Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), a student group and affiliate of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Michigan, has once again chosen to display its true colors. While the group purports to stand for “human rights, liberation, and equality,” it has a tendency to frequently appeal to — and promote — antisemitism.
On January 13th, 2023, SAFE protested a talk by Vice President Kamala Harris. Members of the group cycled through several chants: “intifada! intifada! Long live the intifada,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Video Credit: Brendan Gutenschwager on @blakeflayton – Twitter.com
These chants are incontestably antisemitic as intifada is an explicit reference to two of the darkest chapters of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Between 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, Palestinian terror groups targeted and murdered thousands of Israelis, mostly civilians, through suicide bombings, stabbings, and shootings.
Furthermore, as the maps on SAFE’s social media pages reveal, their chants for “Palestine to be free, from the river to the sea” are an unmistakable call for the elimination of the State of Israel.
For SAFE to publicly call for an intifada and the elimination of the State of Israel is incredibly insensitive and an open display of hostility toward Jewish and Israeli students.
SAFE recently announced a February 2023 campaign entitled Palestinian Awareness Week: “Power to our Freedom Fighters, Glory to our Martyrs!” where the group has openly vowed to lionize Palestinian terrorists.” This should be deeply concerning to UM administrators, faculty, student government, and the Ann Arbor community.
Under what circumstances is it acceptable for a student group to call for violence against Jews and Israelis? We call on President Ono’s administration and the student government to condemn SAFE’s virulent antisemitism and to hold all members of the UM community accountable to the University’s policies against discrimination, violence, and harassment.
These open displays of antisemitism by SAFE are the latest incidents tied to an international disinformation campaign called “Israel Apartheid Week.” The effort maligns the State of Israel as a product of “settler colonialism,” an “apartheid state,” and a “violator of Palestinian human rights.” Additionally, participants in “Israel Apartheid Week” are known to justify terrorism and violence against Israelis, just as SAFE has done.
The propaganda spread during Israeli Apartheid Week is based on the same tired antisemitic libels that were used to marginalize and persecute Jewish people for centuries. CAMERA on Campus encourages all to follow our global effort to refute the falsehoods spread by detractors during “Israel Apartheid Week.”
Visit www.apartheidweekexposed.co to learn more.