The Algemeiner reports that On February 17, students from more than 200 college campuses gathered at the University of  California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for the 12th annual National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) conference.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) is a radical student organization that has chapters on university campuses across the US, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand. SJP maintains a heavily biased approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict, with its members frequently calling for the dissolution of the State of Israel, hosting vigils for terrorists, and spreading misinformation. Worse yet, SJP also targets Jewish students on campus.

While Israel can be criticized to the same degree as any other country, SJP’s rhetoric routinely crosses the line, promoting a narrative that attempts to mainstream anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment under the guise of social justice and advocacy for human rights.

In 2018, when UCLA also hosted the national SJP conference, the conference website asserted that “Zionism is a human ideology and a set of laws that have been challenged and can be destroyed.” The website also falsely accused the State of Israel of  “ethnic cleansing, destruction, mass expulsion, apartheid, and death.”

National SJP’s open bigotry and their appeal to these antisemitic tropes is reprehensible.

This year, the conference claimed to “allow participants to return to their respective campuses with the tools, connections, and motivation to build new campaigns or fortify work already underway.”

The recent “work” and “campaigns” by SJP chapters around the country are unsurprisingly antisemitic.

In January 2022, the SJP chapter at the University of Chicago called for a boycott of all courses related to Israel or taught by Israeli academics, a campaign they continue to promote to this day.

On September 7, 2022, the SJP chapter at the University of Wisconsin-Madison opened the first day of classes with graffiti targeting various Jewish organizations. Afterward, SJP stated that it was “strictly a comment on Zionism,” although SJP’s graffiti named five Jewish organizations on campus: Hillel, Chabad, and TAMID, and claimed that the organizations have “blood on their hands”.

Between September 2022 and January 2023, SJP chapters at Ohio State University, Georgetown, and UMass Amherst also lionized terrorists from numerous terror cells including the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Lions’ Den. These terrorist organizations call for Israel’s destruction, and their members have attempted, and in some cases, succeeded in murdering Jewish people.

In addition to glorifying terrorism, SJP misrepresents Zionism, demonizing the term in order to promote anti-Jewish bigotry.

Last year at the UC Berkeley School of Law, nine anti-Zionist groups adopted a bylaw promoted by Law Students for Justice in Palestine to ban Zionist speakers from club activities. At SUNY New Paltz, Jewish survivors of sexual assault were excluded from survivor circles because of their connection to Israel.

To ban speakers from club activities and to exclude a survivor of sexual assault on the basis of their Zionist-Jewish identity is antisemitic.

In truth, Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of the Jewish people, nothing more, nothing less; it is a belief that is inextricably linked to Jewish identity for most Jews.

Source - The Algemeiner/Twitter - Image - Pixabay