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DESCRIPTION:11/11/21 SFSU Press Conference/Rally Time To Take A Stand: From 1968 ’ To 
 2021 - The Fight Continues to Defend AMED & Prof Rabab \n\n\nJoin us for a 
 Press Conference & Community Speak Out @SFSU Weds 11/17 @11am to stand up 
 for the Arab & Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies Program at 
 SFSU. Facebook event pg: https://fb.me/e/2CZfI4KHh\nYou can also support by 
 sending a letter to SFSU Pres Mahoney, whether you are an alumni or 
 community member by clicking here: 
 https://www.nationalsjp.org/save-amed\n\nBackground\nSince its inception in 
 2007, AMED remains critically under-resourced, while enduring ongoing 
 attacks against Dr. Abdulhadi and her students at SFSU who have experienced 
 death threats, wanted style posters and ominous blacklists, with attacks on 
 their freedom of speech and academic freedom from corporate and zionist 
 outside forces. \nInstead of opposing these attacks, the Administration and 
 the Chancellor have not only refused to take a stand, they are now openly 
 partnering with AEN: https://academicengagement.org a known Zionist network 
 and supporter of apartheid Israel in the censoring of AMED by Zoom, 
 Facebook and Youtube, and in doing so clearly chosen to side with the 
 oppressors.\nThe 1968 San Francisco State Student Strike hailed as the 
 strike that Changed Higher Ed Forever—was over 53 years ago, but today 
 the struggles remain the same. Email: defendrabab@gmail.com and let us know 
 if your organization can endorse or how you can get involved. Share widely! 
 \n\nIn Support of SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi & the AMED 
 program.\n\nSFSU Press Conference and Community Rally/Speak Out 
 \n\nStatement by Abdul Jabbar, Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary 
 Studies, City College of San Francisco.\n\n\nHarassment of Prof. Rabab 
 Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University\nIt is retrogressive, 
 regrettable, and unacceptable that SFSU administration is siding with the 
 oppressors and enemies of academic freedom. We cannot allow the 
 administration to destroy the University’s reputation that goes back to 
 the 1968 strikes and sacrifices that overthrew an unjust system and ushered 
 in the era of academic freedom for students, professors, and all associated 
 with education. The target of corporate media lynching, now supported by 
 SFSU administration, is the Palestinian-American professor Rabab Abdulhadi, 
 who is a famous award-winning scholar and author in her field. In 2006, she 
 was invited to head the newly created program of Arab and Muslim 
 Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies and promised funding for new 
 full-time faculty members and other resources. Subsequent to a controversy 
 over an event relating to the Edward Said mural at the University, the 
 administration caved in to sustained pressure from Israeli lobbies and did 
 not honor its contract with Prof. Abdulhadi. After fifteen years since her 
 hiring, she remains the only full-time faculty in the entire program. \n	As 
 an example of targeting Palestine-focused scholarship, Zoom cancelled a 
 September 23, 2020, open classroom virtual event, titled "Whose Narratives: 
 Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled." Zoom was 
 hired by California State University system to facilitate classroom 
 instruction over video/web conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic after 
 in-person instruction became impossible. Zoom cited the background of a 
 panelist Leila Khaled (accused of terrorism) as the reason for their 
 action. Zoom’s action prevented the event organizing professors from 
 teaching and the students from learning. \nIn a statement posted on 
 Facebook, International Campaign to Defend Prof. Rahab Abdulhadi has 
 questioned Zoom’s judgement: “Zoom cites Leila Khaled’s virtual 
 presence as the issue. But we know that this repeat cancellation is not 
 about ‘material support,’ an argument that has already been effectively 
 dispelled by legal experts.…it is rather about an ongoing, coordinated 
 and intensive campaign waged by pro-Israel Lobby to ensure that Palestine 
 is barred from the classroom as well as corporate digital platforms.”  
