http://electronicintifada.net/content/bogus-allegations-anti-semitism-create-real-climate-fear-arab-muslim-students-us/11563
 <http://electronicintifada.net/israellobbywatch> 



Bogus allegations of "anti-Semitism" create real climate of fear for Arab, 
Muslim students in US


Nora Barrows-Friedman 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman>  

The Electronic Intifada 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/electronic-intifada>  

Berkeley <http://electronicintifada.net/location/berkeley>  

8 August 2012 

  
<http://electronicintifada.net/sites/electronicintifada.net/files/styles/large/public/120808-uc-solidarity.jpg>
 

Despite a failed lawsuit, Zionist groups are still trying to muzzle activists 
on Californian campuses.

(UC Berkeley SJP <http://electronicintifada.net/people/uc-berkeley-sjp> )

An attempt to portray Palestine solidarity campaigning on campus as 
“anti-Semitism” has failed — once again — at the University of California, 
Berkeley <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/uc-berkeley> .

Lacking evidence that would support their complaints, a group of Zionist 
students had to abandon a federal lawsuit and reach a settlement accord in late 
June.

But this will almost certainly not be the last case of its type. Across 
California, and elsewhere in the United States, well-financed lobby groups 
working closely with the Israeli government continue to file various lawsuits 
against universities, alleging civil rights violations against Jewish students. 
The real intention, however, is to chill Palestine solidarity activism and 
censor open discussions about Israeli policy in classrooms.

The UC Berkeley lawsuit termination follows a dismissal in December 2011 of an 
earlier version of the same lawsuit 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/judge-dismisses-claims-anti-semitic-climate-uc-berkeley/10780>
  by a judge who ruled that the students’ claims lacked evidence. But the judge 
allowed a settlement to proceed which included the ability of the students to 
amend their initial civil rights law complaint. However, the settlement 
agreement reiterated the judge’s assertion that there was no basis to the 
allegations and required that the lawsuit be closed.

Activists and civil rights advocates say that the end to this lawsuit is a 
relief to student organizers on UC Berkeley’s campus. But it is a cautious 
relief.

The lawsuit against the UC Regents — the governing body of the University of 
California — was filed in 2011 by two students associated with Tikvah, a 
Zionist Jewish organization on campus. It alleges that the university allowed 
“discrimination” against Jewish students to occur by tolerating the 
“development of a dangerous anti-Semitic climate on its campuses.”

The plaintiffs also claim that the university failed to “adopt and implement 
policies, regulations and student organizations procedures to prevent threats, 
intimidation and harassment by the anti-Semitic/anti-Israel SJP [Students for 
Justice in Palestine 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/students-justice-palestine> ], MSA [Muslim 
Students Association 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/muslim-students-association-msa> ] and MSU 
[Muslim Student Union 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/muslim-student-union-msu> ], all of which 
threatens and endangers the health and safety of University of California’s 
Jewish students.”


Bogus allegations


Claiming that Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim student 
organizations were not only “anti-Semitic” but “pro-terrorist,” the lawsuit 
includes extreme Islamophobic and anti-Arab rhetoric. The plaintiffs allege 
that “the more publicly activist SJP may be understood as the militant arm of 
the outwardly benevolent MSA”; and adds that SJP, the Muslim Student 
Association and Muslim Student Union help to “fund terrorism” and have ties to 
“terrorist groups including Hamas <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/hamas>  
and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

A central complaint in the lawsuit is that symbolic protest actions during the 
SJP-organized Israeli Apartheid Week 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-apartheid-week>  — a global week of 
action to bring attention to Israeli abuses of Palestinian rights — along with 
the creation of a mock Israeli checkpoint on campus created a “hostile 
environment” towards Jewish students (nothwithstanding the fact that UC 
Berkeley’s SJP is a multi-cultural, multi-faith group that includes many Jewish 
students among its members).

One of the plaintiffs, Jessica Felber, also claims that she was “attacked” by a 
Palestinian student during one of the protests. However, the court decided 
early on that the entire lawsuit had no valid legal claim, and neither the 
university nor the court were required to address the specific allegations. The 
Palestinian student, for his part, has vigorously denied attacking Felber.


