This one is important, but complex. You may want to read my Nov 16 post first, if you haven’t already. It’s about the course I am taking to help me understand the world of post-modernism, decolonization, intersectionality, oppressor/oppressed, white/non-white which permeates so much thinking in the humanities and social sciences at universities today. And how the departments which teach these subjects are set up in such a way not to have an open search for “truth”, but to start with a “given” and look for supportive facts. And how Jews are classified as “white” and therefore are in the “oppressor” class, and that Israel is a place that is illegitimate and must be “decolonized”. If you do not believe this, you are not “woke”, as this term in used by the proponents of this way of thinking.

[As an aside, it may be that Jews are classified as “white” by these post-modern intellectuals, but they are classified as “not white” by white supremacists. Beginning to see the problem?]

Now, let’s dig a little deeper. You may have seen that Brandeis, Columbia, Fordham, George Washington University and all Florida public universities and colleges have suspended or decertified an organization called Students for Justice in Palestine, which is one of the most active of the anti-Israel “from the river to the sea” groups, on campuses nationwide.

[Another aside: In Florida, Gov. DeSantis banned these groups from public institutions state-wide. He and the State have been sued on the basis that this is a violation of members’ free speech. Who brought the suit? The ACLU. This is one more reason why I just do not like the ACLU, and haven’t since the Skokie Nazi march incident decades ago. I view the ACLU’s putting free speech on a pedestal the same way I view all those organizations which put religious expression or the right to own guns on a pedestal. Sorry, ACLU supporters, but that is how I feel.]

Let’s go back to Students for Justice in Palestine. It may surprise you to know that this organization (which keeps its address, officials, members, and financial supporters a secret – or tries to) has between 200 and 300 (another secret) active branches on US campuses. And that it does have a website: http://www.nationalsjp.org. (By the way, it is not a tax exempt 501(c)(3) organization)

Five days after the Hamas attack on Israel, SJP declared a “Day of Resistance” on more than 200 campuses. It issued a toolkit instructing local chapters on how to act and react. It called Israel a vassal state of the United States, and a state that has been engaged in genocidal activity to its founding. It clearly supports the destruction of “the Zionist entity”, although it has not – to my knowledge – threatened Jewish genocide, and it welcomes Jewish supporters. On its website, Students for Justice for Palestine also supporters various black, feminist and Latino/a movements for freedom, saying all of these movements are closely related. This, of course, is consistent with the post-modern, woke, decolonizing teaching described above and on my blog post of two days ago.

In the toolkit, the SJP declared that October 7 was an “historic win for the Palestinian resistance”. Some of its campus branch organizations went further. For example, Michigan: “Power to our freedom fighters. Glory to our martyrs.” John Jay College: “Do not let the Western media call this terrorism. This is DECOLONIZATION.” Swarthmore: “There exists only the colonized and the colonizer, an oppressed and an oppressor. To resist is to survive and it is our right.” [These statements were quoted in an excellent article by Judy Maltz in Haaretz on Friday]

The origins of Students for Justice in Palestine is a bit murky, but it is clear that one of the founders is a man named Hatem Bazian, originally from Nablus in the West Bank and now on the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley. It is of continual interest that so many leaders of this pro-Palestinian movement are at Berkeley, at San Francisco State, at U Cal Davis – and other branches of the California public university system.

If you were to grade Hatem Bazian on his level of activity, you would have to give him an A. Just look at the Maltz article (if you can get beyond the paywall) or better yet, look at his own website (www.hatembazian.com). This is one active fellow, and he has started a number of organizations, including Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine. Maltz talks about attempts to link these organizations itself to Hamas (Bazian denies any direct connection) to see if there are any funding links. Her conclusion is (to paraphrase) that it’s possible to see the smoke, but no one yet has found the fire. She also cites a few statements by Bazian that go beyond criticism of Israel and seem to target Jews more generally – such as the influence Jews have on American Universities, which can be seen by the names on so many university buildings.

I am not going to go further into Bazian’s many writings and activities – he is one of the ultimate “woke, post-modern” intellectuals, who sees Israel and Israel’s supporters (which include not only the United States, but many “Zionist Arabs”, those Arabs, mainly from the countries party to the Abrahamic Accords) as colonialists, occupying Palestinian land, pure and simple. He concentrates, as you would expect, on the West Bank as well as Gaza, and (this time perhaps more understandably) rails against Israeli settlements, and annexation threats. But he sees it all in the context of his overall theory.

From all of this, one can see the difficulty universities have in policing organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which are national in scope, have available teaching or action resources, and which may or may not be well funded. But identifying SJP and the people and forces behind it, is clearly a first step. The question is, though: what is step number two?