East County News Service
Photo courtesy ECM news partner 10 News
May 3, 2016 (San Diego) — Muslim student groups at San Diego State University are calling for action after posters appeared on campus claiming certain Muslim students are allied with Palestinian terrorists and anti-Semitism.
The posters were the works of the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles and named seven students by name along with the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement described as a “Hamas-inspired genocidal campaign to destroy Israel, the world’s first Jewish state.”
BDS has called on companies to boycott Israel and on its "Who Profits" websites, names and shames Israeli companies and individuals doing business in disputed terroritories and denouncing what it considers military excesses by Israel. But now some of its members and advocates are raising objections to pro-Israel groups using similar tactics.
Advocates of the Horowitz Freedom Center's flyers contend that their posters name and shame certain pro-Palestinian activists to hold them accountable for anti-Semitic hate speech, joining or speaking at rallies advocating elimination of the Israeli state and for alleged financial or other ties to officially recognized terrorist groups. Jewish activists at Canary Mission have set up a website documenting individuals spreading anti-Semitism.
Congress has a;sp heard testimony documenting ties between Hamas and leaders of the BDS movement.
Horowitz has been invited to speak this week at SDSU by a Republican students group that has indicated it will go forw
ard with the event and not give in to pressures it views as bullying tactics.
At a recent demonstration, pro-Muslim protesters blocked SDSU president Hirshman, who is Jewish, from exiting his vehicle for a full hour, until police intervened to protect Hirshman.(Photo, right, from Students for Justice in Palestine Facebook page)
San Diego State President Elliot Hirshman, in a meeting with students groups on Monday, including Associated Students, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Muslim Student Association.
Afterwards the school issued a statement indicated that the parties agreed to “undertake a review of university policies to insure we are balancing freedom of expression and protection from harassment.”
Some students called on Hirshman to outright denounce the posters, as UCLA's president did when similar ones surfaced there.
But others praised the Horowitz Center's efforts to protect Jewish students on campus and stop what they view as incitement to hatred of Jews amid growing global anti-Semitic violence.