which colonizers have your heroes resisted?” Doors open at 5:30pm. Early arrival is suggested as last year’s event was sold out! Live Silkscreening! Native FOOD! Performances start at 6pm.

In solidarity with First Nations’ struggles against alcoholism, this event is Alcohol FREE.

I have to give considerable thanks to Dusty, at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers, for initially fielding this story and to the Elder of Ziyon for running with it.

Also, it should be noted that the president of GUPS, Mohammad Hammad, may have some issues.

According to the Jewish Press:

It appears the president of a university-funded student group at San Francisco State boasted how much he loved his knife and that it made him want to stab an Israeli soldier. 

The Simon Wiesenthal Center sent a warning to officials at San Francisco State University on Monday, Dec. 2, advising them of a potential threat to Jewish students there.  

The basis for the warning was the posting on the social media forum Tumblr which appears to be by the president of San Francisco State’s General Union of Palestine Students, Mohammad Hammad.  

The photo shows Hammad with a knife, beneath which is the caption, “I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.”  

This is developing into a serious story and one that I have a clear interest in pursuing.

But I have to wonder, what kind of idiot is this kid, anyway?

I mean, really, it's not hard to understand why a child of Arab descent might despise the Jewish State of Israel, given the fact that Jewish sovereignty on historically Jewish land is entirely anathema to the umma for religious reasons.  But to be the president of the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State University and to hold up a knife on your Tumblr page while threatening violence against Jews might be a tad too much for even San Francisco State University.

We shall see.

State Funded Incitement to Murder at San Francisco State University

Michael L.



Calls for anti-Jewish violence among Palestinian-Arab students, and their friends, has been a problem for my alma mater, San Francisco State University, for quite some time.

On Thursday, November 7, 2013, The General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) at SFSU, in coalition with the Arab and Muslim Ethinicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), celebrated the sixth anniversary of a mural in honor of Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, according to San Francisco Examiner reporter, Jonah Owen Lamb.

During that celebration some students held up signs that read "My heroes have always killed colonizers."

As noted by the prominent pro-Jewish / pro-Israel Elder of Ziyon blog, they "handed out stencils of a picture of Leila Khaled, the PFLP terrorist who was involved in two plane hijackings and several other terror attacks."

They are also selling t-shirts of Ms. Khaled on their facebook page claiming that "resistance is not terrorism."



Within the pro-Jewish on-line community this story was initially brought to our attention by my friend Dusty at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers under the title, San Francisco State University: Dangerous Incitement to Violence.  

Dusty points out that SFSU's reputation is not exactly stellar in terms of its relationship with the Jewish people.

What I would suggest to the Arab students who care about such things at SFSU is that the Jews of the Middle East have been a tiny, oppressed minority under the heel of Arab-Muslim persecution since the rise of Islam in the 7th century.

For thirteen centuries the Jewish minority within the Middle East lived as a persecuted and reviled people for bigoted religious reasons and it was for bigoted religious reasons that Jewish numbers were kept artificially low under the boot of Arab-Muslim imperialism within the system of oppression known as dhimmitude, long before the modern state of Israel ever came into being.

The bottom-line, of course, is that the pro-Arab student organizations at SFSU have, essentially, called for violence against the Jewish minority and they do so, ironically enough, under the banner of social justice and human rights.

What I want to know is if SFSU president, Leslie Wong, intends to do anything about it other than murmuring platitudes about being "disturbed" and "dismayed" and having "concerns."

What the Bay Area Jewish community wants to know is just what Wong intends to do about a call for violence against the Jewish people on his own campus.

I intend for this to be a series of posts until we get a reasonable answer.

The Sharia Bomb

Michael L.

{Cross-posted at Jews Down Under and the Times of Israel.}

The tidbit below was written by Ron Ben-Yishai and published at Y-Net:

The way things look from Israel now, the assumption is that Obama has fortified himself behind a small and closed ideological circle. This circle believes in partial non-interventionism and has an aversion to international conflicts – not only in the Middle East but also in South East Asia. In regards to Iran, this circle believes in pursuing a permanent deal that allows Iran to reach the nuclear threshold, while containing the nuclear program in such a way that will bar Iran from ever crossing the threshold or attaining a nuclear weapon without the West noticing.

