Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

Key Points

• SJP refers to a network of anti-Zionist student groups on university campuses across the U.S.
• SJP is also used as shorthand for National SJP or NSJP, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, which is led by a Steering Committee.
• Individual SJP chapters and National SJP have justified and/or glorified the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel. They were also a central organizer of the 2024 student encampments across US universities and colleges.
• SJP chapters take their cues from NSJP and often promote and cross-post the same messaging and “calls to action” on social media and at protests.
• National SJP (NSJP) and many SJP chapters have called for "Zionists"— those who believe in the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland and have connections to Israel—to be removed from campus spaces or from universities altogether. Some SJP chapters have called to ban Hillel (the premier Jewish student group in the US) and Chabad, and some activists have gone so far as to call for harassing or intimidating Zionists and vandalizing Zionist institutions.
• Many SJP chapters have shared explicit pro-Hamas or other FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organizations) rhetoric on social media, including through the promotion of FTO statements and images featuring members of FTOs, at times with weapons.
• Pre- and post-October 7, SJP has been a leading campus organizer of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns and anti-Israel protests on university campuses.
• The SJP network includes individual SJP campus chapters, of which there are approximately 275 (mainly in the U.S. and Canada), and "informal" affiliates (other local campus organizations like Palestine Solidarity Committee, or PSC)
• SJP says members of its network are “autonomous” entities brought together by “points of unity” and a shared set of principles in “the fight for Palestinian liberation.”

Background

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) refers to a network of anti-Zionist student groups on US university campuses that has justified terror attacks against Israel, particularly the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught, engages in antisemitic rhetoric and propaganda and is a leading campus organizer of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns and anti-Israel protests on university campuses. It has been a central organizing node for the student encampments that proliferated across American universities and colleges in the spring and summer of 2024, amid a surge in antisemitic activity and sentiment on US college campuses.

SJP refers both to individual campus chapters and to National SJP (NSJP), the national organization led by a Steering Committee and staffed by volunteers that organizes annual conferences and provides resources to affiliated groups. NSJP insists that individual SJP chapters and other affiliated student groups within its “informal network” operate “independently of and autonomously from NSJP.”

Other than “sharing points of unity,” NSJP claims to “not dictate the structure, programming, or any other aspect of local organizations.”

But some 275 SJP chapters take their cues from the national organization, and often promote and cross-post the same messaging and “calls to action” on social media and at protests. The vast majority of SJP chapters are located in the U.S. and Canada.

Both NSJP and individual SJP chapters have hailed and defended the unprecedented mass terror incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, by thousands of Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists who killed some 1,200 people and took over 240 as hostages. Some, like the SJP chapter at Columbia University, have published social media posts that openly support acts of terror against Israel and have explicitly called to “escalate” actions like occupying buildings, engaging in vandalism, disrupting operations, blocking access to public spaces, among other such tactics, “in solidarity” with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war triggered by the October 7 attack.

In the aftermath of October 7, NSJP posted a “Day of Resistance” toolkit with language supporting the attack and demonizing and denigrating Zionists. Before and after the attack, members of the SJP network have also regularly demonized Jews and others who identify as Zionists or proud supporters of Israel, called for their exclusion on campus and demanded that universities divest from all Israeli companies, academic institutions and Jewish organizations like Hillel as one of the many conditions to end university encampments.

In September 2024, as the new academic year began, NSJP promoted (in a since-deleted post on X) one of the demands from a group calling themselves “actionists” at Columbia University, which called for the destruction of the "American empire" and to "eradicate America as we know it." After unknown actors doused the school’s Alma Mater statue with red paint—a tactic that is often used by pro-Palestinian demonstrators—NSJP re-posted the group’s “demand” about divestment, which read: “True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself. It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-culture repositories without the continuous suppression of all populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it."

