The group Palestine Legal has filed a civil rights complaint against Florida State University (FSU) for allegedly tolerating and intensifying an anti-Palestinian environment on campus. It’s believed to be the first ever anti-Palestinian discrimination complaint on a college campus.
“It’s time to speak out about racism against Palestinians as the status quo,” said Michael Ratner Justice Fellow Amira Mattar in a statement. “We’re demanding that the federal government hold Florida state to account because we must put an end to the erasure, dismissal, and intentional distortion of Palestinian voices.”
The complaint, which was sent to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, concerns Ahmad Daraldik, a 20-year-old Palestinian-American student FSU. After Daraldik was elected student senate president at the school in June 2020, pro-Israel groups dug up a social media post that he made as a twelve-year-old living in occupied Palestine. In that post he refers to an IDF solider stepping on a young girl as a “stupid Jew.” The photo seems to have been staged. Daraldik was also attacked for 2019 Instagram photo where he’s standing in front of Ramallah’s Nelson Mandela statue. His caption on the photograph was, “Iconic. #fucktheoccupation #fuckisrael.”
Daraldik wrote a letter to the student body apologizing for the post he made a child and condemning antisemitism. “While I made my comments from the perspective of a Palestinian child who lived under military occupation I have since realized they were wrong and offensive,” reads the letter. I would never frame my experience like this or make such comments today. I choose solidarity instead, and hope you join me in coming together to heal and move forward.”
Daraldik’s apology didn’t deter the campaign against him, which eventually caught the attention of local politicians. GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis called on FSU to “unequivocally condemn this toxicity and ignorance on campus.” Bilirakis was one of four lawmakers who called for action against Daraldik. There were three petitions demanding that he be ousted and two city councils passed resolutions condemning him. Additionally, he received dozens of private messages that were racist and Islamophobic.
Daraldik was eventually removed from his position by the student supreme court.
The Palestine Legal complaints details how FSU helped bolster the attacks. FSU President John Thrasher put out a statement condemning the old social media posts as antisemitic and the school opened a student conduct investigation into Jack Keen, a student who defended Daraldik.
While the attacks on Daraldik ramped up, FSU adopted the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which includes some criticisms of Israel. Earlier this year, the student senate rejected a BDS resolution and two resolutions that took aim at the IHRA working definition. Those resolutions were authored by Daraldik.
Here in the states we have big corporate interest unwilling to do business in Georgia because of systemic racism proven by the efforts of the Republicans to suppress the vote, however, the I lobby has been successful at getting state governments to make it illegal to support the boycott, divest, sanction movement standing up to Israel’s complete oppression of Palestinians and continued theft of their internationally recognized land.
Hoping Phil or some other brilliant writer here at Mondoweiss points this massive hypocrisy out.
This article brings to mind:
Former Senator James Abourezk has revealed that many members of congress privately resent the control that Israel has over them. He wrote,
“I can tell you from personal experience that, at least in the Congress, the support Israel has in that body is based completely on political fear—fear of defeat by anyone who does not do what Israel wants done. I can also tell you that very few members of Congress—at least when I served there—have any affection for Israel or for its Lobby. What they have is contempt, but it is silenced by fear of being found out exactly how they feel. I’ve heard too many cloakroom conversations in which members of the Senate will voice their bitter feelings about how they’re pushed around by the Lobby to think otherwise. In private one hears the dislike of Israel and the tactics of the Lobby, but not one of them is willing to risk the Lobby’s animosity by making their feelings public.” http://ifamericaknew.org/us_ints/pg-abourezk.html
Bravo for anyone that dares to stand up to the Zionist lobby and fight back, as Palestine Legal has chosen to do here. Fighting back isn’t just advisable, it’s absolutely necessary to protect and defend the Palestinian justice movement, while exposing and ultimately defeating the scourge of Zionism.
This brings to mind Betsy McCollum’s defense of AIPAC’s attacks a little over a year ago when it labelled her an anti-Semite. Instead of cowering to the arrogance of AIPAC and the Zionist lobby, as those in Congress typically do, Betsy fired back, characterizing AIPAC as a ‘hate group’. AIPAC was stunned and had to walk back it’s charges in the face of Betsy’s courage.
Again, once you stand up to, and fight back against, a bully, you expose the bully as a coward, forcing he, she or it to retreat.
What he should have written as a 12-year-old was “brutal Jew.” When every Jew you see is either a police officer, a soldier, or a settler, why should you be expected to think they’re anything but bad?
This article completely ignores the toxic history of antisemitism at FSU. Clearly it bothers pro-Palestinian activists when they are not given a free run to terrorise Jews on university campuses.
8,000 FSU students signed an online petition to remove the student senate president Daraldik over his anti-Jewish social media posts. That sounds like quite a ground swell.