Zionist group files civil rights complaint


Though the Felber vs. UC Regents lawsuit has proven unfruitful to the 
plaintiffs, they asserted that they would bring the same complaints against UC 
Berkeley to the US Department of Education 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/us-department-education> , citing 
violations of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/title-vi-civil-rights-act>  which protects 
against discrimination based on race or national origin in institutions that 
receive federal funding.

However, this Title VI complaint may be in violation of the settlement contract 
and the court’s dismissal of the suit. The settlement agreement released all 
claims against the university, and was dismissed on the basis that the 
plaintiffs cannot file the same complaint again.

But the plaintiffs associated with Tikvah are pushing forward anyway, and filed 
the Title VI claim on 9 July. This “lawfare” tactic — using civil rights laws 
to claim prejudice against Jewish students because of Palestine solidarity 
activism, or Muslim student organizing — is being regularly practiced by other 
Zionist groups across the US. The tactic has been pioneered and coordinated by 
Kenneth Marcus 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-zionists-sharply-divided-over-how-censor-palestine-speech-campus>
 , a pro-Israel activist who previously headed the US Department of Education’s 
Office of Civil Rights, which handles such complaints.

Some say that using Title VI in this way is deeply troubling. In an article 
published by The Electronic Intifada in January, a Jewish professor at 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/california-professor-under-attack-opposing-study-israel-scheme/10859>
  University of California Santa Cruz who was targeted and harassed by Zionist 
groups said it was “disturbing” to hear that such groups were attempting to 
define Judaism as a racial identity, “because that’s what Hitler did … but 
[they] have to define it this way to claim anti-Semitism.”


Failing to justify claims


Apparently responding to campaigns by Israel lobby groups, including the 
Zionist Organization of America 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/zionist-organization-america>  and the 
Anti-Defamation League 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/anti-defamation-league> , US Secretary of 
Education Arne Duncan announced a new set of guidelines in 2010 that 
specifically “applies Title VI … to the protection of Jewish students from 
anti-Semitism on campuses. Title VI prohibits discrimination based on ‘race, 
color or national origin’ but does not include religion. Under the Department 
of Education guidelines, the Civil Rights Act can be invoked if anti-Jewish 
behavior is considered to be based on shared ethnic characteristics” (“New 
guidelines add protection for Jewish students 
<http://www.jewishtimes.com/index.php/jewishtimes/news/jt/national_news/new_guidelines_add_protection_for_jewish_students/>
 ,” Baltimore Jewish Times, 27 October 2010).

Even so, Israel lobby groups have yet to make any legal headway using various 
strategies in California and across the US.

As The Electronic Intifada reported, the Amcha Initiative 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/amcha-initiative> , a Zionist political 
group co-founded by faculty at UC Santa Cruz and UC Los Angeles, has launched 
legal actions against faculty members 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/california-professor-under-attack-opposing-study-israel-scheme/10859>
  who are openly critical of Israeli policies, and are taking their claims of 
“anti-Semitism” and “intellectual and emotional harassment” of Jewish students 
to the top courts in the state.

Amcha filed complaints of violations of Title VI at UC Santa Cruz more than one 
year ago, a matter that is is still pending with the Office of Civil Rights. 
StandWithUs <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/standwithus> , a Los 
Angeles-based national Israel lobby organization working closely with the 
Israeli government, was also planning a civil rights complaint against 
Evergreen State College 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/evergreen-state-college>  in Olympia, 
Washington, but never appears to have filed it since the plan was exposed by 
The Electronic Intifada 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/uncovered-israels-role-planned-us-lawsuit-fight-bds/10350>
  last September.

In January, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights threw out a 
complaint by Zionist groups 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-department-education-throws-out-zionist-groups-civil-rights-complaint-against>
  alleging civil rights law violations at Barnard College in New York.

