As nine California legislators on Tuesday congratulated San Francisco State University President Dr. Leslie Wong for standing up to anti-Semitism on campus last week, online activity of the student group in question showed even more blatant displays of Jew hate.
“It is imperative that we recognize individuals who have the courage to stand up to intolerance and bigotry,” Assembly member Marc Levine (D-San Rafael), a member of the Assembly Higher Education Committee and the Legislative Jewish Caucus, along with eight other legislators, said in an open letter to Wong. “We thank you for your work to preserve a culture of tolerance at San Francisco State University and applaud your efforts to discourage exhibitions of discrimination.”
Last week, Wong had condemned a campus event held by the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) as anti-Semitic, after AMCHA Initiative, a group that fights campus hate speech against Jews, wrote to the administration to protest. Wong’s censure was the first time an administrator from SFSU admitted or condemned an act of anti-Semitism on campus.
The maelstrom was sparked by a stand at an event which invited passers-by to create their own placards with a stencil that read, “My heroes have always killed colonizers.”
Wong said, “I am dismayed by the glorification of violence that this message conveys. There is no place at SF State for celebrating violence or promoting intolerance, bigotry, anti-Semitism or any other form of hate-mongering. We are a university community committed to furthering civil dialogue. Each of us must remain vigilant in working to achieve this goal.”
The conciliatory words from the university and legislators came in the face of denials and more hate speech from the student leader behind the rally.
On Facebook, Mohammad Hammad, president of the General Union of Palestinian Students, denied the charges against his group: “We are appalled at this blatant attack against the integrity and principled position that GUPS has maintained throughout its history. We are horrified by the baseless attack and allegations of anti-Semitism that have been leveled against GUPS and the Cesar Chavez Student Center, the organizers of the 6th annual anniversary of the Palestinian Cultural Mural honoring the late professor Edward Said,” he wrote.
Blogger Elder of Ziyon and researcher Bob Knot tracked down the rest of his online footprint, and were appalled to see the extent of his hatred for the Jews of Israel.
“Hammad has three Tumblr accounts, which have all recently become password protected: palestinianliberator, canttouchthisnuhnuhnuh, and astrangerdanger. Between the time that the disgusting signs were publicized and the time that the GUPS realized that they have a public relations problem, Hammad described to his friends on Tumblr exactly who the target of the signs are – and his opinion does not refer only to to Jews who lived in Israel in the 1940s,” the blogger wrote.
One of his Tumblr accounts read:
“You know what? / Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it / And you know what else? / My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers / I literally see nothing wrong with this and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed / HMM”
Elder of Ziyon also found a speech written by Hammad that calls for violent uprising in Israel and condones the killing of Israelis in a war of “liberation”:
“I will no longer support the two-state solution, and will vie for the liberation of Palestine through the reclamation of the lands that are rightfully ours through any means necessary. If the Israelis want to live in peace with us, so be it, but this peace will NOT be on their terms. It may be Palestinian freedom fighters who pull the triggers, but whatever lives are lost in the battle for liberation rest squarely on the shoulders of Israel. Until return, and until liberation, one-state for Palestinians through any means necessary.
Another account showed a photograph of a hand, presumably Hammad’s, giving the middle finger to a U.S. Armed Forces recruitment office from inside a car with a dashboard lined with a Palestinian flag.