hate speech

Palestinian Pitzer student called “cockroach” by Claremont professor targeted in hate crimes

Physical threats emerge as SJP investigation continues

By Liz Scherffius and Emma French

On Tuesday March 11th, Najib Hamideh’s (PZ‘15) reserved carrel in the Honnold Mudd Library was found with a graffitied message: “This carrel is reserved for me to fuck N. Hamideh in the skull.” Two days later, a sharpened key was found hammered into one of Hamideh’s car tires.

The physical threats follow an exchange between Hamideh and Claremont McKenna College (CMC) Professor Yaron Raviv that took place during a street theater simulation of an Israeli Defense Force checkpoint organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as a part of Israeli Apartheid Week. According to a statement issued by SJP on March 8th, the event “consisted of passing out fliers, asking passersby for their IDs as part of a checkpoint simulation, and actors (who had given consent prior to the event) being ‘detained’ off to the side of the checkpoint.”

In an interview with The Orange Peel, SJP member Sonia Mehrmand (SC’13) said, “We were recreating something that is a reality for people on the West Bank and Gaza… We weren’t outside with signs [or] having people protest with us. We were playing our roles and people had to pass through. It was street theater with a political theme but it wasn’t a demonstration.”

During a checkpoint simulation outside of Collins Dining Hall, when Hamideh asked repeatedly to see Professor Raviv’s ID, Raviv replied “fuck off, you little cockroach.”

 Read more at Pitzer Orange Peel

Israeli Claremont McKenna professor calls Palestinian SJP student a “cockroach”

Israeli professor working in the US calls Palestinian student a “cockroach”

by Gabriel Schivone and Nora Barrows-Friedman

Students in the five-college Claremont system in southern California are organizing against an act of racial discrimination by an Israeli professor who called a Palestinian student a “cockroach.”

Since the incident became public, the student says he has faced violent threats written on his reserved seat in the campus library, and someone flattened one of the tires of his car with a sharpened key.

The first incident occurred on Monday, 4 March, when the Claremont group of Students for Justice in Palestine launched its series of events marking Israeli Apartheid Weekwith street theater actions simulating mock Israeli military checkpoints at three of the colleges throughout the day. Israeli Apartheid Week is marked at campuses nationwide and internationally to educate the wider public about Israel’s occupation and supremacist rule in Palestine.

At one point that evening, a man who was later identified as a faculty member at Claremont McKenna College aggressively approached the Students for Justice in Palestine members staffing a mock checkpoint which was set up outside an entrance of the Collins Dining Hall on the campus.

The professor, Yaron Raviv, who is an Israeli citizen and teaches economics at Claremont McKenna College, demanded that the dining hall staff, the dean of students and campus security remove the Students for Justice in Palestine members from the area.

But since Students for Justice in Palestine had acquired official permission for its event and had its paperwork in order, neither the school officials nor the dining staff agreed to remove the students. They did request, however, that the students not block the doorway.

The student activists complied with this request, according to a Claremont McKenna College Campus Safety and Security officer’s incident report obtained by The Electronic Intifada.

A Palestinian member of Students for Justice in Palestine, Najib Hamideh, then walked up to the professor and politely asked his reason for being there, requesting that the man identify himself. In an exchange verified and quoted in the officer’s report, the professor then responded, “Fuck off, you cockroach.”

According to Hamideh, Raviv next referred to all the Students for Justice in Palestine members as cockroaches, and then asked him which of the Claremont colleges Hamideh belonged to. When Hamideh replied that he attends Pitzer College, Raviv then responded that “all Pitzer kids are cockroaches,” Hamideh says.

The Electronic Intifada attempted to contact professor Raviv for a comment on 13 March, but he has still not replied to our request.

Read More at Electronic Intifada

Petition: University of California President Mark Yudof, Condemn UCSC Lecturer’s hateful attacks on Muslim/Arab student groups

Sign this petition urging UC President Mark Yudof to condemn UCSC Hebrew lecturer Tammi Benjamin’s Islamophobic claims that SJP and MSA participants are “anti-semitic” “foreign students” “with ties to terrorist organizations”

A video has surfaced, showing UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman Benjamin making extremely offensive comments about the Muslim Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine groups at an off-campus event in June 2012. Benjamin describes their members as “foreign students who come from countries and cultures where anti-Semitism is how they think about the world.” She makes openly racist and defamatory claims that MSA and SJP are connected to terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Benjamin also singles these student activists out from all others, saying, “These are not your ordinary student groups like College Republicans or Young Democrats. These are students who come with a serious agenda, who have ties to terrorist organizations”.

These comments reflect the worst stereotypes and slurs leveled at Arab and Muslim communities in the post-9/11 era. They have absolutely no place in a university environment and it is completely unacceptable for a University of California lecturer to be making them, especially about students. What is even worse is that these comments are part of a pattern, one that the University of California Office of the President has been complicit in promoting.

Tammi Benjamin leads an extreme pro-Israel group called the Amcha Initiative, which has launched a series of censorship attempts targeting UC and California State University academics and student groups, based on claims that academic critique of Israel is tantamount to anti-Semitism. In 2011 they filed a complaint against UCLA professor David Shorter for linking to a page related to the Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement on a class website, prompting an improper investigation that was eventually dismissed. In February 2012 the Amcha Initiativetried and failed to shut down Israeli historian Illan Pappe’s speaking tour at CSU campuses, falsely claiming that he was “anti-Semitic” and supportive of terror. Tammi Benjamin was also behind a federal complaint alleging that campus political and academic speech critical of Israel creates a hostile environment for Jewish students at UC Santa Cruz, resulting in an ongoing Department of Education investigation into the school. The ACLU recently condemned the federal investigation into UC Santa Cruz as “disturbing” and having “a chilling effect” on student organizing in a letter criticizing a similar investigation at UC Berkeley.

In March 2012, Tammi Benjamin and the Amcha Initiative sent a letter to UC President Mark Yudof with racist rhetoric tying student groups to terror, and misrepresenting an incident at UC Davis. The next day President Yudof responded with a system-wide email that adopted the Amcha Initiative’s false narrative, without any condemnation of their inflammatory language or baseless claims.

It is no wonder that Tammi Benjamin felt comfortable publicly claiming students were tied to terrorism last June, when the University has rewarded her organization for doing so in the past. These actions are damaging to Muslim and Arab students and their allies, and promote an environment where students are open targets for hate groups. The University of California and the Office of the President must take a clear stand against hate speech directed at marginalized communities, and distance itself from extremists like Tammi Benjamin and the Amcha Initiative that work to smear and silence student human rights campaigners.

We ask that University of California President Mark Yudof:

-Release a statement from the UC President’s Office condemning Tammi Benjamin’s hateful comments in the video and previous Amcha Initiative statements.

-End any UC cooperation and communication with extremist groups like the Amcha Initiative that target advocates for human rights.

-Formally retract any statements issued at the request of the Amcha Initiative, and take proactive steps to address the negative impact the UC’s past cooperation with the group has had on free speech and campus climate for Muslim and Arab students and groups like SJP and MSA.