Who Is Paying for All This?

The Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP) has released a 73-page report updating previous reports on Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and identifying people and organizations supplying financial and logistical support to SJP amid the current wave of pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic protests sweeping the nation’s campuses. Prominent among them is American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). Both SJP and AMP were co-founded by UC Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian, whose name, naturally, appears in the report. The Daily Mail (UK) has posted this story, and the report itself, in pdf form, can be accessed here.

One of the figures identified in the report is Taher Herzallah of the AMP. Herzallah was one of the so-called “Irvine 11″, members of the UC Irvine and UC Riverside chapters of the Muslim Student Union who disrupted the speech of the Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, at the UC Irvine campus in 2010, which I personally witnessed.

One of the more comical features in the report (as if there is anything funny about this) is when Bazian, who reportedly controlled the Twitter account of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP),  mistakenly sent a message to CNN’s Jake Tapper complaining about his coverage of Rashida Tlaib from his personal account rather than the JVP account. 

“@JakeTapper your reporting on Rashida Tlaib’s Nakba 75 event was racist and anti-Palestinian. As Jews who believe in human rights and justice, we demand you do better,’”

As the Daily Mail points out, Bazian is hardly Jewish. He is Muslim, and as I point out, his actions and statements over the years, going back to when he was a student at San Francisco State University, have led to numerous charges of him being an anti-Semite (I concur with that assessment).

The report also points out the logistical support that has gone into these campus takeovers. This is hardly a grassroots effort. One can observe the expensive tents, which on some campuses, are uniform in size and color, the helmets worn by many protesters/occupiers, the huge plywood slabs encircling the UCLA encampment that had to be dismantled by police this week. As many experts have stated, some of the protesters/occupiers are students, while others are outsiders. NYPD (and certain media outlets like Fox News) have specifically identified known protest organizers.

In addition, many reports have claimed that billionaire activist George Soros is giving big bucks to these protests. I myself have no evidence of that, but I have little doubt that he is actively assisting.

Even more importantly, as ISGAP points out, there is the Hamas connection behind all this. Hamas is a US-designated terrorist organization. It was Hamas who started the war in Gaza with its horrendous attack against innocent Israeli civilians. It is Hamas that those protesting are supporting. And Hamas-linked organizations in the US are actively supporting what is happening on our campuses.

Someday, hopefully, we will get a US Justice Department that will aggressively investigate these organizations and individuals who are stoking all this hate, anti-Semitism, and violence. This is a nationally coordinated conspiracy to violate multiple laws as well as the civil rights of Jewish students. It deserves a nationally coordinated law enforcement response.