In Israel, officials say that if this outline becomes a reality, then it would be nothing short of a disaster for Israel. It would mean Iran will be three months away from creating the material it needs for a first nuclear bomb.

I never believed that Barack Obama had any real intention of preventing an Iranian nuke or what I am calling a Sharia Bomb.  It's a Sharia Bomb because ultimately it shores up the security of the Sharia-based regime in Tehran and will be very useful in spreading political Islam as the rest of the countries in the region, even Iran's Sunni competitors, look to that country as the strong horse.  The balance of power will shift away from the Sunnis toward the Shias and away from secular dictatorships toward the Islam-based theocratic dictatorships favored by Barack Obama.

The only real winners here are the Iranian regime and the Democratic party in the United States.   For Iran it's a huge win for obvious reasons.  It puts that country within sprinting distance of developing nuclear weaponry.  For the Democrats it means that they can claim that Obama kept the United States out of war and therefore we should support his successor candidate who, I suppose, is likely to be Hillary Clinton.

The wild card, of course, is Israel.

Will Israel go it alone?  Can Israel go it alone?  Or, has Obama sufficiently subdued Netanyahu and the Israelis so that they do not have the political capital or will to do whatever is necessary to upend the Iranian nuclear program?  One thing is certain, as I wrote in a previous piece, when Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic that he doesn't bluff... he was bluffing.

My guess is that Obama's real goal viz-a-viz Iranian nukes is to simply hold it off until he can dump the problem into the lap of his Democratic successor.  If he can keep the Iranians from going nuclear until sometime after the next election he will have done his job for the Democratic party, although betraying the country in the process.

Ultimately, history will look upon Obama as a weak president - perhaps the weakest in over a century - who eroded America's leadership role throughout the world for ideological reasons.  As someone who comes out of the political left I can tell you that what most "progressives" want is for the United States to be something akin to, say, Norway or France.  They want the US to become a social democratic state, which it basically is, already - and speaking strictly for myself, I do not necessarily have a problem with that.  What I do have a problem with, however, is that they also want the US to be just one country among 192 other countries, which is why Obama insists on "leading from behind."

No Cowboy Diplomacy for this guy, that much is certain.

What it means for Americans is that the US influence over its own destiny is undermined and what it means for Israel is that they can no longer depend upon either the good will of the United States, nor US ability to get things done.  If the US is incapable, or unwilling, to prevent Iranian nukes it tells Jerusalem that Washington, D.C. is not to be trusted.  Of course, they know that in Jerusalem anyway due to Obama's bungling of the latest attempted round at "peace talks" and his eagerness to twist Netanyahu's arm to do things like release the murderers of Jews into the loving embrace of Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority.

This is an exceedingly perilous moment in human history.  Since the United States is proving itself to be, under the current leadership, both weak and undependable, Israel will be forced to take matters into its own hands.  If Israel fails to act, and Iran goes nuclear, it essentially means that the Zionist project is finished.

If Zionism means anything it means that no longer will Jews live or die according to the whims of a non-Jewish despot.  But if Iran gets the bomb the Jews of the Middle East will, in fact, live or die according to the whims of whatever ayatollah happens to be in power in Tehran.  And for that we will owe a big smooch to Israel's Best Friend Forever, Barack Obama.

If, however, Israel does the world's dirty work for it by taking out Iranian nukes, the international community, including the Egyptians and the Saudis, will scream from the hilltops about Jewish-Zionist aggression and the "illegal" nature of Israeli methods of self-defense.  Progressive-left ideologues, of the sort that publish at Daily Kos or the Huffington Post or the UK Guardian, will flood their journals with veiled hatred toward Jews in the guise of hatred toward Zionism and the Jewish State of Israel.

At that point most western-left Jews will retreat into the fetal position, which is convenient considering how familiar they are with that position already.

This is Cultural

Michael L.



It doesn't even matter if these are Islamist rebels supported by the Obama regime - they are - or if they are Assad loyalists.

The question is, are we allowed to make cultural judgments or draw cultural distinctions or is that, too, considered "racist"?