Some SJP chapters also praised the Iranian regime’s April 13, 2024 missile attack on Israel, as well as attacks by the Houthis (Ansar Allah), a US-designated terror group backed by the Iranian regime, whose slogan is, "God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

Origins

SJP was first established as a standalone student group in 1993 at UC Berkley by Osama Qasem and initially appeared to support a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. Then-graduate student Hatem Bazian helped establish the club and also went on to co-found American Muslims for Palestine, a leading US organization that espouses extreme anti-Israel views and provides anti-Zionist training and education to students and some Muslim community organizations around the country. As SJP chapters and affiliated groups emerged on other campuses, they were initially united under the umbrella of the Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM).

When PSM was dissolved in 2006, AMP placed a heavy emphasis on supporting and helping coordinate the activities of SJP, assisting in its development as one of the primary organizers of anti-Israel campaigns and events on campus over the years. AMP described SJP as part of a “signature project” to “organize and unify the work for Palestine on campuses in the United States,” according to a 2010 brochure.

NSJP as a national organization was formed in 2010. In 2011, AMP helped organize the first NSJP conference at Columbia University.

By 2024, NSJP claimed there were more than 350 affiliated chapters (though it is more likely this number is closer to 275), including more than forty in Indonesia.

Today, NSJP’s “informal network” of affiliated campus groups include the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) at the University of Texas-Austin, Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER) at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, among others.

Until late 2020, NSJP adhered to three "points of unity” among campus chapters and affiliated groups, one of which included “Ending Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands” -- a euphemism for abolishing the state of Israel as we know it.

These points of unity are no longer featured on the NSJP site, which now says the organization upholds "fifteen shared principles and values" -- without specifying -- developed together with local chapters and movement partners who "seek a political framework that addresses collective liberation from Palestine to the Rio Grande."

"We believe the struggle for a free Palestine is also the struggle for Black liberation, gender and sexual freedom, and a livable and sustainable planet," NSJP claims.

Individual SJP chapters have adopted far more radical principles, including explicitly calling for the dissolution of the State of Israel, and countenancing violent “resistance” to Israel. Some SJP chapters have also repeatedly expressed explicit support for U.S.-designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Some chapters have also promoted the five-point “Thawabet,” a set of anti-Zionist activist principles that state that “armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine,” a "free Arab Palestine from the river to the sea" and "the Zionist entity is a constant source of threat for peace."

For years, SJP chapters have also been leading campus organizers of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel, and specialize in using confrontational tactics such as disrupting student-run pro-Israel events, constructing mock “apartheid walls” and distributing fake “eviction notices” to dramatize alleged Israeli abuses of Palestinians. As proponents of “anti-normalization” between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel advocates, they make it more difficult for groups with diverging views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to work together and achieve mutual understanding.

In June 2022, SJP chapters were among the most enthusiastic proponents of the antisemitic Mapping Project website, which includes a call to “dismantle” and “disrupt” the main Jewish organizations of the Boston area, including a Jewish high school.

After October 7, NSJP described Hamas’s massacres of Israelis as “a historic win for Palestinian resistance," and called for "not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors." Individual SJP chapters also applauded the Hamas terror assault.

Funding

NSJP continues to receive financial support, training and other resources from American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), the organization has said.

NSJP is also fiscally sponsored by the WESPAC (Westchester People's Action Coalition) Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit organization that facilitates tax-deductible donations to the group and other anti-Zionist organizations. This arrangement allows sponsored groups to receive funds without having to file their own tax documents. WESPAC does not and is not required to make public the details of its fiscal sponsorships, including to NSJP.

Local SJP chapters are often funded by student activity fees, member dues, community members and fundraisers.

NSJP and SJP chapters’ key role as central organizers (but not necessarily funders) of the anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic encampments that swept US universities beginning in March 2024 has raised suspicions and allegations about their sources of funding.

Bazian and other AMP leaders have previously been linked to the now-defunct Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a radical anti-Israel organization that was tied to the 2008 Holy Land Foundation case, and was once described by the U.S. government as part of the “propaganda apparatus” of Hamas.

While there is no hard evidence of direct financial ties to terror groups, SJP and terrorist organizations have expressed rhetorical support for one another. For example, Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian terror group with ties to the Iranian regime, and the student wings of both organizations and other terror organizations released statements of support for the current student protests.

In other instances, individuals convicted or accused of funding or having terrorist associations have made appearances on college campuses and spoken to students.

