“Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP) is a blatantly anti-Semitic group with more than 150 active chapters throughout America and Canada.
The organization was formed to attract radical leftist activists, including anti-Zionist Jews, to the Palestinian cause. The increasing number of foreign students attending American universities seems to be a significant factor in the growth of SJP activism.
SJP coordinates its activities with other anti-Israel organizations like the Muslim Students Association (MSA), the General Union of Palestinian Students, and the Muslim Student Union. SJP was originally formed as an offshoot of the MSA – which was founded in the 1960s with help from a Saudi charity and the Muslim Brotherhood.
The MSA seeks to recruit members for the brotherhood and to promote Islamic identity. Many chapters are pushing to end America’s support for Israel.
In 2007, the New York Police Department highlighted MSA as an “incubator” for Islamic radicalism, and several of the group’s leaders and members have been involved in terror attacks. These include:
• University of Arizona MSA President Wa’el Julaidan; one of Al-Qaeda’s founders
• Rutgers University MSA co-founder Ramzi Yousef; locked up for masterminding 9/11
• University of Massachusetts MSA Associate Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; currently on trial for the Boston Marathon bombing
SJP is also associated with American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which uses SJP’s organizational structure to push its anti-Semitic agenda and to train activists. Some believe that AMP has links to Hamas, a group labeled “terrorist” by the EU, the US, Canada, and others.
SJP is ruining the college experience for Jewish students.
Under the guise of social justice and human rights, SJP is hosting events on American campuses that demonize Israel and its supporters.
“Their whole way of being on campus is creating a hostile environment for Jewish students; an environment where Jewish students are afraid to speak up. And that’s not what a college experience is supposed to be about,” says Susan Tuchman, Director of the Zionist Organization of America’s Center for Law and Justice.
New York’s American Fordham University has decided to ban SJP chapters from its campus. “Fordham has no registered student clubs the sole focus of which is the political agenda of one nation, against another nation,” reads a statement issued in January. “The narrowness of SJP’s political focus makes it more akin to a lobbying group than a student club.”
University watchdog Canary Mission has also detected a rise in anti-Semitism in US campuses. The group recently reported an increase in anti-Jewish Facebook posts by students at the University of Texas, Arlington (UTA) and has identified over 20 examples of current and former students denying the Holocaust, calling for violence against Jews, and comparing Israel to Nazi Germany.
The majority of these posts come from students involved with the MSA, the SJP, or both. Canary Mission states that its new findings represent a “fraction of the hatred and intolerance that SJP and its members harbor on campuses across North America.”