Students for Justice in Palestine

In 2001, SJP's University of California, Berkeley chapter chose the memorial of the Deir Yassin massacre to occupy a campus building and disrupt a midterm exam in progress for over 600 students as part of a protest against the university's investments in Israel. Police broke up the occupation after warning the students of trespassing. Seventy-nine protesters were arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest. One protester was jailed on a charge of felony battery after he bit a police officer.[7]

Following the arrests, SJP was banned from operating at UC Berkeley, prompting an SJP protest by 200 demonstrators a month later. University Chancellor Berdahl said, "It is important to understand that this is neither an issue of free speech, nor of the right to hold demonstrations on campus. The issue is the occupation of an academic building, interfering with the rights of other students to continue their education."[8]

On April 9, 2002, SJP staged a sit-in Wheeler Hall, one of the University of California, Berkeley's largest classroom buildings. Police were called to the scene and the students ordered to leave or face arrest. 41 students did not leave and were arrested and charged with various violations of the university's Code of Student Conduct.[9] The university also banned SJP from engaging in on-campus protests.[10]

In 2006, Auckland University's SJP led demonstrations against the local weapons industry Rakon, a company that sells components to the U.S. military.[11] On 28 September 2015, members of the Victoria University of Wellington's SJP branch picketed a talk by two visiting former Israeli soldiers that had been organized by the Australasian Union of Jewish Students.[12]

In April 2011, while speaking at Brandeis University, Avi Dichter, a member of the Knesset and of Israel's centrist and Kadima party, was interrupted by protesters from the university's SJP calling him a war criminal and accusing him of torture and crimes against humanity.[13]

Every year the International Studies (IS) program at Vassar College has a course that sends students on a trip abroad. In 2013, it was decided that the trip would be to Israel and Palestine to study water issues for a course called The Jordan River Watershed.[14] The trip drew the ire of SJP for, among other things, being coordinated with the Israeli research institute Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. On February 6, nine SJP members picketed an IS class and handed out leaflets criticizing Israel and Israeli appropriation of Palestinian water sources.[15]

On September 9, 2014, at Loyola University Chicago, students were manning a Hillel table promoting Birthright Israel, a program that pays for Jews to visit Israel. A group of Palestinian students affiliated with SJP lined up at the table and tried to register for trips to Israel. After conversations with the students manning the table, they were turned away because they were not Jews. The Palestinian students then lined up for a photo op some distance away with signs that read: "My family is from the ethnically cleansed village of [each place name] BUT I DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO RETURN." According to members of SJP, the point of trying to register for Birthright Israel was to expose the program's racism.[16][17]

The Hillel students complained and accused the Palestinian students of having harassed and verbally assaulted them "in an attempt to intimidate Jewish students."[18] After two months of investigation, the university cleared SJP of those allegations, but found both Hillel and SJP responsible for having violated the University's Free Expression and Demonstration policy, Hillel for not having registered its table and SJP for not having registered its impromptu action, having learned about Hillel's tabling the night before.[19]

As punishment, Hillel was required to attend an event on how to register events, while SJP was sanctioned with probation for the remainder of the school year, which prohibited it from requesting funds from the school for the duration. It was also required to attend "InterGroup Dialogue Training."[19]

In May 2015, after a more than yearlong campaign, the SJP campaign at Bowdoin College to boycott Israel ended with 20% of students voting in favor, 21% abstaining and 59% voting against.[20]

In February 2009, following a two-year campaign by SJP, signed by over 800 students, professors and alumni,[21] Hampshire College in Massachusetts became the first U.S. college to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The board of trustees decided to divest from Caterpillar, United Technologies, General Electric, ITT Corporation, Motorola and Terex.[22]

Hampshire College President Ralph Hexter said the decision to divest from those companies was not aimed at Israel but related to socially responsible investing criteria, and criticized SJP for suggesting otherwise.[23][24] SJP replied the college was shying away from the "political implications of its action".[23]

In November 2010, SJP at DePaul University began a campaign to have Sabra brand hummus removed from the university. The parent company of Sabra is the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that supports two Israeli brigades, the Givati Brigade and the Golani Brigade.[25] The university initially agreed, but reversed its stance a few days later by reinstating Sabra hummus in the dining halls. The university spokeswoman said, "in this instance the sale of Sabra hummus was temporarily suspended, by mistake, prior to review by the Fair Business Practices Committee. We have reinstated sales to correct that error by staff personnel."[26]

In May 2011, the DePaul SJP presented a referendum to the Student Government on Sabra.[27] The result was 1,127 in favor, 332 against and 8 extraneous write-ins. The number of votes were 32 short of the 1,500 needed for the referendum to be valid.[28]

Stanford's BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) defeat was notably followed by two quick BDS victories at University of California, Riverside and University of California, San Diego. On March 8, 2013, substantial campaigning by SJP at University of California, Riverside (UCR) produced a victory when the Senate voted 11–5 to endorse BDS and divest from Caterpillar and Hewlett Packard. The vote in support of BDS at UCR was large enough to avoid a veto by the undergraduate student body president who opposed the resolution.[29]

Zionist organizations have charged that the SJP promotes antisemitism,[30] and the Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel civil-rights law organization, maintains a page on SJP that lists episodes of what they call "Harassment of Student Groups" by its chapters and members.[31]

The pro-Israel AMCHA Initiative has published a report on what they consider the association between SJP groups, the BDS movement, and campus antisemitism, including a 2015 report that found that "the presence of an anti-Zionist student group such as Students for Justice in Palestine" is one of the two "best statistical predictors of overall antisemitic activity on a campus."[32][33][34] A 2016 follow-up report found that antisemitism was "eight times more likely to occur on campuses with at least one active anti-Zionist student group such as SJP."[35][36][37] A 2016 report by researchers at the Steinhardt Social Research Institute concurred with the AMCHA Initiative's report.[38]

On February 7, 2013, Brooklyn College's (BC) SJP chapter organized and held an open forum on the BDS movement and boycotts of Israel. The college's political science department co-sponsored the forum. The speakers were Judith Butler, an American philosopher who supports the BDS movement, and Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian who is one of its founders.[39]

The forum attracted widespread media attention. Among its critics were the Anti-Defamation League, Alan Dershowitz, who called it an "anti-Israel hatefest", and New York politicians, who threatened to stop funding the college if the event was held. But the forum took place, with around 200 people in the audience and 150 anti-BDS protestors who had gathered outside.[40]

During Butler's speech, four Jewish students of BC, Yvonne Juris, Melanie Goldberg, Ari Ziegler, and one unnamed student, were asked to leave. They had brought with them anti-BDS literature and flyers that they intended to hand out.[40] According to Goldberg, the organizers of the event confronted them, demanded they hand over the papers, and asked a security guard to remove them from the event, which he did.[41]

This caused controversy; the organizers were accused of antisemitism because the evicted students were Jewish and of stifling free speech. Four months later, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) filed a legal complaint against the college, alleging anti-Jewish discrimination. This caused BC to launch an investigation which resulted in a 40-page report two months later, while the students that organized the event sought legal help from the Center for Constitutional Rights. The report stated that the eviction was not discriminatory but based on a "political viewpoint". BC eventually settled with ZOA and President Karen Gould apologized for how the school had handled the event.[40]