College students Allied for Freedom and Equality protested a speech by Vice President Kamala Harris, who they are saying helps ‘genocide’
An anti-Israel pupil group on the College of Michigan on Thursday marched through campus praising violent assaults within the Jewish state and calling for Israel’s destruction.
Members of Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) carried Palestinian flags by means of the quad whereas chanting, “Lengthy stay the intifada” and “From the river to the ocean, Palestine can be free,” a call for the destruction of Israel. The group was protesting Vice President Kamala Harris, who was visiting campus to debate the Biden administration’s local weather coverage.
The protest is the newest high-profile anti-Semitic incident on U.S. school campuses. Final week, Jewish college students at George Washington College filed a discrimination criticism in opposition to their college, alleging it retaliated in opposition to them after they reported their professor for anti-Semitism. Cases of anti-Semitic hate have doubled on school campuses lately, in accordance with a report from the AMCHA Initiative.
SAFE is an affiliate of College students for Justice in Palestine, a nationwide group identified for opposing Jewish audio system at universities and backing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) motion. In line with a 2019 report from the Institute for the Research of International Antisemitism and Coverage, College students for Justice in Palestine has expressed help for convicted terrorists and is the “essential driver of Jew-hatred on campus.”
The College of Michigan’s public affairs workplace, SAFE, and College students for Justice in Palestine didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Wolverine for Israel, a pro-Israel campus group, slammed the demonstration as “a name to violence in opposition to Israelis and the Jewish state.”
In an Instagram post, SAFE denounced Harris’s “help for Israeli apartheid” that “has brought about immense ecological destruction.” Protesters on the occasion chided the vp, chanting, “Kamala, Kamala, you’ll be able to’t disguise, you are committing genocide.”
The group’s condemnation of Harris is odd, contemplating the vp’s historical past of help for anti-Israel protests. In 2021, she praised a school pupil who accused Israel of “ethnic genocide.”
“Your reality shouldn’t be suppressed,” Harris mentioned, nodding as the scholar criticized U.S. protection funding for Israeli missile techniques.
White Home press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has additionally accused Israel of “conflict crimes” and beforehand served as spokeswoman for MoveOn.org, an anti-Israel group.
A White Home official instructed the Washington Free Beacon that “the Biden-Harris administration will absolutely and all the time respect the American individuals’s First Modification rights” however that the “United States firmly rejects the BDS motion” and “can be a robust associate in preventing efforts to delegitimize Israel.”
“The USA helps insurance policies that advance Israel’s safety and regional integration, help a two-state answer, and result in equal measures of safety, prosperity, and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians,” the official mentioned.
President Joe Biden in December accredited $3.8 billion in protection spending for Israel. Throughout their protest, SAFE organizers criticized Biden for offering “unconditional assist” that has “destabilized” the atmosphere within the Center East and contributed to the “ethnic cleaning of Palestinians in occupied territories.”
“Not one other nickel, not one other dime, no extra money for Israel’s crimes,” the group chanted exterior the occasion.
Professional-Palestinian militants killed 27 Israeli residents in 2022—about half as many as have been killed in 2005, over the past yr of the Second Intifada. Almost 1,000 Israeli civilians have been killed in the course of the First and Second Intifadas.
SAFE additionally called out the vp over her help for marijuana prosecutions that led to “mass incarceration”—solely to laugh off her personal abuse of the drug in the course of the 2020 Democratic presidential major. The Free Beacon first reported in 2019 that as California’s legal professional common, Harris imprisoned greater than 1,500 residents for marijuana-related offenses.
Salma Hamamy, who’s listed on the college’s webpage as the first contact for SAFE, didn’t reply to a request for remark. She serves on pupil authorities for the School of Literature, Science, and the Arts and in Might 2021 supported a campus-wide decision to face in solidarity with Palestinians.
The group issued an open letter the identical month calling on the College of Michigan’s Board of Regents to divest from all Israeli-owned firms.