October 7, support for terror and violence

In the days following Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, NSJP and many of the organization’s campus chapters explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas and its armed attacks on Israeli civilians, voicing an increasingly radical call for confronting and “dismantling” Zionism on U.S. college campuses.

Some SJP chapters issued pro-Hamas and/or pro-terror messaging and/or promoted violent anti-Israel messaging channels.

SJP chapters at Columbia University, George Washington University, and Rutgers University were suspended in November and December 2023 for violating university policies, and the SJP chapter at Brandeis University was banned.

After the attack, one of NSJP’s most prominent actions was planning a “Day of Resistance” on October 12, 2023, during which chapters on campuses across the country would convene rallies and other actions to applaud Palestinian “resistance” to Israel.

The tone of the call-to-action was taken from a previous NSJP statement issued right after the October 7 attack that encouraged “not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors” in Israel.  

NSJP also released a “Day of Resistance” toolkit in which it made clear that it advocates for Hamas or other Palestinian forces to conquer all of Israel, and for the “complete liberation” of Israel and the full influx of Palestinians to Israeli land. The toolkit also called for chapters to bring this resistance to the U.S. by “dismantling Zionism” on its campuses and “challenging Zionist hegemony.” The toolkit additionally praised the October 7 terror attack: “Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity...”

Numerous SJP chapters also released inflammatory statements in support of Palestinians seizing control of Israeli territory, including some that explicitly endorsed the use of violence and attacks on civilians. “We reject the distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘militant.’ We reject the distinction between ‘settler’ and ‘soldier,’” The George Washington University SJP wrote: “A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”

The SJP chapter of CUNY Law shared, “If you support Palestine understand that necessitates supporting our right to defend ourselves and liberate our homeland by any means necessary.”

The University of Illinois SJP chapter shared a video that showed what appears to be a Hamas terrorist filming himself from inside the home of an Israeli family during the Oct. 7 attack. That same chapter held a protest outside a Chabad House against the presence of an IDF soldier speaking with students in early April 2024, calling the soldier “a genocidal war maniac.”

Chapters have also used the image of a person flying in a paraglider, a clear reference to the Hamas terrorists who utilized paragliders as part of their massacre of Israeli civilians, as a symbol of their call for resistance.

Some SJP chapters issued pro-Hamas messaging and/or promoted violent anti-Israel propaganda social media accounts. At least three chapters referred followers to Resistance News Network (RNN) -- part of an encrypted messaging application that shares violent images and videos of attacks on Israelis and disseminates Hamas propaganda -- since the Hamas attack, and five others routinely shared RNN content even before the October 7attack.

In May 2024, Columbia SJP’s Telegram shared a video of Hamas members with the caption "these men will never be defeated.”

SJP chapters have also used imagery of convicted terrorists like Leila Khaled of the PFLP, the PFLP logo, and Hamas’s inverted red triangles in flyers and social media posts. This symbol first gained widespread use early in the Israel-Hamas war as a way to signify, in some cases, support for violent Palestinian so-called “resistance” against Israel. It first appeared in propaganda videos promoted by the al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which showed footage of Hamas terrorists attacking Israeli military targets while superimposing inverted red triangles over the heads of Israeli soldiers or other targets.

Khaled appears in SJP materials frequently. In May 2022, Seattle University SJP and SUPER UW advertised t-shirts, tote bags, sweatshirts and stickers depicting an image of PFLP leader and terrorist Leila Khaled holding a rifle.

SJP of UC Riverside erected an apartheid wall in May 2023 with one panel depicting Khaled carrying a rifle.

In August 2022, an off-campus chalking activity by members of Wayne State University SJP depicted Ibrahim al Nabulsi, who was a senior commander in the U.S.-designated terror group Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and allegedly involved in several shootings in the West Bank. Nabulsi died in a firefight with the Israeli military in 2022.

After the October 7 attack, SJP also expressed support for the Houthis. In April 2024, NSJP tweeted “Thank you, Yemen,” amid attacks on Israel by the Yemen-based Houthis, alongside a photo of a rally in the Gulf country featuring a sign with their Arabic slogan (“God Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam”).

