Activities

• SJP is the campus organization most directly responsible for creating a hostile campus environment saturated with anti-Israel events, BDS initiatives, and speakers. Each SJP chapter operates independently and is responsible for forming its own constitutions, finding funding sources, and organizing activities. (Read NGO Monitor’s report “BDS on American Campuses: SJP and its NGO Network”)
• SJP has been suspended from multiple universities due to its violence and violation of campus policies.
  • In November 2023, three universities (Brandeis, Columbia, and George Washington)  suspended their chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) due to violations of  campus policies,“chants and social media posts calling for violence against Jews,” and “openly support[ing] Hamas.” 
  • In December 2023, SJP at Rutgers was suspended because they had “violated several university policies, including those forbidding ‘disruptive or disorderly conduct,’ failure to comply with university directives, improper behavior by campus guests, and ‘inappropriate use of space.’”
  • In April 2024, SJP at the University of Georgia was suspended for its conduct during an encampment where 16 students were arrested. SJP’s suspension was extended through Spring 2026 with a 3-year probationary period to follow. 
  • In May 2024, San José State University suspended the faculty adviser for the campus chapter, following an “intense” February SJP protest. 
  • On October 24, 2024 SJP at Brown was suspended after leading a “rally protesting the university’s decision not to divest its endowment from certain companies that support Israel.” The chapter allegedly conducted “threatening, intimidating and harassing actions.”
  • In November 2024, SJP at George Mason University was suspended the day after police raided the home of chapter’s president and former president, Jena and Noor Chanaa, in conjunction with a vandalism investigation. Police found firearms, ammunition, foreign passports and pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews.” 
  • In February 2025, SJP at UCLA was suspended. UCLA released a statement stating: “Whenever an act of violence is directed against any member of the university community, UCLA will not turn a blind eye.”
• In December 2024, SJP posted a “year in review,” crediting itself with establishing “127 student encampments, the passing of 56 divestment resolutions, over 3,000 students and faculty being arrested and over 1,000,000 students mobilized for Gaza.”
• In May 2024, 16 Republican senators called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to “investigate nonprofits that support National Students for Justice in Palestine…the agency should investigate whether, by directing funds to NSJP, the nonprofits are supporting terrorism, which would violate their tax-exempt status.”
• In November 2023, three Jewish students sued New York University for the “university’s handling of discrimination and harassment against Jewish students.” The lawsuit included a significant number of complaints against SJP, including “antisemitic remarks” made at an SJP protest, such as “slit-your-throat gestures at the Jewish students present,” and comments praising the Holocaust.

Political Advocacy

• In January 2025, SJP activists protested outside a Chabad house at Ohio State University hosting IDF soldiers. An SJP instagram post included flyers with the names and photos of IDF soldiers and a “blood-splattered” IDF logo, alleging: “these war criminals, directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing and occupation of Palestine…We strongly oppose any attempts to commemorate or honor war criminals, as well as any acts of normalization with the zionist entity.”
• In October 2024, Columbia SJP published a statement titled, “Commemorating One Year of the Strategic and Anti-imperialist Al-Aqsa Flood.” Columbia SJP referred to the Oct 7th Hamas massacre as “a strategic counteroffensive of the oppressed against imperialist aggression.”
• In August 2024, SJP was a part of the NGO network that protested outside the Democratic National Convention, demanding that Democrats adopt anti-Israel policies. The central demand of the NGO coalition was to “End U.S. Aid to Israel…. We must stop our government from arming and supporting this genocide.”
• In June 2024, SJP advertised a  “summer school” to “entrench[] the frameworks necessary to sustain and grow the Student Intifada in the coming academic year.”
• In March 2024, students from Columbia and Barnard University Apartheid Divest Coalition,¹ of which SJP is a leading member, held an event titled “Resistance 101” – despite the university refusing to host the event on campus. The event was sponsored by Samidoun and Within our Lifetime. During the event, International Coordinator at Samidoun Charlotte Kates stated, “There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas.”
• In October 2023, in the aftermath of the brutal Hamas attack, SJP published a statement referring to the violence as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.” SJP additionally claimed, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”
• In December 2022, SJP tweeted, “As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of the First Intifada, we honor the Palestinian people as they build a new generation of freedom fighters challenging Zionist colonization in the name of liberation and self-determination.”
• In June 2022, a SJP protester was charged with a hate crime for throwing rocks at Jewish students at the University of Illinois.
• In April 2022, SJP held an event to discuss “how Israel’s process of ethnic cleansing takes form on college campuses.”
• In June 2021, SJP activist Nerdeen Kiswani participated in a conference, “Challenging Apartheid in Palestine: Reclaiming the Narrative, Formulating A Vision,” hosted by the Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University. Conference organizers and sponsors, as well as other participants, were linked to various terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
• In June 2021, SJP held “Student Strategizing Sessions” aimed at “Develop[ing] the tools, resources, and coordination for chapters to collectively pursue campaigns and direct actions in the upcoming academic year⁣” and to “Ground our organizing in an analysis of the popular uprising in Palestine, this current moment of political reckoning, and the role of students in the imperial core⁣.”
• In October 2020, SJP was a signatory on a statement claiming the “IHRA-WDA will not stop Palestine solidarity…The threat therefore remains that the IHRA-WDA may still be used by government agencies against supporters of Palestinian human rights, be they academics, activists, public employees or others.”
  • The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, adopted by nearly 30 countries and counting, represents the international consensus definition of antisemitism, as well as how to distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel and antisemitism. An example of the latter includes denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
• On April 24, 2014, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at New York University distributed “mock eviction notices” to two residence halls known for their high concentration of Jewish students. 

