In a fiery rebuttal issued Wednesday, David Horowitz defended his reputation and that of his organization, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, from charges by a UCLA administrator that posters hung by the Freedom Center on UCLA’s campus targeting supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel are “hateful” and “thuggish” and use the “tactic of guilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander, and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially tinged fear.”
University of California-Los Angeles Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Jerry Kang sent an email attacking Horowitz to the entire UCLA community—some 50,000 individuals—calling the Freedom Center’s posters “repulsive” and “personalized intimidation” and stating that they produce “chilling psychological harm” that “cannot be dismissed as over-sensitivity.”
Kang also falsely characterized the Freedom Center’s previous poster campaign as “accusing two student organizations — the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — of being murderers and terrorists.”
In his response, Horowitz termed this accusation “a lie” noting that “The posters did not accuse SJP of being an organization of murderers and terrorists, as the Vice Chancellor claims. They accused SJP of being ‘Jew-haters’ because they support the murderers and terrorists of Hamas, which they do… In a public statement I also called on UCLA to remove the campus privileges and university funding of SJP because they are a hate group and their activities routinely violate UCLA’s ‘Statement of Principles Against Intolerance,’ which Vice Chancellor Kang professes to champion.”
Horowitz also challenged the Vice Chancellor’s claim that the posters constitute intimidation, stating “There is no intimidation on the posters, just a list of names of activists who support SJP and BDS… the posters don’t cast those listed on them as murderers and terrorists, just activists from Students for Justice in Palestine who supported the BDS boycott campaign. BDS has been denounced by figures as liberal as Alan Dershowitz and Larry Summers as anti-Semitic.”
“This disgraceful performance by a top university official demands a retraction and apology from the University of California and some serious reflection by Vice Chancellor Kang about the hateful content of his letter and the focused, personalized intimidation directed at myself and all those involved in putting up posters he happens to disagree with,” Horowitz concludes, noting that Kang might “also benefit from a re-reading of the First Amendment and learn to live with opinions he doesn’t like.” Horowitz’s full response to Vice Chancellor Kang may be read below.
The Freedom Center is responsible for posters appearing on five California campuses attacking the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel as a “Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.” Images of the posters which appeared on the campuses of UC-Santa Barbara, San Diego State University, UC-Santa Cruz, UCLA and UC-Berkeley over the last week can be viewed here.
In addition to defining the BDS movement as a genocidal campaign to wipe out Israel, one of the posters placed on each campus names a number of prominent BDS activists on that campus, stating at UC-Santa Barbara for example: “The following students and faculty at UC Santa Barbara have allied themselves with Palestinian terrorists to perpetrate BDS and Jew Hatred on this campus.”
A second poster displays a photo of armed Palestinian militants with the caption “BDS: The Final Solution to the Israel Problem,” while a third features an enlarged photo of retired UC-Santa Cruz professor Angela Davis who is known for her anti-Israel activism emblazoned with the words “Communist Anti-Israel BDS Supporter.”
All three posters contain the hashtag #StoptheJewHatredonCampus, a reference to the Freedom Center’s campaign and website of the same name, and also include a link to the HorowitzFreedomCenter.org website.
The posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus which seeks to confront the agents of campus anti-Semitism and refute the genocidal lies about the Jewish state spread by Palestinian terrorists and their campus allies. These lies include the claims that Israel occupies Palestinian land and that Israel is an apartheid state. These lies and rebuttals to them may be found on the campaign website, www.StoptheJewHatredonCampus.org.
“Virtually every major university campus in America is host to student organizations dedicated to spreading the propaganda lies of Hamas designed to weaken and delegitimize the Israeli state, and promoting Hamas campaigns like Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) whose goal is its destruction,” explained David Horowitz. “Our goal in placing these posters on prominent campuses across America is to expose the true motivations of these groups who have chosen to ally themselves with terrorists and to challenge the lies which underpin their genocidal propaganda.”
Reply to Slander
By David Horowitz
Today a letter attacking me was sent to all members of the UCLA community – that would be nearly 50,000 people I think – by Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Jerry Kang. The Vice Chancellor’s letter attacked me as a “provocateur” who last year “put up hostile posters accusing two student organizations — the Muslim Student Association (MSA) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — of being murderers and terrorists.” This is a lie.
Actually it is two lies. First, the posters posted last year targeted only Students for Justice in Palestine – not the Muslim Students Association. Kang obviously included MSA so that he could condemn me for employing what he called a “tactic of guilt by association, of using blacklists, of ethnic slander, and sensationalized images engineered to trigger racially-tinged fear.” (Calling people you don’t agree with racist seems to be a favored gutter tactic of activists on campuses like UCLA these days.)
Second the posters did not accuse SJP of being an organization of murderers and terrorists, as the Vice Chancellor claims. They accused SJP of being “Jew-haters” because they support the murderers and terrorists of Hamas, which they do. That is why the only words on the posters were “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “#Jew Haters.” In a public statement I also called on UCLA to remove the campus privileges and university funding of SJP because they are a hate group and their activities routinely violate UCLA’s “Statement of Principles Against Intolerance,” which Vice Chancellor Kang professes to champion.
Kang then accused me of compounding these sins by conducting a new poster campaign – launched yesterday - called “Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus.” The new posters listed the names of UCLA student and faculty activists who support SJP and BDS – the Hamas-inspired boycott movement, designed to strangle the Jewish state. Kang’s letter calls the posters “a focused, personalized intimidation that threatens specific members of our Bruin community.” There is no intimidation on the posters, just a list of names of activists who support SJP and BDS. Nonetheless, Kang went on to elaborate “if your name is plastered around campus, casting you as a murderer or terrorist, how could you stay focused on anything like learning, teaching, or research?” But the posters don’t cast those listed on them as murderers and terrorists, just activists from Students for Justice in Palestine who supported the BDS boycott campaign. BDS has been denounced by figures as liberal as Alan Dershowitz and Larry Summers as anti-Semitic. Kang sent a personal letter of support to all those named as activists in behalf of these anti-Semitic campaigns. He then went on to lecture everybody about diversity, tolerance and inclusion.
This disgraceful performance by a top university official demands a retraction and apology from the University of California and some serious reflection by Vice Chancellor Kang about the hateful content of his letter and the focused, personalized intimidation directed at myself and all those involved in putting up posters he happens to disagree with. He might also reflect on his own words: “Regardless of our religion, regardless of our politics, we should all agree that thuggish intimidation is beneath us, that demagoguery isn’t our style. Fellow Bruins, let us stand together for at least this.” Amen. Finally, if Chancellor can take a pause from his homogenized and hypocritical outrage and his truckling to campus radical groups, he might also benefit from a re-reading of the First Amendment and learn to live with opinions he doesn’t like.