With the latest revelation coming out of San Francisco State University including a Tumblr page in which a student allegedly brandishes and knife and fantasizes about killing Israeli soldiers, the AMCHA Initiative has followed up with another letter to SFSU president Les Wong. Dear President Wong,
As you know, a posting from the Tumbler account of GUPS president Mohammad G. Hammad has recently been widely circulated. The posting includes a photograph showing Mr. Hammad holding a large knife and a caption reading "I seriously cannot get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier." This is a horrifying image, all the more so because Mr. Hammad is the leader of a university-sanctioned and funded student organization that recently hosted an on-campus event glorifying the murder of Jews.
Following articles about Mr. Hammad's posting in several Jewish media outlets such as the Jewish Journal and the Jewish Press, members of the Jewish community throughout the state and across the country are understandably outraged at such behavior, and deeply concerned for the safety of Jewish students at SFSU.
In light of Mr. Hamad's post threatening violence against Jews and his organization's sponsorship of an event that included the glorification of the killing of Jews, we and many members of the Jewish community want to know what your action plan entails -- what concrete steps you have already taken, and what steps you intend to take in the immediate future -- to keep Jewish students safe from antisemitic harassment and attack on your campus.
We believe that if a registered student group or its leader threatened violence against any other student ethnic group, the university would take prompt and concrete actions. We expect nothing less for Jewish students.
We look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative
Leila Beckwith
Co-founder, AMCHA Initiative
CC: CSU Chancellor Timothy P. White
CSU Board of Trustees
CSU Interim General Counsel Andrew Jones
Kenneth Monteiro, Dean of College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU
California State Senator Leland Y. Yee (San Francisco)
California State Senator Mark Leno (San Francisco)
California Assembly Member Philip Y. Ting (San Francisco)
California Senator Carol Liu, Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Education
California Assembly Member Joan Buchanan, Chair of the Assembly Education Committee
California Assembly Member Marc Levine
California State Senator Marty Block
California Assembly Member Das Williams
California Assembly Member Jose Medina
California Senator Lois Wolk
California Assembly Member Richard Bloom
California Assembly Member Steve Fox
California Jewish community leaders
BCC: Wide circulation in the Jewish community
Here the AMCHA Initiative's alert to the community on this incident:
I would like to add a note here. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin,who is a friend and one of the co-founders of the AMCHA Initiative, is under a relentless attack from the pro-Palestinian thugs on California campuses. The below link may give you an idea of the courageous and valuable work she is doing.
http://www.jewishcommunityheroes.org/nominees/profile/tammi-benjamin/ Below is her entry from Rate My Professors: http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=430909 Below is an article about Tammi from Jewish Press http://www.jewishpress.com/news/appealing-jewish-prof-civil-rts-office-removing-recourse-for-jews/2013/10/31/ Thanks to Dusty for sending me these. | |||||||||||||||
This character is beneath moral outrage. The proper response would be to ridicule him for holding a knife on a video in the safety of a SF dorm room about killing Israeli soldiers, from 12.000 miles away. Very brave... maybe he'd like to say that in the presence of a real Israeli soldier. They may be wrong or deployed with malice at times, but few doubt their rigorous training, skills, or reflexes any more. I bet a professional hit man would laugh at the kid's choice of knife anyway. He's no different than the Americans who cheered loudly for the revolutionary movement furthest from home while building careers and buying houses in the suburbs. Don't feed his ego with outrage, dismiss him as only capable of kissing an Israeli soldier's rear end if he stood on a tall soap box.
ReplyDeleteSiarlys,
ReplyDeleteThank you. There is hope for you.
There always has been Gary. Only, what you and I hope to change sometimes leads in different directions.
ReplyDeleteThe battle goes on... http://bayareaintifada.wordpress.com/2013/12/07/sfsu-heroes-have-always-killed-colonizers/
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteJust read it. What a load of self-pitying crap.
Yeah, yeah. That banal diatribe at Word Press is in the style of the "one big happy family" school of political struggle. You scratch my political back, and I'll scratch yours. We're too busy scratching each other's backs to go out and build a mass constituency, which is kind of a drag anyway, because you have to listen to people, and you find that Hispanic families who work for a living and pay rent or struggle to keep up with a mortgage, much less those working on dairy farms where they are expected to eat their sandwich for lunch with one hand while milking cows with the other, and drink out of the same hose used to wash down the floors of the cattle stalls... REALLY AREN'T THINKING ABOUT BEDOUINS IN THE NEGEV, and have no opinion about using dime store knives on Israeli soldiers armed with Uzis.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, what's a university for if you can't FEEL revolutionary while paying thousands of dollars in fees and tuition every year, running up debt you'll work at some fancy white collar job to pay off, while reminiscing about how militant you were before you had to work for a living?
This is the kind of idiocy Lenin condemned when he wrote "Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder." Now Anony Mouse will say, hey, we're not Leninists, Lenin was a white man, as if that means anything. And he endorsed the Balfour declaration. But just remember dude, he DID win a revolution, which is more than you've ever come close to doing. (It didn't entirely turn out like he had hoped either -- and a more amateurish attempt would have worse results.)