 \n\n	In December, 2020, Prof. Abdulhadi and Prof. Tomomi Kinukawa, Faculty 
 Lecturer in the Department of Women and Gender Studies, filed a claim 
 against California State University over the cancellation of their 
 September 23 open classroom. The claim is a procedural requirement for 
 filing a lawsuit against CSU and Zoom Video Productions. The suing 
 professors and their attorney argue that “Zoom's action in cancelling 
 their class and CSU's failure to provide a safe and secure means for them 
 to communicate with their students, violated their rights and their 
 students' rights to free speech and academic freedom protected by the U.S. 
 and California constitutions.”\n	In another glaring example of banning 
 Palestine-related academic programs, Facebook, like Zoom, failed to remain 
 neutral over controversial topics. It removed from its platform the page 
 relating to AMED Studies, thus interfering with a university-sponsored 
 academic offering and depriving the professors and students of the 
 opportunity to continue with educational activities online—the only means 
 of instruction during the COVID-19 crisis. The seekers of academic freedom 
 depend on the internet to uphold their right to freedom of speech. These 
 are just a few of the numerous examples of the harassment of Prof. 
 Abdulhadi, which has to be brought to a stop immediately and the 
 University’s contract with Prof. Abdulhadi fully implemented. \n\nSave 
 AMED Studies & Defend Dr. Abdulhadi\n\nPresident of San Fransisco State 
 University Lynn Mahoney,\n\nDear President Mahoney and Chancellor 
 Castro,\n\nI am writing to express my full and continued support for the 
 Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies Program at San 
 Francisco State University (SFSU) and demand that the University fulfill 
 its contractual obligation to support and expand the program. Over the past 
 decade, the SFSU administration has consistently opposed and thwarted the 
 AMED Studies Department and attacked Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, director of AMED 
 Studies. In doing so, the university has leveraged historic iterations of 
 anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic violence to stiffle the 
 diffusion of critical, paradigm-shifting knowledge and resources on 
 Palestine and the Arab world. In suppressing AMED Studies, SFSU has 
 seriously undermined academic freedom at CSU, and by extension California 
 and the United States.\n\nOver the past 12 years, the SFSU administration 
 has made it their mission to hinder the advancement of AMED Studies and Dr. 
 Rabab Abdulhadi. The University has withheld resources from the department, 
 censored vital curriculum on Arab and Muslim communities, and most 
 egregiously, has abetted the defamation of Dr. Abdulhadi by racist, 
 heavily-funded groups such as the Lawfare Project, which seeks to smear Dr. 
 Abdulhadi’s Palestine justice-centered scholarship, pedagogy and activism 
 as “terrorism” and “antisemitism.” This is most tangibly evident 
 through the shutdown of a university-sponsored open classroom, “Whose 
 Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance,” which virtually brought 
 students into conversation with a panel of international luminaries whose 
 speech was described by SFSU President Lynn Mahoney as “abhorrent” and 
 “deeply offensive.” The university's censorship of Dr. Abdulhadi does 
 not only silence and repress Palestinian freedom narratives, but also 
 deeply betrays SFSU's history of grassroots student anti-racist organizing. 
 As people who believe in freedom, justice, and equality for all, we demand 
 that the University:\n\n1. Positively respond to the two upcoming statutory 
 grievances filed by Dr. Abdulhadi and the University’s hostile climate 
 actions. Similarly, redress the grievance of Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, 
 co-organizer of the silenced AMED open classroom, meaningfully and 
 substantially.\n\n2. Make a solid and institutional commitment to 
 community-centered pedagogy and completely support AMED Studies by fully 
 funding and resourcing the department. \n\n3. Hold responsible university 
 administrators accountable for their prejudicial and unethical actions that 
 have poisoned the university community.\n\n4. Guarantee academic freedom 
 for all faculty members, departments, and programs. Protect Arab, Muslim, 
 and Palestinian faculty, staff, and students’ rights to academic freedom 
 and freedom of speech. Defend and protect them from all forms of 
 discriminatory and disparate treatment, including Zionist, Islamophobic and 
 right-wing white supremacist attacks and smear campaigns. \n\nAs students, 
 faculty, staff, and social justice activists across the globe affirm our 
 unwavering support for Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and the AMED Studies Department, 
 we call on all people of conscience, educators, community organizers, 
 activists and student groups to support Dr. Abdulhadi and the teaching of 
 Palestine and call upon all academics and educational institutions to 
 categorically reject the private intervention in and vetoing of the 
 curriculum and the corporatization of higher education as well as the New 
 McCarthyism silencing all who stand for Palestinian freedom and liberation. 
