Last year my old alma mater funded student political organizations that called specifically for murder and presumably for the murder of Jews. At an event sponsored by the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), among a few other like-minded groups, honoring the late Columbia professor of the Humanities, Edward Said, signs were held aloft calling for the murder of "colonizers."
The people that I spoke to on campus all hold significant institutional positions at the university. They are people with their finger on the pulse of that campus, yet they seemed mystified about just who these "colonizers" in need of killing might be. Nonetheless, I feel reasonably certain that when hard-left students, who happen to be members of the General Union of Palestine Students, hold up signs that read, My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers, that they do not mean Rosicrucians or Rastafarians, they mean Jews.
The irony, of course, could hardly be more rich. The Arabs that flowed from the Saudi Peninsula in the seventh-century were among the greatest, most vicious, and most successful colonizers in human history. They conquered much of Europe and still often hold out hope for the reconquest of Al-Andalus, which you and I might know as the country of Spain. They also kept the Jews in a state of submission for thirteen centuries until the movement for Jewish liberation, Zionism, freed us from perpetual dhimmitude and persecution in the part of the world that the Jewish people have lived in for millenia.
This is because while Abdulhadi might share and encourage Mr. Hammad's disposition toward the Jewish people, as a university professor, she clearly has the wits not to hold up a knife on a social media website in order to discuss a desire to stab Jews.
I have her listed in my notes from the time, but I never wrote about her because, in truth, I find this whole nasty situation with SFSU to be unbecoming. I used to love that campus. I not only received a Master's Degree in History there, but I also met my wife in that department. Some of the happiest years of my life were spent at San Francisco State and arriving at that campus in the late 1990s represented a true turning point in my life.
Of course, I also distinctly recall walking past Malcolm X Plaza, in front of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, and witnessing the Palestinian organization at that time, presumably GUPS, in solidarity with the Pan-African student organization holding aloft a banner that replaced the five-pointed stars in the American flag with 50 little Stars of David.
It was just little racist reminder to the tiny Jewish minority on campus that they better keep in line.
In truth, it should not have taken me a full ten years after that moment to acknowledge the fact that the western left is very definitely no friend to the Jewish people.
The blood red on the fist that Abdulhadi proudly displays on her SFSU webpage reminds this Jew of the proud display of blood captured in the picture below taken directly after two young Jewish IDF members were lynched by an Arab-Muslim mob, after taking a wrong turn in Ramallah upon the start of the Second Terror War (intifada) in 2000.
This is what Benjamin writes:
Dear Friends and Supporters:
A California Public Records Act inquiry, requested by AMCHA Initiative, revealed that San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi received more than $7,000 from SFSU to fly to Jordan, the West Bank and Israel to meet with known a terrorist and individuals closely affiliated with terrorist organizations.
Abdulhadi claimed the purpose of her trip was for academic and University business-related reasons and she concealed the true nature of her trip - personal political activism - on at least four documents with administrators, including President Wong, who approved the trip. Evidence demonstrated that Abdulhadi had actually always intended to use the University-funded trip to build relationships with anti-Israel political activists to promote anti-Semitic academic, cultural and economic boycotts of Israel, and the meetings were set before Abdulhadi requested University approval.
This is the same professor who was the faculty advisor to the SFSU knife-wielding student investigated by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force. She was also caught on tape glorifying terrorism to SFSU students.My initial reaction was to close my eyes and turn away because I simply do not want to deal with this.
I do not want to call down to that campus and, as an alumnus, complain about the fact that the university literally funds student groups that calls for the murder of Jews. What are we supposed to do? Call the office of SFSU President Dr. Wong and talk with some administrative assistant about how funding student organizations that spread violent hatred toward others is perhaps not in the university's mission statement?
I just do not want to feel that the university wherein I met my wife not only tolerates violent hatred directed towards us, but quite literally funds that hatred.
I have no intention of pursuing this story beyond this post - although I may - because I simply do not want to go through this again. If San Francisco State University wishes to gain a reputation as the most anti-Semitic campus in the United States, today, then there is very little that I can possibly do to dissuade them.
I would suggest, however, that the administration might consider the notion that funding student organizations that call for murder, or funding their advisor's trip to visit with Jihadis, is not necessarily very good for the university's reputation.
Heck, SFSU does not really need its Jews, anyway.
I am certain that they will get along just fine without us.