Right-wing activist David Horowitz is the man behind the posters on college campuses that called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) anti-Semitic and akin to Hamas.
Horowitz confirmed it was his organization behind the images in an interview with the Jewish Journal‘s Jared Sichel.
The posters are the first salvo in a Horowitz-run campaign against Palestine solidarity activism on campus. The campaign, called “Jew Hatred on Campus Awareness Week,” represents the latest pro-Israel tactic to try to squelch Palestine solidarity activism. But it is perhaps the most extreme campaign, suggesting things like staging mock hangings on campus to highlight Israel’s “stellar record on human rights.”
The posters, which call Students for Justice in Palestine “Jew haters” and contain images of Hamas executions of alleged collaborators, were discovered on multiple college campuses earlier this week. Horowitz said students posted his anti-SJP images. They were denounced by SJP members as anti-Muslim and anti-Arab images meant to tie activists to terrorism.
Horowitz is a right-wing bomb-thrower who frequently targets Muslims. His political tactics are designed to shock, so it was not surprising that he called SJP anti-Semitic and compared pro-Israel groups who disagreed with him akin to Nazi collaborators.
“I want SJP to be officially recognized as a hate group and its campus privileges and financial support removed as they would be if it were an anti-black hate group, or an anti-Hispanic hate group, or an anti-Muslim hate group,” Horowitz told the Jewish Journal.
Asked about how pro-Israel groups on campus have also denounced the posters, Horowitz said: “They are afraid of offending people whose agenda is their elimination. How sick is that? Let’s remember in the lead up to the Holocaust the Jewish councils in Eastern Europe organized the ghettos. They got everybody’s name so it would be easy for the Germans to exterminate them. Of course, they didn’t believe they would be exterminated. These Jews have the same delusion. They don’t want to recognize that they have enemies.”
Horowitz, a 1960s-era radical turned right-winger, is a regular guest on Fox News and the creator of the website TruthRevolt, which frequently inveighs against Palestinians and pro-Palestine activism.
Horowitz and his David Horowitz Freedom Center are leading anti-Muslim players in the U.S. Funded by a host of foundations to the tune of $10 million, Horowitz has “promoted the myth that Muslim extremists infiltrated an array of political organizations on both the left and the right,” according to the liberal group Center for American Progress.
The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Horowitz the “Godfather” of the anti-Muslim movement in the U.S. In a 2011 appearance at Brooklyn College, Horowitz said, “no people has shown itself so morally sick as the Palestinians have.”
Horowitz does not limit his vitriol to Palestinians and Muslims. Earlier this year, in the aftermath of protests in Ferguson, Missouri over the shooting of unarmed Black teen Michael Brown, Horowitz said, “there’s no community that’s more racist in America than the black community.”
It’s unclear what form Horowitz’s new anti-SJP campaign will take on campus. So far, he has only released a list of the top ten “anti-Semitic” campuses. He suggests that students hold film screenings, speaker events and teach-ins.
In a press statement, Horowitz said that “we made the decision to form ‘Jew Hatred on Campus’ to expose anti-Semitic student groups who support or are associated with known terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and which call for the destruction of the Jewish State.”
It is pretty obvious the zionists are getting very worried.The use of such tactics is evidence of desperation.Will netanyahu create the post of minister of propaganda with an unlimited budget.
SJP members should create posters showing horowitz,s statement that Blacks in the US are the most racist.That ought to put a kink in his plans .
I thank Horowitz. He will do great service in showing the real, and ugly, face of racist zionism in a country which needs it’s eyes opened.
I get that “bomb-thrower” doesn’t refer to actual explosive devices, but it strikes me as unnecessarily provocative (if that’s the right term) when other, perfectly-good words exist to describe him:
– hate-monger
– fear-monger
– Zio-supremacist
– @sshole
Let’s remember in the lead up to the Holocaust the Jewish councils in Eastern Europe organized the ghettos. They got everybody’s name so it would be easy for the Germans to exterminate them. Of course, they didn’t believe they would be exterminated.
Isn’t this the kind of thing that Greta Berlin got in trouble for re-tweeting?
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/greta-berlins-statement-not-correct
https://mondoweiss.mystagingwebsite.com/2012/10/no-room-for-racism-in-a-movement-working-for-equality-and-freedom
“The campaign, called “Jew Hatred on Campus Awareness Week,” represents the latest pro-Israel tactic to try to squelch Palestine solidarity activism.”
Is it? Polling shows that 54% of Jewish college students have personally witnessed or experienced at least one antisemitic incident on campus. So I guess now any campaign against campus antisemitism is going to be spun as an attempt to “squelch Palestine solidarity activism.” #Jewishlivesmatter I know, I know, you’re all taking the survey with a grain of salt, because, you know, it doesn’t fit your political worldview.
“Horowitz is a right-wing bomb-thrower who frequently targets Muslims.”
That he is. But he’s indistinguishable from left-wing bomb-throwers who frequently target Jew under the guise of “anti-Zionism,” and there are many in the Palestine solidarity crowd.
And what exactly makes this poster anti-Muslim? There is nothing on that poster of his identifying the people on it as Muslim (and Palestinian and Muslim are not interchangeable terms), and SJP is not a Muslim organization. So it must be that reason it’s anti-Muslim is that racists will look at the poster, find that its iconography fits their preconceived anti-Muslim stereotypes, and act accordingly. Or maybe it’s hate speech because depicting Muslims or anything that looks like Muslims, negatively, is now hate speech. Perhaps publishing pictures of ISIS beheadings is hate speech.
Of course, by the same logic, posters negatively depicting Israelis or targeting major Jewish organizations are anti-Jewish.
“He suggests that students hold film screenings, speaker events and teach-ins.”
Don’t see anything wrong with that; the way to combat bad speech is with good speech, and to Horowitz’s credit, he made clear that he did not favor shutting SJP down.