 \n\nFree Palestine! Palestine Belongs in Critical Ethnic Studies! Save AMED 
 Studies Now!\n\nI have been teaching at City College of San Francisco since 
 1968 and know from personal experience that conflating anti-Semitism with 
 asking for Arab and Palestine studies is against academic freedom and 
 tantamount to squelching educational rights. Lobbying efforts driven by 
 imperial geopolitical interests should be kept separate from rights to 
 education\n\nAbdul Jabbar \nEmeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary 
 Studies, City College of San Francisco\n\nSend letters: \n\nDr. Lynn 
 Mahoney, President, San Francisco State University President@sfsu.edu 
 \n\nDr. Joseph Castro, Chancellor, California State University   
 csu-chancellor@calstate.edu\n\nSend copies of letters of support to: 
 team@professorabdulhadidefense.com \n\n\nSAVE AMED STUDIES, SUPPORT 
 ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND END SYSTEMIC RACISM AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE 
 UNIVERSITY\nhttps://www.nationalsjp.org/save-amed\n\n\nSFSU President sides 
 with tech giants on silencing of Palestinian voices\nPresident Mahoney’s 
 decision upholds the University’s acceptance of Big Tech’s increasing 
 control over academic discussion, and its complicity with Zionist 
 organizations.\nhttps://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/sfsu-president-sides-with-tech-giants-on-silencing-of-palestinian-voices/\nBY 
 OPEN LETTER  NOVEMBER 5, 2021  7\n Share on Facebook Share on Twitter\nSan 
 Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney (Photo: San Francisco 
 State University)\nSAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT LYNN MAHONEY 
 (PHOTO: SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY)\nEditor’s Note: The following 
 press release was issued on November 4, 2021 by the International Campaign 
 to Defend Professor Rabab Abdulhadi. The press release comes as San 
 Francisco State President Lynn Mahoney overturned the decision of a campus 
 panel that ruled the school failed to protect Professors Rabab Abdulhadi 
 and Tomomi Kinukawa from censorship when Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube denied 
 their services for an event featuring Leila Khaled. For more on this story 
 see here. Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements 
 from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked 
 issues.\n\nPRESS RELEASE: November 4, 2021\n\nSFSU President Lynn Mahoney 
 overrules her own faculty panel & supports Big Tech intrusion on academic 
 freedom and the silencing of Palestinian narratives\n\nIn an outrageous and 
 insulting decision, President Lynn Mahoney of SFSU has disregarded the 
 legitimate reprimand of a faculty panel that recommended redress to Dr. 
 Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and 
 Diasporas Studies (AMED) program, for the University’s failure regarding 
 violations of Professor Abdulhadi’s and her colleague Professor Tomomi 
 Kinukawa’s academic freedom.  \n\nPresident Mahoney’s decision upholds 
 the University’s corporatized acceptance of Big Tech’s increasing 
 control over academic discussion and its complicity with Zionist 
 organizations that stifles all discourse on issues of human rights and 
 dignity for the Palestinian people.  \n\nThe President’s decision follows 
 a ruling  by the faculty member panel based on a six hour hearing following 
 the arbitrary cancellation by Zoom and other social media outlets of Drs. 
 Abdulhadi and Kinukawa’s online open classroom, “Whose Narratives? 
 Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled.” The 
 University is bound by contract, law and AAUP policy to protect academic 
 freedom rather than subcontracting the responsibility to private companies. 
 Further, universities must maintain structural independence from the whims 
 and demands of partisan lobbying organizations, including Zionist groups 
 like the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and the Lawfare Project.\n\nIn 
 its ruling, now vetoed by President Mahoney, the faculty panel affirmed 
 that: “San Francisco State University has inflicted harm upon Dr. 
 Abdulhadi (and co-instructor, Dr. Kinukawa) and that her academic freedom 
 was, in fact, violated. We characterize this harm in two ways: 1) that the 
 university did not provide adequate support to Dr. Abdulhadi against the 
 actions of the corporate entity, Zoom, and, more importantly against the 
 outside organization, Lawfare Project.”  Furthermore, the panel ordered 
 the university to provide remedy in the form of a public apology to Dr. 