In 2008, the Department of Education tossed out a Title VI claim filed by the 
Zionist Organization of America against UC Irvine — but, according to The 
Jewish Daily Forward, the case is apparently being reconsidered under the 
secretary of education’s new guidelines, and another, separate Title VI 
complaint has been filed there (“Coming up empty on Title VI 
<http://forward.com/articles/152691/coming-up-empty-on-title-vi/?p=all> ,” 13 
March 2012).


Demanding punishment of faculty


This past month, Amcha leveled attacks (but not a civil rights complaint) 
against a professor at UCLA 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/la-professor-wakes-hate-mail-linking-anti-zionist-material/11547>
  who posted a link to websites with information on the Palestine solidarity 
movement, including the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of 
Israel <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/usacbi> . UCLA’s academic freedom 
committee of the academic senate rejected Amcha’s claims against Dr. David 
Delgado Shorter, and reiterated the school’s commitment to academic freedom and 
protection against intimidation and complaints by outside political groups.

In another example from June of this year, the Global Frontier Justice Center 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/global-frontier-justice-center>  — the US 
front for the Israeli lawfare group Shurat Hadin 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/shurat-hadin>  — demanded that the city of 
Los Angeles sue 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/new-assault-israel-groups-us-front-asks-city-los-angeles-sue-professor>
  California State University at Northridge mathematics professor David Klein 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/david-klein>  for his outspoken criticism 
of Israel.

This demand — which California’s attorney general had earlier declined to take 
seriously — followed an aggressive campaign against Klein by Amcha, who called 
for the university to punish him 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/california-professor-under-attack-opposing-study-israel-scheme/10859>
  for his public support of the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and 
sanctions <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds>  movement.


Invoking the Holocaust


Legal threats are part of an expanding effort by the Israel lobby and Zionist 
groups who target the academic system with accusations of anti-Semitism, 
emotion-laden allegations of attacks on Jewish students and manipulation of the 
memory of genocide to silence debate. In their Title VI claim, for example, the 
Felber lawsuit plaintiffs invoked the Holocaust, labeling the Univrersity of 
California’s “tolerance” of Palestine solidarity groups on campus as “a 
chilling reminder of the darkest chapter of history.”

They claimed that “the university’s actions and omissions present a disturbing 
echo of incitement, intimidation, harassment and violence carried out under the 
Nazi regime and those of its allies in Europe against Jewish students and 
scholars in the leading universities of those countries during the turbulent 
years leading up to and including the Holocaust.”

Tom Pessah, a Jewish Israeli graduate student at UC Berkeley and a longtime 
member of Students for Justice in Palestine, remarked that this comparison is 
not just shockingly ludicrous, but dangerous as well.

“Many people have devoted their entire lives to informing the world about the 
Holocaust and anti-Semitism more generally, and this is a truly priceless 
legacy that is supposed to protect all of us, Jews and non-Jews, from further 
expressions of racism,” he told The Electronic Intifada.

“To use this legacy to score cheap political points completely devalues it, and 
that is something that actually puts Jews in jeopardy. If people listen to the 
arguments in this lawsuit, and get really convinced that what Jewish students 
experienced in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust is in any way like [what’s 
happening at] UC Berkeley in 2012, that will undermine the work of everyone who 
has ever sought to raise awareness of what the Nazis did. Anti-Semitism will 
really come to mean disagreement with Israeli government policies, and nothing 
more than that. And that is really scary.”


“Shutting down speech critical of Israel”


Liz Jackson of the National Lawyers Guild’s 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/national-lawyers-guild-nlg>  San Francisco 
office has been actively involved with legal advocacy work in defense of the 
free speech of students engaged in Palestine solidarity activism at UC 
Berkeley. She said that the Felber lawsuit and Title VI claims are prime 
examples of the way in which Zionist groups are attempting to clamp down on 
academic freedom and on-campus critical discussion of Israeli policies.

“This lawsuit isn’t just about those events, it’s not just about Israeli 
Apartheid Week, or mock checkpoints — it’s about shutting down speech critical 
of Israel,” Jackson stated.

