top
Palestine
Palestine
Indybay
Indybay
Indybay
Regions
Indybay Regions North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area North Coast Central Valley North Bay East Bay South Bay San Francisco Peninsula Santa Cruz IMC - Independent Media Center for the Monterey Bay Area California United States International Americas Haiti Iraq Palestine Afghanistan
Topics
Newswire
Features
From the Open-Publishing Calendar
From the Open-Publishing Newswire
Indybay Feature

Open Letter to SFSU President Wong Concerning Student Celebration of the Edward Said Mural

by National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area
President Wong: We are writing on behalf of the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF), to express our serious concern about your statements regarding the November 7 student celebration of the Edward Said mural, and to urge you to uphold academic freedom by Palestinian students and faculty against outside political pressure. AMCHA’s call for investigation and discipline and false accusation of anti-Semitism against GUPS and AMED is a politically motivated attempt to silence their point of view that echoes similar attacks on Palestinian and Arab students on campuses around the country.
edward_said_mural.jpg
Hate speech on your campus should be a concern of yours. But controversial political speech is not the same as hate speech. Resisting colonialism, whether Israeli or American or British, and supporting such resistance has nothing to do with hate speech. You may disagree with the sentiment, and we do not adopt the language in question, but in the spirit of Edward Said, the context is clearly about resisting occupation, not about anti-Semitism. You made the leap from controversial political statement to bigotry and Anti-Semitism, no doubt, because of how the incident was framed by an organization called the AMCHA Initiative.

The AMCHA Initiative – an organization with which we hope you will distance yourself – has filed numerous complaints aimed at encouraging California Universities to punish student and faculty speech critical of Israel. All have been ignored or dismissed. AMCHA and similar organizations are not calling for the open dialogue and debate on the issues of Israel and Palestine that your statement called for, but rather, they are using the accusation of anti-Semitism as a way to deflect all criticism of Israel. They are attempting to intimidate rather than allow their own ideas to rise or fall in the face of dissenters. You, unfortunately, have greatly amplified this stifling tactic.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects freedom of speech, regardless of whether the content of the speech is controversial. “The law is ... clear that the government may not prohibit angry or inflammatory speech in a public forum unless it is (1) ‘directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action’ and (2) ‘likely to incite or produce such action.’ Speech that stirs passions, resentment or anger is fully protected by the First Amendment.” (Collins v. Jordan, 110 F.3d 1363, 1371 (9th Cir. 1996), citing Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969); Terminiello v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1, 4 (1949).)

The NLGSF is a human rights bar association in existence since 1937 with hundreds of members in the Bay Area. We have active working groups and committees on hate speech, Palestine, and the rights of protesters. We have member caucuses, including The United People of Color Caucus and the Queer Caucus. We urge you to reconsider your statement and condemn the tactics of the AMCHA Initiative.

Sincerely,

Michael Flynn
NLGSF President

Rachel Lederman
NLGSF President-Elect


November 26, 2013
http://www.nlgsf.org/news/open-letter-sfsu-president-wong
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Rahula Z
Here are the comments that have alarmed the Simon Wiesenthal Center to make an urgent statement on the potential threat this man poses to students at San Francisco State Jewish students:

You know what? Israelis ARE colonizers, there is literally no way around it. And you know what else? My heroes HAVE always killed colonizers, I literally see nothing wrong with this and my only regret is that not all colonizers were killed.

HMM

Here is the statement by the Wiesenthal Center in response to this blatant threat of murder:

Simon Wiesenthal Center officials today warned San Francisco State University of a potential threat to its Jewish students after the Amcha Initiative uncovered a picture on Tumblr allegedly posted by the President of the University-sanctioned General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) in which he is shown holding a knife with the caption saying, “I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.

Copies of the picture were forwarded to SFSU President Leslie Wong by Amcha and the Wiesenthal Center, and in a phone conversation earlier today with Wong’s office, Center officials warned that such avowedly violent statements, especially when linked with another recent GUPS campus event where participants used a stencil saying, “My heroes have always killed colonizers,” pose a potentially significant threat to the university’s Jewish students.

“It is outrageous and unacceptable that the leader of a University-funded group would invoke a message of death and violence,” said a Wiesenthal Center official.



Imagine if this was a Jewish student saying these outrageous comments about muslims…how long do you think it would take before he was arrested and charged?

We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

Donate

$110.00 donated
in the past month

Get Involved

If you'd like to help with maintaining or developing the website, contact us.

Publish

Publish your stories and upcoming events on Indybay.

IMC Network