Earlier that month, SJP was part of a group of U.S. organizations that praised Iran for its April 13, 2024, missile-and-drone attack on Israel, alleging that authentic supporters of Palestine must support the attack.

As the attack was unfolding, Hunter College Palestine Solidarity Alliance, an affiliate of SJP, reposted a report of a drone attack from the anti-Israel account Arabs of Canada and added: “true solidarity.” In another post, PSA Hunter College placed a laughing emoji over a clip of Israelis allegedly running into shelters during the Iranian attack.

The most notable such immediate reaction to the Iran attack occurred at a conference held by the March on the DNC coalition, co-sponsored by Chicago SJP, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), Students for a Democratic Society at UIC and others.

As news of the attack broke, more than a hundred activists at the event appeared exuberant, cheering and chanting “hands off Iran!”

Encampments

National SJP (NSJP) and SJP chapters across the U.S. played a leading role in organizing the university encampments beginning in March 2024, alongside numerous other campus and community anti-Zionist groups like AMP chapters, Within Our Lifetime (WOL), Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Palestine Action US, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Samidoun, Students for Democratic Society (SDS), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and others.

In April 2024, as college encampments began to spread, NSJP put out a call-to-action urging college students, staff and faculty to “join the Popular University for Gaza” and “take back our institutions,” adding “we will seize our universities and force the administration to divest” from Israel.

NSJP's “mission statement” read: “We as students will reclaim our power on campus — there will be no classes or compliance with our institutions so long as their shameless profiteering off of our genocide persists. Through the student movement for a popular university, we will transform our mass mobilization into sustained, tangible power…We will seize control of our institutions, campus by campus, until Palestine is free.”

Posts promoting the “Popular University for Gaza” initiative posted on social media by National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). 

In the months they were active in the spring and summer of 2024, the student encampments numbered into the dozens and featured calls to support Hamas, “globalize the intifada,” and ostracize “Zionists” on campus and elsewhere.

At the Columbia University encampment on April 17, 2024, a protester told the crowd: “We will never let up and we will never let down until Palestine is free, Zionism is destroyed, and Zionists start to hide like the Nazis.”

As the overwhelming majority of Jews identify in some way with Zionism or with Israel, such statements are essentially calls for the exclusion of Jews.

Similarly, the use of “intifada” in protest slogans such as “long live the intifada” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution” is seen as particularly egregious. Intifada refers to two historical periods of violence in the late 1980s and early 2000s. During the Second Intifada, from September 2000 to early 2005, Palestinian terrorists committed indiscriminate acts of violence against Israelis, including suicide bombings, resulting in the deaths of more than 1,000 people.

As the student “intifada” started gaining ground in April 2024, Columbia SJP put out a call to its network to increase the pressure on universities by adopting escalation tactics, including occupying buildings.

Buildings were then occupied at Columbia, Stanford, California State University (CSU) Los Angeles, and Cal Poly Humboldt. Millions of dollars in damage was reported by Humboldt, and the damage to property at CSU LA and Stanford was considered extensive by those universities.

At the University of Washington, a statue of George Washington was spray painted with 'kill your local colonizer.' (Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Student organizers, including at The New School, New York University and Emerson College, also advertised their encampments using inverted red triangle imagery. Encampments also featured flags of US-designated terror groups and images glorifying terror figures.

Flags bearing the logos of the US-designated terror groups Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Hezbollah are seen at the encampment protests at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt (left) and Princeton University (right).

At the Columbia encampment and others, protesters displayed a sign with the PFLP logo alongside an image of Ahmad Sa’adat, the imprisoned general secretary of the terror group. Signs also bore the names and photographs of convicted terrorists such as Nasser Abu Hamid, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades; Walid Daqqa, PFLP; Leila Khaled, PFLP; Ahmad Qatamesh, PFLP.

At the UCLA encampment, protesters chalked: “Oh Qassam [Hamas's military wing], burn Tel Aviv.”