 Abdulhadi and to provide “a site for rescheduling the event with Leila 
 Khaled on an alternate platform, without interference”. \n\nClearly, with 
 this decision, SFSU is continuing its policy of harassment of Dr. 
 Abdulhadi, intensifying its efforts to dismantle the AMED program, and 
 confirming its complicity with Zionist organizations that seek to silence 
 Palestinian voices on campuses across the country as Israel has pursued 
 against Palestinian human rights organizations. SFSU’s lip service to 
 academic freedom flies in the face of limiting Palestinian speech in favor 
 of an overriding concern for its corporate bottom line.\n\nAs with this 
 week’s criminalization of 6 legitimate Palestinian human rights 
 organizations by the Israeli government, SFSU chose to follow the Zionist 
 playbook of demonizing all actions in support of Palestinian liberation and 
 teaching about Palestine as “terrorism” and 
 “anti-Semitic”.\n\nPresident Mahoney’s decision was written by Ingrid 
 Williams, Vice President of Human Resources.  According to University 
 by-law, the President’s veto will trigger an automatic and independent 
 arbitration hearing for a final decision on Dr. Abdulhadi’s 
 grievance.\nProfessors fight to defend Palestine and protect academic 
 freedom\nTwo upcoming hearings at San Francisco State University could have 
 nationwide impact on academic freedom and the fight against the censorship 
 of Palestinian voices. Here's how you can help. 
 \nhttps://mondoweiss.net/2021/09/professors-fight-to-defend-palestine-and-protect-academic-freedom/\nBY 
 DAVID SPERO  SEPTEMBER 28, 2021  \nTwo upcoming sets of statutory grievance 
 hearings at San Francisco State University (SFSU) could have nationwide 
 impact on academic freedom, the rights of faculty, and student access to 
 education regarding Palestinian narratives.\n\nOn 9/30, from 10-4pm PST, 
 Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa willseek redress for the 
 cancellation of “Whose Narratives?”, a virtual open classroom they 
 co-organized. This highly popular event was attacked by the Israel lobby 
 and right-wing groups with false and discredited allegations of “material 
 support for terrorism,” and shut down by Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook, 
 without any protest from the university.\n\nFlyer for the event, “Whose 
 Narratives? Gender, Justice & Resistance: A conversation with Leila 
 Khaled”\nFLYER FOR THE EVENT, “WHOSE NARRATIVES? GENDER, JUSTICE & 
 RESISTANCE: A CONVERSATION WITH LEILA KHALED” \nInstead of providing an 
 alternative platform, SFSU posted defamatory articles about the open 
 classroom on their websites and falsely warned Professors Abdulhadi and 
 Kinukawa that they could themselves be criminally liable for holding this 
 virtual open classroom. The University is bound by contract, law, and AAUP 
 policy to protect academic freedom; and by allowing outside tech 
 corporations to shut down a for-credit class, SFSU has jeopardized academic 
 freedom for any teacher with a counter-narrative.\n\nThe second hearing on 
 10/19 from 10-4pm PST addresses 14 years of attacks on Professor Abdulhadi 
 and the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) program she 
 directs.  This abuse includes:\n\ncontract violations that have sabotaged  
 the efficacy of AMED Studies. \nreneging on the written promise of creating 
 two new  AMED faculty positions.\nrepeated class cancellations and changes, 
 and \npersonal and professional smears, threats, and character 
 assassination–abuses that have impacted her health, interfered with her 
 scholarship, and reduced this unique program to a one-person 
 operation.\nFor years, a series of administrations have tolerated and 
 promoted egregious attacks against the Arab, Muslim and Palestinian 
 communities at SFSU. SFSU administrators have consistently opposed and 
 thwarted the growth of the AMED program and systematically participated in 
 efforts to dismantle it. \n\nThe university has been complicit with Zionist 
 organizations to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism and to 
 elevate the interests of the Zionist Jewish community above other 
 communities and ethnicities, including anti-Zionist Jews and Black, 
 Indigenous, and other people of color. \n\nThe administration has recently 
 intensified their promotion of Zionism. On September 9th, 2021, Jeff 
 Jackanicz, SFSU’s Vice President for University Advancement sent an email 
 announcing that SFSU intended to, “address and take action on the campus 
 climate experiences of several affinity and identity groups at SF State” 
 by partnering with SF Hillel, Hillel International, and the Academic 
 Engagement Network (AEN,) three groups committed to defending Israel from 
 criticism.  The partnership makes clear that the university is prioritizing 
 Zionism and reiterates the longstanding and false conflation of Jewishness 
 with Zionism.\n\nDefending academic freedom \n\nUniversity administrators 
 often act as though academic freedom and freedom of speech do not apply to 
 Palestine. Israel’s defenders have made suppressing Palestinian 
 narratives and activism on campus a top priority, and they do it by 
 alleging their critics hate Jews.  Scholars who challenge Israel, like Dr. 