Support for Terorrism

• On February 11, 2025, a member of the PFLP terror organization, Ribhi Karajah,   was scheduled to speak at a Georgetown University Law Students for Justice in Palestine event. The event was postponed by the university following widespread condemnation, including from Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY).
  • Karajah “served three and a half years in an Israeli prison for his role…in an August 2019 roadside bombing in the West Bank in which 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb was killed while on a hike with her father and brother, both of whom sustained injuries.”
• In December 2024, Columbia SJP posted on X a quote from Leila Khaled, a PFLP terrorist who hijacked planes in the 1970s, stating, “I have learned that a woman can be a fighter, a freedom fighter, a political activist, and that she can fall in love, and be loved, she can be married, have children, be a mother… Revolution must mean life also; every aspect of life.”
• In November 2024, police searched the house of SJP leaders at George Mason University, Jena and Noor Chanaa, and found firearms, ammunition, foreign passports and pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews.”
• In July 2024, NSJP sponsored an event titled “Ghassan Kanafani Presente (sic): Culture of Resistance on Our Own Terms.” Kanafani was the PFLP’s spokesperson and a member of its Political Bureau.
• In May 2023, SJP co-hosted events featuring Mohammad el-Mezain. El-Mezain, Holy Land Foundation’s (HLF) Director of Endowments, was one of five individuals arrested and convicted as part of the federal case against the Holy Land Foundation for funding Hamas. El-Mezain was found guilty of conspiracy for providing material support to Hamas and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

BDS Activities

• In November 2024, SJP members invaded and occupied an administrative building at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and “vowed not to surrender it unless school officials adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.”
• In September 2024, in a now deleted post, National SJP shared a message from Columbia SJP that stated, “Divestment [against Israel] is not an incremental goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and the American empire itself. To divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”
• In December 2023, SJP tweeted, “The Zionist regime has destroyed every university in Gaza. Why are there academic associations that have endorsed the boycott but have yet to denounce this scholasticide? What is the use of passing BDS within your institutions if you are not going to mobilize right now?”
• In November 2023, SJP was a signatory on a joint statement calling on “U.S. labor unions to cut all ties with Israeli unions…We additionally call on U.S. unions and our employers to divest from Israeli bonds and from the military, extractive, and technological industries connected with the Israeli occupation and U.S. imperialism…Failure to do so amounts to organized labor’s complicity with, and support for, the ongoing genocide.”
• In October 2021, SJP participated in a “National Week of Action to #DivestFromDeath” calling to “pressure institutions to divest from war profiteers.”
• In August 2021, SJP called on Congress to “end the U.S. military funding that’s fueling ethnic cleansing.”
• In 2015, WESPAC CEO Nada Khader was a panelist at an event at Pace University’s “Israel Apartheid Week.” The goal of the panel was to “introduce SJP to campus…There will be a strong focus on the non-violent Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign.”
• In 2012, SJP published a “media handbook” to train BDS activists in public advocacy. The handbook includes pro-BDS talking points, promotes apartheid rhetoric, adopts the Nakba narrative, and contains suggestions interacting with the media. 

Officials

• SJP Founder Hatem Bazian (lecturer at University of California, Berkeley) is also the co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). According to AMP, “We also work in broad-based coalitions and support campus activism through Students for Justice in Palestine.”
  • On October 31, 2023, the Attorney General’s Office of Virginia announced an investigation into AMP, stating that there is “reason to believe that the organization may be soliciting contributions … without first having registered…. In addition, the Attorney General will investigate allegations that the organization may have used funds raised for impermissible purposes under state law, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations.”
  • In March 2020, President of AMP Hatem Bazian submitted an amicus brief to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in support of ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s decision to investigate Israel for alleged war crimes. The brief consisted of an irrelevant diatribe about events in the 1910s and 1920s, with the conclusion that “Not only that I urge the court to recognize Palestine, as a State, but the time is right for London to publicly admit that the Balfour Declaration was a major historical crime against the Palestine, was illegal, led to ethnic cleansing and created a 12-million member Palestinian diaspora. Achieving peace is contingent on justice and can begin to take shape only when this original sin is admitted and recognized as such. This Chamber must correct the record and begin by recognizing Palestinians statehood as a first step toward addressing the systematic denial and obfuscation of their rights.”
  • In 2018, Bazian retweeted several times the hashtag #PalestinianHolocaust and claimed that Gaza is a “concentration camp.” On June 13, 2015, Bazian tweeted “Gaza: an epistemic Warsaw Ghetto but only different Semites are locked-up this time around.”
• Leila Abdelrazaq, Communications Coordinator for Friends of Sabeel North America, served “on the National SJP Ad-Hoc Steering Committee” in 2015.
  • In 2021, Abdelrazaq participated in a panel hosted by Brown SJP on “Palestine and Everyday Resistance.”
  • Abdelrazaq has supported  Rasmea Odeh, a PFLP operative convicted for immigration fraud after concealing her role in two terrorist bombings in Israel, referring to her as “one of my personal sheroes (sic).”
  • In 2013, Abdelrazaq designed a comic pamphlet for “educating the general public about the boycott Israel campaign.”