A protestor at the UCLA encampment stands over chalking that reads, “Oh Qassam [Hamas's military wing], burn Tel Aviv.” (Source: Instagram)

The UCLA encampment also featured “Death 2 Zionism” and other graffiti in the spaces that were taken over.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Graffiti reading "Death 2 Zionism" is seen outside the Powell Library on the UCLA campus where anti-Israel demonstrators set up an encampment on Monday, April 29, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Other encampments showcased stridently anti-Zionist rhetoric, including calls for “Zionists” to be ostracized or vilified.

In June 2024, NYC SJPs organized a protest against Hillel at Baruch College, demanding that CUNY sever its relationship with the organization. At the protest, a banner reading “it is right to rebel, Hillel go to hell,” with an inverted red triangle on it, which has come to signify support for Hamas on social media. A blood-drenched Israeli flag with the star of David replaced with a swastika was also seen.

Protesters demonstrate against Hillel at Baruch College in New York, NY on June 5, 2024. (Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)

Anti-Israel protesters at Hillel at Baruch College in New York hold an Israeli flag with drops of blood, and a swastika in the middle of the star of David, June 5, 2024. (Source: Instagram)

The SJP chapter at Drexel University called for a ban on Hillel as well as Chabad on campus as part of its encampment-related demands.

In June 2024, as summer break began, the SJP chapter at Vassar College in New York published a summer reading list that included the 1969 book "Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine," published by the PFLP.

SJP Ideology

SJP and the Demonization of Zionism

Though many SJP chapters have previously explicitly disavowed antisemitism, their wholesale demonization of Zionism and Zionists amounts to the demonization of a significant number of their fellow students. Their commitment to complete anti-normalization amounts to an effort to dictate the acceptable contours of Jewish identity and insist that Jews strip their connection with Israeli culture and society from their Jewishness. In tandem with confrontational tactics, this can have the effect of turning campuses into hostile places for Jewish students.

Large percentages of American Jews have stated that Zionism or a connection to the State of Israel iare important parts of their religious, social, or cultural identities.

Such demonization most commonly takes the form of repeated proclamations that Zionism and Zionists are racist and should be ostracized from campus life and beyond.

Here are some examples from recent years:

• At a February 2024 protest, SJP University of Chicago complained that “The university claims that SJP 'restricted the freedom of speech of Zionists,' once again proving that the university’s neutrality is to side with Zionism and white supremacy.”
• October 2023: Grinnell SJP, in their statement supporting the October 7 attack, stated they affirmed that “Zionism is white supremacy. Israel is a settler colonial power backed by the imperialist United States, whose existence is predicated on the displacement of the native Palestinian population.”
• March 2023: CUNY4Palestine and Wellesley SJP shared a post that rejected an Interfaith Iftar hosted by the Center for Religion and Global Citizenry (CRGC) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, due to the Center's work with "Zionists." A section of the post read: “DO NOT BREAK YOUR FAST WITH ZIONISTS!... AND DO NOT ATTEND THIS EVENT!”
• December 2022: Tufts SJP shared an Instagram post that read: “Dialogue legitimizes zionist [sic] perspectives. When zionists [sic] are invited to the table to share their opinions on an equal playing field, it reinforces the idea that their views are not harmful and racist, but legitimate and deserving of a platform to be considered.”
• April 2022, on a Harvard Palestine Committee Apartheid Wall read. “Zionism is racism settler colonialism white supremacy apartheid.”
• February 2021: The National SJP Conference featured U.S. Palestinian Community Network’s Nesreen Hasan, who remarked that "liberal Zionists" do not have a place in social justice spaces.
• December 2020: SJP at the University of Illinois, Chicago, posted a meme on their Instagram account that actively encouraged the shaming of Zionists by calling them “colonizer,” “racist,” telling them to “go back to Brooklyn,” and more. Advocating for fellow students to “go back to Brooklyn” is unconscionable, and the idea that Zionists are from Brooklyn plays into an antisemitic trope.
• Nov. 18, 2020: On Facebook, SJP at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (SJP UIUC) called for pro-Israel students to be excluded from racial justice organizing, claiming that white supremacy and racism are inherent to pro-Israel advocacy. Responding to the university’s call for Zionists to be allowed in social justice spaces, SJP stated, “they [UIUC administration] fail to mention that as Zionists, they actively advocate for white supremacy and racism, effectively excluding them from all anti-racist organizing.”