 Norman Finkelstein have been denied tenure. Steven Salaita PhD, a 
 highly-regarded professor, was removed from his job at University of 
 Illinois Champaign-Urbana after a vicious smear campaign by friends of 
 Israel. He wrote, “Mainstream journalists, administrators, and 
 politicians are receptive to Zionist pressure because their primary 
 obligation is to serve centers of power. You’re not simply up against 
 devotees of Israel, but more broadly an imperialist geopolitical structure 
 in which pro-Israel sentiment is embedded.”\n\nThe grievants want SFSU to 
 commit to support AMED, honor Dr. Abdulhadi’s contract, and protect 
 faculty against tech censorship. The grievances will be heard by a 
 committee of three faculty members. If they vote to redress Professors 
 Abdulhadi and Kinukawa, SFSU President Lynn Mahoney will review the 
 decision and decide what, if any, actions to take. The decision will then 
 be reviewed by CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro. In this process, the case will 
 bring attention to the question of how far Israel’s influence on American 
 higher education extends.  Strong support from the community and academia 
 will make it hard for administration to ignore the hearing’s 
 results.\n\nRightwing Zionist Carary Mission Secretly Funded By Jewish 
 Federation of San Francisco\nREVEALED: Canary Mission Blacklist Is Secretly 
 Bankrolled By Major Jewish Federation\nJosh Nathan-KazisOctober 3, 
 2018\nhttps://forward.com/news/national/411355/revealed-canary-mission-blacklist-is-secretly-bankrolled-by-major-jewish/?fbclid=IwAR2B4HvjYsYlvjdiCL9KcrcEosr08JNZEIprKSDYdH6cs2nVq_Y0Ix1PU4A\nOne 
 of the largest Jewish charities in the U.S. has been secretly funding a 
 shadowy online blacklist targeting college students who criticize 
 Israel.\nFor three years, a website called Canary Mission has spread fear 
 among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political 
 dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. The dossiers are 
 meant to harm students’ job prospects, and have been used in 
 interrogations by Israeli security officials.\nAt the same time, the 
 website has gone to great lengths to hide the digital and financial trail 
 connecting it to its donors and staff. Registered through a secrecy 
 service, the site is untraceable.\n?Josh Nathan-KazisOctober 3, 
 2018Following Forward Report, Federation Says It Will No Longer Fund Canary 
 Mission\nNow, for the first time, the Forward has definitively identified a 
 major donor to Canary Mission. It is a foundation controlled by the Jewish 
 Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an 
 annual budget of over $100 million.\nThe federation’s support of Canary 
 Mission connects the American Jewish establishment itself to a website that 
 is facing increasing criticism from young Jews.\nCanary Mission has been 
 controversial since it appeared in mid-2015, drawing comparisons to a 
 McCarthyite blacklist. While some of those listed on the site are prominent 
 activists, others are students who attended a single event, or even student 
 government representatives suspected of voting for resolutions that are 
 critical of Israel.\nIn recent months, it been the subject of growing 
 backlash from pro-Israel Jewish students and local Hillel professionals, 
 who say it is damaging to their own work.\nMainstream American Jewish 
 leaders have claimed not to know who funds Canary Mission. As it turns out, 
 a big chunk of the money came from within their own ranks.\nIn late 2016 or 
 early 2017, the Helen Diller Family Foundation earmarked $100,000 for 
 Canary Mission. It made the donation to the Central Fund of Israel, a New 
 York-based charity that serves as a conduit for U.S. taxpayers seeking to 
 make tax-exempt donations to right-wing and extremist groups in Israel. In 
 its tax filings, the Diller Foundation listed the purpose of the grant as 
 “CANARY MISSION FOR MEGAMOT SHALOM.”\nThat phrase, which may have been 
 mistakenly included in the public document, appears to indicate that the 
 grant to the Central Fund of Israel was intended for Canary Mission via 
 Megamot Shalom, a hitherto-unknown Israeli charity.\nMegamot Shalom appears 