Another question to ask is, how is it that so many well-meaning liberals in the United States support a president that gives money and arms to people who commit beheadings not only within the context of war, which is bad enough, but within the context of religion, which is just horrendous?

By the way, the victim in the video was apparently subject to a case of mistaken identity.  The murderers did, in fact, chop off the head of one of their allies.

Columnist Sarah Honig put it like this:

What would eventually be revealed as a case of macabre mistaken identity began at an Aleppo hospital, where a wounded man lay rambling incoherently. Somebody claimed he blurted out the names of Shiite holy men. Since Shiites constitute the military mainstay of despot Bashar Assad and his Alawite loyalists, nothing further was required to seal the fate of the semi-conscious patient.

He was dragged out of bed and it was off-with-his-head – as simple, as speedy and as savage as that. 

Obama Legitimizes Terrorism

Michael L.

The tidbit below was written by Ariel Ben Solomon and published by the Jerusalem Post:

The US and Hezbollah are in secret indirect talks managed by London dealing with the fight against Al-Qaida, regional stability and other Lebanese political issues.  

Senior British diplomatic sources, quoted in a report in Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai on Wednesday, said British diplomats are holding discussions with leaders of the Lebanese organization and transferring the information to the Americans.

The discussions “are aimed at keeping tabs on the changes in the region and the world, and prepare for the upcoming return of Iran to the international community,” according to diplomatic sources in Washington.

Because the US, unlike the UK, recognizes both the political and military wings of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and refuses to distinguish between them, US officials cannot legally meet with any member of the party. But according to the sources, the US is willing to hear the views of the party and “warm up to a direct relationship in the future.”

Hezbollah is, of course, an Islamist organization that hopes to install al-Sharia as the basis of government.  Al-Sharia, needless to say, oppresses women, calls for the murder of gay people outright, and seeks the domination of all non-Muslims within the historic system of persecution and exploitation known as dhimmitude.  It is also a terrorist organization in that it has targeted perfectly innocent people for death based on their religion and heritage.  And let us not forget, of course, that Hezbollah was behind the 1983 bombing of United States marine baracks in Beirut that killed 241 American GIs.

And now, under Obama, the US wants to “warm up to a direct relationship in the future” with this vile organization.

This represents yet another example of the lengthening list of ways in which the Obama administration has clearly and consistently and persistently supported the rise of political Islam throughout the Middle East, if not throughout the world, more generally.

The administration's focus on al-Qaeda is a red herring.  Al-Qaeda is just one organization among others that call for the Jihad against the west, and for the genocide of the Jews, but in its ideology, if not its tactics, it shares the same goals as the Muslim Brotherhood - out of which it was born - and Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the various Salafist organizations, and, yes, Hezbollah.

One of the reasons that Obama's foreign policy in the Middle East is so counterproductive is because of the central contradiction that resides at its heart.  In one breath Obama hypocritically condemns Qaeda and in the next he bolsters all the other major organizations that support Qaeda's ultimate goal of imposing Sharia wherever possible and on violently confronting the west whenever possible.

Finally, let us not forget that it was Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, who said, "If they [the Jews] all gather in Israel it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide."

And this is who Obama wants to warm up relations with?

I know that Obama's ostrich-like Jewish sycophants, like the vicious nitwit who ran the failed Progressive Zionist blog, will make excuses for anything that Obama says or does, but how it is that they can continue to support a president of the United States that consistently undermines their own interests, not to mention the general well-being of the Jewish people throughout the world, remains hard to grasp within any rational assessment of his behavior viz-a-viz Jews or viz-a-viz the Jewish State of Israel.  They might argue that because this is not about direct discussions with Hezbollah that it is much ado over nothing, but if the report is true it is an indication of just where this administration is headed.

The Obama administration needs to be reminded that just as one cannot support the Muslim Brotherhood and still claim to be a friend of the Jewish people, so one cannot support Hezbollah and claim to be a friend of the Jewish people.

Until such a time as Islamist organizations give up the Koranically-based Jew Hatred which resides at the heart of their religious tradition, no western politician can be supportive of them and still expect the friendship and backing of the Jewish people.

And, yet, they do and the majority of us, at least in the United States, still kiss their feet.