A group accused of providing support for terrorists is holding their national conference at George Mason University, a state-funded Virginia institution. Students for Justice in Palestine will hold a two day conference on the Fairfax campus of George Mason University. The conference announcement states:
The conversations we have will be important and pertinent to the student movement, so we want to see as many faces as possible! Let's keep growing and building together as we strive for a free Palestine.
The organization is also seeking donations to pay for travel for students from around the country to travel to Virginia for the conference. The national conference is set for November 4 to 6, 2016.
Students for Justice for Palestine has been branded a “hate group.” The Anti-Defamation League says “SJP has consistently demonized Israel, describing Israeli policies toward the Palestinians as racist and apartheid-like, and comparing Israelis to Nazis or Israel to the Jim Crow-era U.S.”
David Horowitz, prolific author and head the David Horowitz Freedom Center, described the organization to me that will be meeting at the George Mason University conference:
SJP is a front for the Hamas terrorists, carrying out their propaganda and spearheading their BDS [boycott, divest, sanction] agendas on campus. It’s an outrage that universities recognize SJP as a student group and fund their pro-terrorist activities.
SJP was founded by Hatem Bazian. As Daniel Mael has written:
Bazian’s extremist rhetoric can be traced at least as far back as 1999, when, in a presentation at an academic conference, he favorably recited a famous anti-Semitic passage from the Quran: “The Day of Judgment will not happen until the trees and stones will say, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’” (He later denied having done so.) In 2011, he helped organize the “Never Again For Anyone” speaking tour, during which the Holocaust was invoked and thePalestinians likened to the Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany.
The organization has been tied to mock eviction notices being slipped under dorm doors, including dorms which contain Sabbath compliant elevators.
One George Mason staff member tells me that some of the same organizers for SJP at George Mason are the same people who led the fight to oppose renaming the Law School in Justice Antonin Scalia’s honor.
Members from SJP from all over the nation are slated to come to Virginia to attend the conference. SJP has at least 215 active chapters on American college campuses. Most college chapters are funded by student activity funds that all members of the entire student body must pay.
New York legislators threatened to cut off public university funding at one college if support for SJP continued. It remains to be seen if Virginia legislators will be concerned.
Groups such as Christians United for Israel, at least, have opposed the anti-Israel rhetoric of SJP and growing threats of violence against Jewish students on campus.
Originally published at PJMedia.com