Pro-Palestinian network’s tactics roil college campuses in U.S.

WASHINGTON — After last month’s attack on Israel by Hamas, Students for Justice in Palestine promoted a “toolkit” for activists that proclaimed “glory to our resistance.” The group has been banned or suspended by Brandeis, Columbia and George Washington universities, and it was recently the target of thundering speeches on Capitol Hill.

In the weeks since Hamas attacked Israel, there may be no college group that has drawn more scrutiny than Students for Justice in Palestine, perhaps the most popular and divisive campus organization championing the Palestinian cause.

But unlike many national campus groups, Students for Justice in Palestine is by design a loosely connected network of autonomous chapters. There is no national headquarters and no named leader. There is a national student steering committee, but it is anonymous. The group has never registered as a nonprofit, and it has never had to file tax documents.

One of the people who founded it about 30 years ago, Hatem Bazian, has described the setup as “a symbolic franchise without a franchise fee.”

That deliberate lack of hierarchy has been crucial to the network’s ascent, allowing chapters to spring up with few obstacles, according to interviews with 20 people and a survey of videos, academic writings, archival news accounts and public records. The network’s constellation of tactics and rhetoric, including theatrical demonstrations with “apartheid walls” and mock Israeli checkpoints, has been replicated on campuses across the country.

The flat structure, though, has also fueled worries among pro-Israel groups that accuse the network of driving antisemitism on campuses, often with little accountability. A 2016 report from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis asserted that the presence of a chapter on a campus was “one of the strongest predictors of perceiving a hostile climate toward Israel and Jews.”

Some critics of the network have gone so far as to raise fears that the student group has illegal financial ties to Hamas, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization. But they have not marshaled irrefutable evidence of that, and no prosecutor has ever brought charges against the network.

Members acknowledge that their tactics can provoke discomfort but insist that the group’s mission is focused on progressive causes, mainly the plight of Palestinians, and combating ills that include white supremacy and antisemitism. And they believe the group’s structure is inseparable from its integrity as a student activist movement, which has surged in intensity as the death toll in the Gaza Strip — now more than 11,000, according to authorities there — has increased.

Although published reports have pegged its founding to 2001, Students for Justice in Palestine actually began in the early 1990s at the University of California at Berkeley, according to Bazian.

Apartheid was collapsing in South Africa, he said, and some critics of Pretoria’s policies turned toward the Palestinian cause through the new student group. Other activists — environmentalists, opponents of U.S. intervention in Latin America, critics of the Persian Gulf War — joined in, broadening the group’s base.

Recalling its early days, Bazian said, “Anyone who wants to organize for Palestine is welcome, as long as you have the principle of centering Palestinian concerns.”

By the middle of 2001, the Berkeley group was drawing headlines. It pressed unsuccessfully for the university system’s regents to divest from Israel, and it blocked a campus gate to simulate an Israeli checkpoint.

The group’s protests eventually included “apartheid walls” with students dressed as Palestinian refugees standing nearby. Members and supporters saw the head-turning demonstrations as ways to puncture press coverage they regarded as too sympathetic toward Israel.

But other students and faculty members said the group’s approach heightened polarization. At some point, the group picked up a nickname among critics at Berkeley and elsewhere: “Students for Just Us in Palestine.”

“The way SJP framed the debate, it was kind of more interested in inflaming emotions, placing the blame, rather than trying to educate others,” said Scott Newman, the president of the Jewish Student Union at Berkeley for the 2000-01 academic year.

Newman, who said he did not remember tense protests before the group’s resurgence, described the tactics as “hostile” and recalled a demonstration where someone had a sign bearing three symbols: the Star of David, an equal sign and a swastika. Recalling the approach more than two decades later, he said, “You go to Berkeley, you get used to ordinary political protest. This was not that.”

He said, though, that Students for Justice in Palestine was effective at drawing attention to its interpretation of events and policy.

The hugely visible demonstrations in California allowed the group to expand, even as it remained decentralized, its chapters autonomous. Early leaders feared infiltration and disruption, so there was no national chain of command. Bazian, now a lecturer at Berkeley, said the approach “allows for any campus that sees the principle to initiate a chapter and get going.”

It was not unusual for universities to help underwrite the groups, as they have often done with registered student organizations. William Youmans, an associate professor at George Washington, remembered that the Berkeley chapter of his era, of which he was a member, “would survive on funding from the university or the equivalent of bake sales.”

Researchers and pro-Israel groups have spent years trying to trace the network’s funding and have been skeptical of such poverty claims. They note that the national group collects donations, but the amount has not been made public. They have also cited the network’s intellectual and financial connections to American Muslims for Palestine, a Virginia group mired in litigation over whether it is an “alter ego” for a disbanded organization linked to Hamas.

Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, an organization that has been critical of Hamas, told Congress in 2016 that American Muslims for Palestine was “arguably the most important sponsor and organizer” for the student group. With that support, he told a House committee recently, groups like Students for Justice in Palestine “systematically threaten or intimidate Jewish and pro-Israel students.”

Bazian, now the chair of American Muslims for Palestine’s board, played down its ties to the student group, which he said were generally limited to providing printed materials and offering grants for students to bring in speakers or attend conferences. He said his group does not have meaningful power over Students for Justice in Palestine.

The student network’s lack of formal structure has not helped ease concerns. Even after the group developed a national steering committee that helped organize conferences and other resources, critics said, it did not declare itself a nonprofit or formally incorporate.