SJP activists also frequently accuse students on campus who consider themselves Zionists of being white supremacists or Nazis.

• In May 2022, at a rally in New York City hosted by JVP, AMP, PYM, Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College, NY4Palestine (a collection of groups in which John Jay College SJP is a member) and others, a protestor held a sign reading: “The Nazis are still around, they just call themselves Zionists now.”
• At a May 2021 rally in Dallas, Texas co-sponsored by SJP UT Dallas, PYM, AMP Texas and Dallas Palestine Coalition, a protestor held a sign referencing “Zionist Nazis.”

Before and after October 7, some SJP chapters have gone further still, insisting that Zionism and Zionists need to be confronted and expelled from campus spaces.

• In May 2024, UCSC protesters, including the university’s SJP chapter and other groups, again explicitly called out Hillel when they launched their campus encampment. Referencing Hillel and multiple prominent San Francisco-based Jewish charities by name, the student protesters demanded that the university “cut ties UC wide with all zionist [sic] institutions--- including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, research collaborations, and universities. Cut ties with the Hellen Diller foundation, Koret foundation, Israel Institute, and Hillel International.”
• The SJP chapter at the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY released a similar set of demands ahead of a sit-in at the university’s administrative building on May 2. Among the demands, which were posted online and displayed on a poster at the sit-in, was that the university “cut ties with Hillel International and any other Zionist institutions.” The SJP statement disparaged Hillel as “an explicitly Zionist club” and attacked the organization for facilitating Jewish students’ travel to Israel via the Birthright program. In another published statement, sit-in organizers reaffirmed: “We demand that the school doesn’t foster a space for zionist [sic] organizations such as Hillel.”
• At the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL, where an encampment was launched on May 4, organizers demanded that the school “divest from all entities and individuals financially supporting the Zionist occupation of Palestine, including: A Total Removal of any programs within the institute that legitimize the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”
• At Portland State University in Portland, OR, student encampment organizers with the SJP-affiliated Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER) group made similar anti-normalization demands on May 2, calling for the university to “divest from all Zionist entities on campus.”

SJP on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

SJP views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the prism of settler colonialism, imperialism and white supremacy, and as a one-sided moral issue, This viewpoint sees Israelis, Zionists, and sometimes Jews inherently taking the role of the oppressive colonizer (thereby denying the centuries-long Jewish connection to the land), and Palestinians, including U.S. designated foreign terrorist groups such as Hamas, taking the role of innocent victims of colonialist racism.

This perspective makes it difficult to find common ground between Israelis and Palestinians, or between American Zionists and pro-Palestinian activists.

SJP Campus Activities

Anti-Normalization

Many SJP chapters have called on activists to avoid “normalization” of, cooperation or even dialogue with, pro-Israel groups. According to the University of Minnesota’s SJP chapter, normalization means “to participate in any project or initiative or activity, local or international, specifically designed for gathering...Palestinians and Israelis.”

At Columbia University and San Diego State University, the policy of anti-normalization was officially adopted, and in April 2010, Columbia SJP issued a statement adapted from a position paper by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI, the leading pro-boycott organization). The statement included a provision that disallowed dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, claiming that it would only help to “whitewash” Israel’s image. The New York City chapter of SJP also rejected “any and all collaboration, dialogue, and coalition work with Zionist organizations through a strict policy of anti-normalization.”

Other SJP chapters followed suit with anti-normalization commitments and enforcement:

• In March 2024, SJP at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst released a lengthy missive against joint Israeli-Palestinian peace group Standing Together, in part reading, “"...The concept of 'Open Dialogue' is meaningless in the face of genocide. Violence is implicit in liberal zionism [sic] and the normalization of the state of Israel...What we demand is not dialogue - it is divestment, ceasefire, and an end to the occupation. Free Palestine.
• In August 2022, Berkeley Law SJP announced that they successfully convinced several campus affinity groups to adopt a bylaw pledging not to work with, invite to speak, or co-sponsor events with anyone who has, or continues to “hold views in support of Zionism.” The adoption of the bylaw by groups representing various communities is an example of broad progressive support for anti-Zionist rhetoric and policies.
• In March 2022, Tufts SJP circulated a petition asking fellow students to boycott “groups that benefit and normalize Israel,” naming almost solely campus Jewish groups: Friends of Israel, J Street U Tufts, Birthright, Visions of Peace, Tisch Summer Fellows Anti-Defamation League internship and TAMID. The petition ignored the wide array of non-Jewish groups on campus that similarly support Israel, causing much of the campus Jewish community to feel under siege.
• A particularly divisive and inflammatory BDS resolution was passed by CUNY Law in late 2021. Organized by CUNY Law SJP and the Jewish Law Student Association, the resolution called for the university to “cut all ties” with Hillel and an array of other predominantly Jewish pro-Israel campus organizations. The resolution also targeted Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin and other corporations in which CUNY holds investments.
• In September 2020, an American University graduate student who was formerly an SJP leader at Butler University published a piece in the anti-Zionist Electronic Intifada stating that “Zionism should have no place or standing in such organizations on college campuses. Zionist organizations like Hillel only perpetuate narrow-minded thinking and reinforce racism.”
• In 2019, the University of Washington’s SJP affiliate complained of Hillel’s participation in a Middle East cultural event, writing that “the very presence of Hillel and the representation of a violent settler colonial state is both political and unquestionably neither ‘family-friendly’ nor safe for Palestinian students.” (The university ensured that Hillel was able to participate.)
• In May 2017, Stony Brook University SJP condemned a Muslim Students Association (MSA) event with “Zionist Hillel,” opining that “Zionism should not be on campus and should not be mixed in with Judaism in the interfaith community.”

Harassment of Student Groups

SJP activists frequently mobilize to protest pro-Israel speakers on campus, and often go further by disrupting programs sponsored by their fellow students. The following is a partial list of these actions:

• In November 2023, SJP at UC San Diego protested an Associated Students meeting assembling outside the entrance to the building to prohibit egress, with protestors accusing Israel of "genocide" and chanting "resistance is justified," "Intifada, Intifada," and "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." Hillel noted that some of the protestors held Al Qaeda flags. Jewish students were escorted out of the building for their protection by UCSD police.
• May 17, 2023: As a student known on campus for being public about her Jewish and Zionist identities walked by an SJP table at the University of California, Davis, an SJP activist yelled, “Zio! Zio! Zio!”
• February 2023: SJP chapters at Portland State University and Boston University shared a post on Instagram reading, in part: “Zionists need to be called out. Is your co-worker a Zionist? Your teacher/lecturer a Zionist? Campaign for them to be fired...Zionists are extremists [sic]. As no logical, sane or moral person is a Zionist.”
• In February 2021, Tufts University student judiciary member Max Price faced harassment from some SJP members and student government officials for his pro-Israel views and identification with Zionism, with SJP petitioning for Price to recuse himself from fulfilling his duties helping to oversee an anti-Israel student referendum, citing his involvement with a campus pro-Israel group.
  • In an official complaint to the Tufts Senate, Tufts SJP alleged that Price “has a conflict of interest as the Tufts Friends of Israel E-Board President.”
  • In a personal statement, Price reflected that in a November meeting, “...other student government leaders grilled me for over an hour about whether my personal beliefs and Jewish and Zionist identities impact my ability to serve on the TCUJ [Tufts student judiciary] on this issue. I was explicitly asked if being co-president of Tufts Friends of Israel—the sole Zionist student club on campus—rendered me too biased to participate in this process. The undercurrent of nearly every question was whether my Zionist beliefs, which are a central expression of my Jewish identity, disqualified me from serving on student government.”

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaigns

Through on-campus action and social media advocacy, SJP has played a significant role in promoting the academic and cultural boycott of Israel:

Economic BDS

SJP has promoted BDS agendas primarily through student council resolutions, calling on student governments and universities to boycott Israeli companies and companies that do business with Israel, from weapons manufacturers to companies that make hummus.

The language SJP uses in the resolutions tends to describe Israel and Zionism as occupiers and colonizers of Palestinian lands, violators of international law, complicit in “illegal and unethical…government authorized settlements,” and purveyors of ethnic divides or war crimes against Palestinian civilians. Moreover, much of the language used in the resolutions implies that Israeli companies “engage or aid in systematic prejudiced oppression.”

Most companies from which SJP encourages divestment profit from what the group describes as the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Notably, it links companies like Amazon, Google, Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard, G4S, Motorola Solutions, Roadstone Holdings, Raytheon, Cemex, Boeing, Northrop Grumman Corporation, and Lockheed Martin to the destruction of Palestinian villages or the manufacturing of weapons used for “violent bombing campaigns in Gaza.”

SJP has also for years promoted BDS campaigns against the sales of Sabra brand hummus products on campuses. Sabra is jointly owned by an Israeli company and by the Pepsi corporation.

Sabra was a target in some 2024 spring encampment demands. University of Oregon SJP demanded that the university end all its purchasing contracts with the company. This was also an encampment demand. The Associated Students of the University of Oregon passed a BDS resolution that also included Sabra as a target.

In February 2024, Tufts University also passed a BDS resolution that included the company. Marquette University’s SJP successfully passed a BDS resolution targeting Sabra Hummus in 2022.

Other SJP chapters, like the ones at Vassar and Swarthmore, were less successful with a push to boycott Sabra outright but university administrations’ responses to SJP complaints are indicative of the problematic sway that Students for Justice in Palestine and larger BDS Movement campaigns hold.

Academic BDS

Some SJP chapters have advocated for an academic boycott of Israel by the global scholarly community.

Numerous encampments in the spring of 2024 demanded their university not only divest from companies doing business in Israel but to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and Jewish organizations as well.

UC Davis’s encampment, for example, demanded a total academic and cultural boycott, as well as cutting ties with major Jewish funding foundation, Koret.

A screenshot of demands from the UC Davis encampment. (Source:Telegram)

UC Santa Cruz’s encampment made similar demands, writing in their demands post, “Cut ties UC wide with all Zionist institutions--- including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, research collaborations, and universities. Cut ties with the Hellen Diller foundation, Koret foundation, Israel Institute, and Hillel International.”

During the 2018-2019 academic school year, Claremont SJP worked to suspend Pitzer College’s study abroad program with the University of Haifa. Then President Melvin Oliver rejected the faculty and student votes, citing academic freedom. The group revived the campaign again in 2023, persuading the student government and faculty to once again agree to suspend the study abroad program.

The school announced the program, along with ten others, was removed from Pitzer’s “pre-approved” list in the Fall of 2023.

“Israeli Apartheid Week,” “Apartheid Walls”

SJP is known for using multiple tactics to bring its cause to the attention of larger campus communities.

Since its inception in 2005, Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) has become one of the most well-known and virulent anti-Israel programs. In dozens of cities around the world each year, anti-Israel activists plan a weeklong series of events, usually in March, that are marked by allegations that Israel has become an "apartheid state" and that the Israeli government oppresses Palestinians in a manner akin to the repression of the Black majority in apartheid South Africa. Speakers at these events contend that Israeli policy regarding Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel are predicated entirely on racism and discrimination rather than legitimate security concerns.

Some chapters adopt the more confrontational tactic of constructing fake “apartheid walls” on campus, which are intended to depict Israel’s separation barrier with the West Bank. These mock walls often have statements posted on them to call attention to alleged Israeli human rights violations.

Screenshots of "Apartheid Walls" on campuses. (Source: Twitter, Instagram)

Some examples of inflammatory rhetoric during IAW include:

In March 2024, SJP at Meredith College displayed a sign reading “it’s not ‘terrorism,’ it’s RESISTANCE,” strongly implying that violent attacks against Israelis, including against civilians, are justified.

In 2023, an apartheid wall erected by SJP at Rutgers University, New Brunswick commemorated Ahmad Abu Junaid, a member of the terror group Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, as well Sanad Samamreh, who stabbed an Israeli civilian in the West Bank (the Israeli was moderately wounded). The group also venerated Khaled in an Instagram post.