When Posters Target Pro-Palestinian Students, Campus Jews Speak Out

Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian posters appeared on college campuses across the country throughout the month of October, provoking condemnation from a variety of campus groups and administrators.

These posters were a product of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an organization spearheaded by anti-Muslim extremist David Horowitz, and are part of the organization’s campaign called “Stop the Jew Hatred on Campus,” which attempts to paint pro-Palestinian students and faculty as anti-Jewish terrorists.

Many of the posters featured a racialized cartoon character of a terrorist beckoning students to join Students for Justice in Palestine followed by a list of students’ names and their affiliation with Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, or campaigns for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) from Israel. Other posters had cartoon caricatures of specific individuals, from well-known faculty to students, labeled with “#JewHatred.”

. @HorowitzCenter Fighting back & naming names @SDSU on their support of terrorists #JewHatred #BDSFail pic.twitter.com/7otxb0uAhi

— Jew Hatred on Campus (@CampusHatred) October 7, 2016

On Oct. 3, Horowitz’s center announced its campaign to hang the posters on college campuses beginning with UCLA. According to the written announcement, posters were to be subsequently hung at UC Irvine, UC Berkeley, Brooklyn College, Vassar College, San Francisco State University, San Diego State University, Tufts University, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Chicago. The posters appeared on most of these campuses over the next month, though they were never seen at the University of Tennessee. In early November, posters also went up at the University of Minnesota.

David Horowitz has been designated an extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and his profile on the SPLC website describes him as a “driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-black movements.”

This is not his first time targeting college campuses with poster campaigns. For this campaign, Horowitz got the student and faculty names for the posters from Canary Mission, a website that posts profiles of activists who support BDS, including photos, with the intent of hindering their academic or job prospects and mobilizing online intimidation. Over 1,000 university faculty members across the country have signed a letter condemning Canary Mission.

“Ever since my name was listed on the posters, I have been followed, bullied and harassed on social media,” wrote UCLA fourth-year student Robert Gardner in The Daily Bruin, the university newspaper. “Like other students, this has caused me to worry for my safety. This experience has also caused me a great deal of psychological trauma, and I worry about my well-being.”

This intervention by a national group into campus politics is not unusual. Because of campus divestment campaigns and well-publicized clashes between different on-campus groups, the college campus is considered a prominent site of American conflict over Israel and Palestine, drawing participation from groups outside of the university scene like StandWithUs, the AMCHA Initiative, and, in this case, Horowitz’s center.

However, despite Horowitz’s eagerness to inject himself into the campus conversation with his claim to stand against “Jew hatred,” most Jewish students and faculty around the country, from across the political spectrum, have staunchly opposed Horowitz’s posters and his efforts to speak in their name.

The Jewish Studies Program at Vassar College released a statement on Facebook saying, “Despite our various opinions, all of us in Vassar College’s Jewish Studies Program are united in condemning all efforts to intimidate, harass, and silence our professors and students who speak out on issues of concern to them.” The statement said the posters are “repugnant, racist, and dangerous, and have no place in a diverse and open society.”

“It’s important for others to know that this is not the work or doing of any of our students,” said Josh Woznica, president of UC Berkeley’s Jewish Student Union and Bears for Israel. “They were just as shocked to see this. We don’t have any ties or any connection to David Horowitz or his ‘freedom center.’”

Despite Horowitz’s extremist status, some see a connection between his campaigns and other pro-Israel activism. Palestine Legal, an organization that aims to protect pro-Palestinian activists, wrote on its website, “Although the Horowitz Center is widely viewed as an extremist hate group, its strategy is in line with broader efforts of mainstream pro-Israel advocacy organizations, Israeli officials, and U.S. government officials to suppress support for Palestinian rights by branding it antisemitic.”

Many pro-Israel campus group members, however, deny that Horowitz’s tactics are in line with their own.

“I think this type of rhetoric makes it very difficult for any dialogue or for any conversations to happen on campus,” said Woznica. “It doesn’t advance the mission of our group.”

A statement released by J Street UChicago, which calls itself “pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian,” said that the group “unequivocally condemns” the posters and urged other members of the pro-Israel community “to stand strong against such demonization.”

“We are committed to civil discourse and the civil rights of all members of the campus community,” said the statement.

Despite Horowitz’s claim to be fighting anti-Jewish hatred, his own work has been called anti-Semitic. In a statement published in the Tufts Daily, Students for Justice in Palestine at Tufts University wrote, “For those of us targeted by these posters who are Jewish, the use of anti-Semitic tropes was especially disturbing, given how the posters appropriated anti-Semitic graphics to serve an Islamophobic, anti-Arab organization, while, ironically, claiming to seek an end to anti-Semitism.” In an interview with The Chicago Maroon, the University of Chicago student newspaper, Horowitz talked about pro-Israel groups opposed to his tactics.

Horowitz responded by saying his student critics are simply afraid, insinuating that Jews in the Holocaust died because of a similar fear. “They’re scared. They’re intimidated and scared,” he said. “This is why six million Jews were exterminated. Because they were scared.”

Mari Cohen is a journalist, poet, and fourth-year history major at the University of Chicago.

Read David Horowitz’s response to the article here.