 to be an Israeli public benefit corporation that operates or operated 
 Canary Mission. Jonathan Bash, who the Forward previously identified as the 
 person who operates Canary Mission, signed the charity’s 2016 financial 
 reports.\nThough it does fund a number right-wing causes, the Diller 
 Foundation is known mostly as a provider of well-regarded Jewish teen 
 programming. It runs a yearlong Jewish leadership program for teenagers 
 from around the world, and sponsors the Diller Tikkun Olam awards, which 
 honor young Jewish volunteer workers with $36,000 cash prizes.\nThe 
 president of its board, real estate developer Jaclyn Safier, sits on the 
 board of visitors of the University of California, Berkeley, and is a 
 distinguished director of a foundation that supports the University of 
 California, San Francisco. Another board member, Richard Rosenberg, is the 
 former chairman and chief executive of Bank of America.\nThe Diller 
 Foundation is organized as a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community 
 Federation of San Francisco, an arrangement that confers certain regulatory 
 benefits. The San Francisco federation, according to its website, appoints 
 the majority of members of the boards of directors of its supporting 
 foundations. The Diller Foundation says in its tax returns that it operates 
 by “conducting or supporting activities for the benefit of” the San 
 Francisco federation. Two federation staff members sat on the Diller 
 Foundation’s board during its 2016 fiscal year, including the 
 federation’s number two executive, chief philanthropic officer Joy 
 Sisisky.\nThe federation is among the largest and most influential in the 
 U.S., with net assets of more than $800 million and two seats on the board 
 of the Jewish Federations of North America. Neither the Diller Foundation 
 nor the San Francisco federation responded to multiple requests for 
 comment.Pigeon Droppings\nMegamot Shalom’s listed address is a padlocked 
 building in a rundown commercial strip in Beit Shemesh, a fast-growing city 
 just west of Jerusalem. There are scuff marks and footprints on the white 
 front door, as though someone has recently tried to kick their way in.\nThe 
 building’s vestibule is littered with pigeon droppings and random office 
 furniture. A window upstairs is wide open. If the building isn’t 
 abandoned, it has at least seen far busier days.\nAccording to filings with 
 Israel’s charities registry, Megamot Shalom was set up in July 2016, just 
 over a year after Canary Mission’s website appeared online. Its mission, 
 according to the filings, is to “ensure the national image and strength 
 of the state of Israel via the use of information disseminated by 
 technological means.”\nThe public filings don’t mention Canary Mission 
 by name, though they do say that the organization paid freelancers for 
 editing website content and a consultant for data security. Among Megamot 
 Shalom’s only reported assets are computers worth around $5,000.\nMegamot 
 Shalom’s publicly available financial reports bear two signatures. One 
 signature is illegible in English and Hebrew. The other is the signature of 
 Jonathan Bash, a British-born Jerusalem resident who two people, granted 
 anonymity to speak about private conversations, told the Forward identified 
 himself to them as the person who operates Canary Mission, as the Forward 
 first reported in August.\nBash is identified in the filing as a “member 
 of the directorate” of Megamot Shalom. When the Forward emailed him for 
 comment in late September, two of his email accounts bounced back auto 
 responses saying he was on an extended vacation.\nMegamot Shalom has 
 virtually no online footprint. What does exist on the Internet was scrubbed 
 after the Forward began asking questions about the organization. An 
 Israel-based writer named Zahava Raymond previously identified herself on 
 LinkedIn as a “writer-researcher” for Megamot Shalom, but removed the 
 organization’s name from her profile after the Forward sent her a query 
 over Facebook. Raymond previously worked for Honest Reporting and NGO 
 Monitor, pro-Israel advocacy groups.\nMegamot Shalom received roughly 
 $165,000 in the last six months of 2016, according to its financial report. 