“And because it’s harder to bully and threaten [individual] students 
themselves, because they’re passionate and not going to be deterred, they try 
and do it by threatening the campuses. Basically the thrust of the lawsuit was 
that it violates the civil rights of Jewish students by failing to protect them 
against a hostile ‘anti-Semitic’ environment,” she said.

Jackson told The Electronic Intifada that the Israel lobby groups were smart to 
have identified the campus as a priority battleground to try and quash 
criticism and discussion of Israeli policies. “When they get so many students 
to say ‘I feel uncomfortable,’ that’s their best effort at making a case 
conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism,” she said. “Where else in US 
society are they going to have a chance to make that case? The campus is their 
only place.”


“Guidance” from Israel lobby


The settlement agreement was filed around the same time as two separate reports 
on Jewish Student Campus Climate and Muslim and Arab Student Campus Climate 
were presented to the University of California. The reports were issued by 
members of the University of California’s Advisory Council on Campus Climate, 
Culture and Inclusion, a council developed by UC President Mark Yudof 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mark-yudof>  in 2010.

Yudof wrote a letter in September 2011 explaining that the climate councils 
would be asked to review “current efforts and identify ongoing challenges to 
creating healthy and welcoming campus environments” (“President Yudof address 
campus climate concerns for Jewish community 
<http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26327> ”).

Yudof has been an ally to Israel lobbyists who are eager to enforce censorship 
on campus behind the mask of perceived discrimination against Jewish students. 
As Dalia Almarina reported 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-california-uni-chief-conflates-real-bigotry-criticism-israel/11163>
  for The Electronic Intifada 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-california-uni-chief-conflates-real-bigotry-criticism-israel/11163>
  in April 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/how-california-uni-chief-conflates-real-bigotry-criticism-israel/11163>
 , Yudof wrote an open letter 
<http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/27279>  to the University 
of California community in March admonishing incidents of “intolerance” against 
Jewish students. Almarina described this letter as an “attempt to disguise 
promotion of Israeli impunity as concern for the safety and security of 
University of California students. His comments amount to abuse of those who 
suffer true oppression as political tools for silencing any challenge to 
Israeli supremacy.”

Included on his advisory council addressing climate concerns for Jewish 
students is Rick Barton, national education chairman of the Anti-Defamation 
League — a onetime civil rights group that now attempts to stifle Palestine 
solidarity activism on campuses across the US. The campus climate report on 
Jewish students, which Barton co-authored, can be downloaded from the UC 
website 
<http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/documents/campus_climate_jewish.pdf>
 .

Yudof also “sought guidance,” he stated, from the American Jewish Committee 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/american-jewish-committee> , another 
Zionist organization, in addressing concerns from Jewish groups following the 
2010 divestment initiative 
<http://electronicintifada.net/content/berkeley-moral-victory-despite-divestment-vote-loss/8809>
  at UC Berkeley (which was later vetoed by the student body president) and the 
UC Irvine <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/uc-irvine>  protest by Muslim 
students against an appearance by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/michael-oren> .

The students — known as the Irvine 11 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/irvine-11>  — were eventually convicted 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora/irvine-11-sentenced-community-service-no-jailtime-attorneys-prepare-appeal>
  in September 2011 of “criminal conspiracy” for their decision to take part in 
a vocal protest during Oren’s speech, but the judge in the trial refused to 
sentence them to any jail time. The University of California also suspended the 
Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine immediately following the protest.

However, despite boasting of “disciplining” students such as the Irvine 11, 
Yudof himself couldn’t contend that Jewish students face a climate of hostility 
due to Palestine solidarity activism by students and faculty across the state. 
In January, just days after the Department of Education threw out the civil 
rights law complaint against Barnard College, Yudof explained in comments in 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/pro-israel-university-california-president-denies-jewish-students-face-hostility>
  to The Forward in relation to the Title VI complaints at UC Berkeley and UC 
Santa Cruz that it would be “difficult to prove that the students and faculty 
in question faced a pervasive, hostile atmosphere.”

Despite Yudof’s affirmation that proving a hostile climate towards Jewish 
students would be difficult, the climate report on Jewish student experience 
repeated claims strategically used by Israel lobby groups equating Palestine 
solidarity activism and anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

In a recent article for Al Jazeera English, poet and activist Remi Kanazi 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/remi-kanazi>  reported that “from the 
outset, the Jewish Student Campus Climate report focuses on nonviolent protests 
and speeches critical of Israel, a state in clear violation of international 
law, not anti-Jewish bigotry. In fact, nearly 50 percent of the report 
(excluding the introduction and recommendations) covered ‘the 
Anti-Zionism/Anti-Israel Movement and its Impact on Climate’ ” (“Silencing 
pro-Palestinian speech on campus 
<http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/2012711112719984650.html> ,” 
12 July 2012).


Distracting from the real issue


Tom Pessah of Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Berkeley was concerned 
that the campus climate report on Jewish students has received more attention 
than actual human rights abuses in Palestine.

“This is the main issue,” Pessah said. “Some people [think] that the way Israel 
is being talked about on campus is much more important than people not having 
access to clean water or medical supplies, or being in jail without trial for 
years. All of these issues we are trying to raise aren’t receiving as much 
attention as the campus climate report.”

Furthermore, Pessah added, “there’s a consistent effort to divert attention 
from what the facts are to how people feel.” In the climate report, the authors 
give a lot of attention to the specific terminology used by Palestine 
solidarity activists to describe Israeli policy — such as apartheid 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/apartheid> , the Nakba 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba>  (the forced displacement of more 
than 750,000 Palestinians during Israel’s foundation) and ethnic cleansing 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/ethnic-cleansing> .

“The counter-argument, given some kind of official sanction in this report,” 
Pessah said, “is that you can’t actually use those words, because someone’s 
going to get upset. And I think that that’s a very un-academic way of going 
about it — you don’t need to deal with actual facts and arguments that people 
are making, because it might upset you. This is an aberration of the whole 
academic environment.”

The report’s authors, Pessah pointed out, initially note — correctly — that the 
Jewish community has a diversity of opinions about Israeli policy. But in the 
recommendations section toward the end, the authors “report that most Jewish 
students feel that their identity is related to Israel and they feel that any 
criticism of Israel is an attack on Israel and an attack on their identity … 
And suddenly, where before we had a diversity of opinion, now there’s just one 
correct opinion, which happens to be the ADL [Anti-Defamation League] line,” 
Pessah added.

“It’s an organization with an agenda, and this agenda shows right through in 
the report,” he said. “They’re using their image as a protector against 
anti-Jewish racism, which is a great cause, to bring forward this Zionist 
agenda, which is not consensual, and which amplifies voices of certain students 
above others.”


Real fear for Muslim students


Zahra Billoo, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/council-american-islamic-relations>  San 
Francisco Bay Area chapter, told The Electronic Intifada that the persistent 
intimidation, climate reports and threats of lawsuits against students and 
student groups in California have contributed to an atmosphere of actual, 
realized fear and caution on campus for Arab and Muslim students.

“We’re now getting reports from families who are saying, you can’t go to school 
at this campus, or if you do go to school at this campus, you cannot get 
involved in the MSA [Muslim Student Association] or the SJP [Students for 
Justice in Palestine],” she said. “[Parents are saying] ‘don’t rock the boat, 
just graduate.’ These are things that we theorized about five or six years ago, 
when I was in school, and now that I’m out, I can actually see this 
manifesting, I actually see these parents giving this advice to these students 
— it’s concerning.”

A current UC Berkeley student and member of Students for Justice in Palestine, 
who is of Palestinian descent and who did not want to be named, agreed. The 
student told The Electronic Intifada that even though he was sufficiently 
concerned to request anonymity, “I wouldn’t say it has affected me nearly as 
much as it has other students — because there are students I know who wouldn’t 
even feel comfortable affiliating with SJP or MSA on their resumes and/or 
graduate school applications.”

The student added, “many others refuse to participate in meetings and events, 
or to even join the clubs at all, in fear that they will be targeted by 
militant Zionists or even law enforcement agencies.”

Billoo remarked that though the attacks have manifested in various ways, it’s 
clear that the tactics are starkly similar, pointing to centralized strategies 
orchestrated by larger Zionist and Israel lobby groups. “You see references to 
StandWithUS, the Zionist Organization of America, and then you see the 
evolution of tactics in a way that I think … MSA and SJP students simply are 
not resourced to respond to in the same fashion that they’re being attacked,” 
she said.

But, she added, this also makes it clear that these students and their 
Palestine solidarity activism are “incredibly effective.”

“This is when [students] have the most time and the most energy in their entire 
lives,” Billoo said. “And they have access to thousands of other students to 
influence them, to talk to them about the human rights atrocities that are 
happening within the apartheid State of Israel. Even so, it is frightening and 
it is threatening as we see more and more movement in terms of equating 
[criticism of Israeli policy] with anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic rhetoric.”


Wide support for free speech


Since the campus climate reports were published, on-campus committees and 
activist groups, legal advocates, civil rights organizations and Jewish Voice 
for Peace <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jewish-voice-peace>  (JVP) have 
called on UC President Yudof to table the report on Jewish students because of 
its “poor methodology and bias,” in the words of JVP.

In a press statement, Cecilie Surasky of JVP said that “rather than offering a 
genuine exploration of a range of Jewish student life issues — which we would 
support — the report reads like a blueprint for limiting pro-Palestinian 
activism and further marginalizing the growing numbers of students, many of 
them Jewish, who are critical of Israeli policies” (“JVP asks UC president to 
table biased report on Jewish life on campus 
<http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/jvp-asks-uc-president-to-table-biased-report-on-jewish-life-on-campuse>
 ,” 25 July 2012).

Meanwhile, the National Lawyers Guild’s San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, the 
Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Bay Area office, and 17 Arab, Muslim and 
Palestinian rights activist organizations at the University of California 
issued a statement which called on Yudof “to exercise caution and adopt a more 
even-handed approach while considering possible changes in campus free speech 
rules” (“RE: UC campus “climate assessment” and student speech 
<http://www.nlgsf.org/sites/default/files/LtrYudoffFreeSpeech.pdf> ,” 12 July 
2012 [PDF]).

“From its inception, the Council has singled out student speech and activism 
critical of Israel,” the letter states. It adds that the appointment of a 
member of the Anti-Defamation League — a group which has called on the UC to 
silence activism critical of Israel — to help author the climate report, 
“clearly was calculated to appease your critics in the staunchly pro-Israel 
community.”

And the UC Ad-Hoc Committee on Jewish Campus Climate drafted their own letter 
<http://www.change.org/petitions/letter-to-pres-yudof-in-response-to-jewish-campus-climate-report>
  and issued several online public petitions 
<http://www.change.org/members/9146851>  to demand that Yudof table the report.


Opportunity to tell the truth


Zahra Billoo said that throughout all of this, there lies opportunities for 
Muslim and Arab students and students who are involved in Palestine solidarity 
activism to take control of their narrative. “They can say hey, this is insane, 
this was a frivolous lawsuit, and now a complaint is being funded by some 
outside force based entirely on lies and seeking to chill the First Amendment 
rights of everybody on campus, not just a handful of students. Because these 
things impact all of us,” Billoo stated.

The UC Berkeley student who did not wish to be named added that the next step 
for Palestine solidarity organizing involves strengthening campus coalitions 
and ensuring that the truth about Israel’s apartheid policies is accessible to 
the masses.

“It’s important to make sure that campus organizations across the US are not 
putting any unnecessary energy into defending themselves from Zionist 
intimidation and harassment, because that is exactly what they would like for 
us to do,” the student said.

“We are not here to entangle ourselves in legal battles with right-wing 
fanatics — our primary concern is, and always has been, to end the illegal 
occupation of Palestine.”

Nora Barrows-Friedman is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada.

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