Posters likening Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a nationwide Palestinian solidarity activist group, to Hamas militants were found across the University of Massachusetts campus Monday and on other college campuses across the country.
The posters depict two masked men with guns in their hands standing over a kneeling man with a bag over his head with text reading, “Students for Justice in Palestine” and “#JewHaters” at the bottom.
Similar posters were found at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Virginia.
Evan Scribner, treasurer for the UMass SJP chapter, said he believes the posters are meant to coincide with Israeli Apartheid Week, an international, campus-centered awareness campaign to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel.
Scribner said the posters were deeply troubling to the organization, which was founded by Jewish students.
“We’ve found that people who disagree with us consistently try to equate criticism of the State of Israel and criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism,” he said when reached by phone Monday night.
“That’s a really big problem and it really bothers us, especially the Jewish students in our group because we feel that it trivializes actual anti-Semitism.”
Scribner added that the posters, which equate Palestinians with terrorists, have Islamophobic and racist undertones and make some SJP members feel unsafe on campus.
“We don’t like the implications that anybody who cares about Palestine or anybody who is a Muslim or a Palestinian or an Arab is a terrorist or is violent,” he said.
Scribner said SJP is taking the matter very seriously and will be bringing it to the attention of University officials.
He added that the organization is a religiously and ethnically diverse group open to anybody. Its main strategy is to get college campuses to divest from Israel.
UCLA students have been tweeting pictures of the poster and a second poster, which has not yet been found on the UMass campus, depicting a man on a motorcycle dragging a dead body through the street with the same text.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for the posters.
Aviva Luttrell can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @AvivaLuttrell.
School parent • Feb 25, 2015 at 11:33 am
Richard: Thanks for your thoughtful post. You speak with moral clarity.
Arafat • Feb 25, 2015 at 8:25 am
Richard,
Muslims have been warring with their neighbors since Mohammed founded Islam. In fact within 300 years of Islam’s birth, Muslim jihadists had violently conquered most of the Middle East, most of North Africa, large sections of Asia, Spain, Portugal, Sicily. Muslims had their eyes set on Rome before the Pope finally declared the First Crusade.
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Muslims antipathy towards Jews is not unique. Their antipathy includes all infidels as is made clear in the Qur’an, Hadiths and Sunna.
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It is said Muslim jihadists have killed up to 70 million Hindus in their jihadist wars in southern Asia. I’d suggest Islam is an equal-opportunity hater.
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What baffles me is that people do not understand this. I mean two decades ago Muslims killed most of the Animists in Sudan. Muslims are currently wiping out Christians in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Nigeria and elsewhere. Muslims are ethnically cleansing what remains of the indigenous Hindu people of Pakistan and Bangladesh. Why is it people cannot connect these dots?
Arafat • Feb 25, 2015 at 8:18 am
“In other news, _____ Chapter of Students for Justice in Tibet have insisted that the university cease doing business with any Chinese company.” – Imaginary news report that would never occur because the bigots who attack Israel don’t actually care about “occupation,” they want to destroy the Jewish State.
Arafat • Feb 25, 2015 at 8:16 am
Evan writes, “Scribner added that the posters, which equate Palestinians with terrorists, have Islamophobic and racist undertones and make some SJP members feel unsafe on campus.”
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Imagine comparing Palestinians with terrorists! Now that’s a real stretch, huh Evan. Earth to Evan…Anyone home?
Elle • Feb 24, 2015 at 10:54 pm
I’m not going to sit and argue politics here, but I think the issue here is that SJP, an organization that has created a hostile environment for Jews and Israeli students on campuses across the US, is apparently able to dish abuse and vitrol without being able to take it. If your claim is that not all criticism of Israel is inherently anti-Semitic, then it should also stand that not all criticism of Palestine is inherently Islamaphobic. This poster neither makes no reference to Islam, nor contains any signifiers that this is a religious critique. The poster makes an exaggerated comparison, but SJP has organized an entire week’s worth of events that stem from an exaggerated comparison. If the SJP believes that such actions create uncomfortable or unsafe environments for discourse on campus, perhaps it is time they reevaluate some of their own practices.
Richard • Feb 24, 2015 at 5:03 pm
Such silly campus organizations will do nothing to change over 1000 of deep seated hatred over land and religion. That fight is doomed to continue until everyone on one or both sides is dead. Regardless of what you think of Israeli policies, the simple fact is that they are in a life and death struggle for their very survival. More than ever, they are surrounded by an emboldened enemy whose only aim is their destruction. Iran is amassing Hezbollah troops in the valleys beneath the Golan Heights, surely also infiltrating every inch of the West Bank. When you are in a life and death struggle, there will always be collateral damage. Perhaps the Palestinian people are the collateral damage, which is much of their own making, particularly as well as their Arab brethren. So while injustices surely occur at the hands of the Israelis, the importance of this pales in comparison with keeping their borders secure and their land intact. The Muslim world needs a serious reformation, as has finally been called for by al-Sisi. Imagine that, it takes a a dictatorial strongman to be the first to suggest there needs to be some modernization of thought and behavior in the Muslim world. For many of us, non=Jewish, non-Israelis, the fact that many, or even most, Muslims are probably decent people is irrelevant. Their religion, their culture, their entire societies have been hijacked by terrorists, millions of them and state sanctioned in the form of Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Libya at the very least. There MUST be an internal civil war/reformation where moderates prevail, much like the rise to power of the fundamentalists in Iran 1979. That probably won’t happen in our lifetimes. Which means that Israel in particular at ground zero but also the western world and Christianity in general need to defend itself to the teeth at all times until peace can be achieved.
School parent • Feb 24, 2015 at 4:32 pm
Given that Israel is the only democracy in the Mideast, affords full civil liberties to its citizens, and is a multi-racial and multi-religious society, it is absurd to call Israel names. Yes, Christians, Jews and Muslims, of all different colors, are free people in Israel. What is racist is the demonization of the State of Israel, the Jewish national homeland. There are over 40 Moslem majority states, and none of them offer civil rights and freedom to all religions. Christians are fleeing the Mideast in droves due to persecution in Moslem countries. The Christians who remain risk imprisonment or death. Just read the daily news. Israel is the only country in the Mideast where the Christian population is INCREASING. There used to be about a million Jews living in Arab countries. They have all been driven out, if not already imprisoned or killed. Concerned Citizen, why do you not decry the racism that exists in every Arab country? Apparently, it doesn’t fit the narrative.
Hindy Cuptar • Feb 24, 2015 at 3:51 pm
People are so upset over some posters? Damn, go study a real, sueful major then
Concerned Citizen • Feb 24, 2015 at 1:39 pm
School parent,
It seems the entire article went right over your head. When Israel’s policy is racist and problematic, it deserves criticism, as any other nation does.
School parent • Feb 24, 2015 at 10:11 am
We all know that SJP is a viciously anti-Israel group. It seeks to demonize the State of Israel. It is a pro-Hamas organization.