 It has not yet filed its financial report for 2017, which was due at the 
 end of August. It’s not clear whether the donation from the Diller 
 Foundation is reflected in the 2016 filings, or if it came in the 2017 
 calendar year.In recent months, Canary Mission’s activities have grown 
 more aggressive. Last spring, two men in canary masksparaded around a 
 Washington, D.C. campus, in a weird display meant to frighten student 
 government representatives. On the Israeli border, Canary Mission is being 
 used as an intelligence source on thousands of students and academics.\nOne 
 young Jewish student profiled on the site told the Forward that he has been 
 afraid to talk to pro-Israel students on campus since his profile went up, 
 for fear that they would report him to Canary Mission.\nMeanwhile, the site 
 appears to be specifically targeting the growing ranks of its student 
 critics. In three separate instances since the spring, Canary Mission 
 appears to have posted dossiers or reports on its site targeting people who 
 had criticized it weeks earlier.\nIn June, Canary Mission posted dossiers 
 on 14 students associated with the chapter of Students for Justice in 
 Palestine at the University of California, Davis. The SJP chapter at Davis 
 had not been particularly active since 2015, when the student government 
 there passed a nonbinding divestment resolution. But less than a month 
 earlier, on May 24, the student Senate at Davis had passed resolution 
 condemning Canary Mission by name.\nThe resolution said that Canary 
 Mission, along with other blacklists, “threaten the security of student 
 activists, as well as create a toxic atmosphere of fear and paranoia among 
 fellow students, thus infringing upon students’ ability to freely express 
 their opinions.”\n“We had known this would definitely put us on their 
 radar,” said the chapter’s president, Khadeja Ibrahim. Ibrahim said 
 that Canary Mission had posted dossiers on a handful of core SJP activists 
 at Davis, plus others who had just shown up at a single rally.\nAlso in 
 early June, Canary Mission posted a report on a University of Michigan 
 divestment vote that had taken place seven months earlier. The report 
 included dossiers on some 40 Michigan students, including student 
 government representatives accused of voting in favor of the resolution, 
 which was passed by secret ballot. The report came just weeks after two 
 pro-Israel Jewish students at Michigan published a widely read op-ed 
 attacking Canary Mission for its role on Michigan’s campus, calling it 
 “counterproductive” and “morally reprehensible.”\nAnd in late 
 August, a report by Canary Mission on a divestment vote at George 
 Washington University featured two Jewish students who had condemned Canary 
 Mission in interviews published in the Forward, one just weeks before. The 
 report highlights Abby Brook, who was quoted in an August story in the 
 Forward saying that she was frightened by two men who showed up at the GW 
 campus in canary costumes. It also highlights Kei Pritsker, who spoke to 
 the Forward in October 2017 about being profiled by Canary Mission. The new 
 report accuses Pritsker of, among other things, having “nodded” in 
 agreement with “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic” statements, and links to 
 a year-old video of a protest against AIPAC in which he appears in the 
 background.\n“The tactics of the organization are troubling, both from a 
 moral standpoint, but have also proven to be ineffective and 
 counterproductive,” said Tilly Shames, who runs the campus Hillel at the 
 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in an interview with the Forward this 
 summer.\nShames said that Canary Mission’s publication of dossiers on 
 students on her campus had led to greater support for the targeted students 
 and their beliefs, and had spread mistrust of pro-Israel students, who were 
 suspected of spying for Canary Mission.\nAdditional reporting by Naomi 
 Zeveloff from Beit Shemesh.\nDo you have more information about Canary 
 Mission or Megamot Shalom? Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at 
 nathankazis@forward.com or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis\n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/11/09/18846201.php
SUMMARY:SFSU Press Conference/Rally:Time To Take A Stand! From 1968 ’To 2021 - The Fight Continues
LOCATION:San Francisco State University\nThe Quad in front of Student Union
URL:https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/11/09/18846201.php
DTSTART:20211117T190000Z
DTEND:20211117T200000Z
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR
