AMCHA Initiative

AMCHA Initiative

Founded	2011
Founders	Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith
Type	501(c)(3)[1]
Location	P.O. Box 408, Santa Cruz, CA 95061
Area served	California and the United States
Slogan	Protecting Jewish Students
Website	amchainitiative.org

The AMCHA Initiative (founded 2011) is a nonprofit organization based in California which seeks to investigate, document, educate about, and combat antisemitism at institutions of higher education in the United States. The Initiative was founded by University of California Santa Cruz lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and University of California Los Angeles Professor Emeritus Leila Beckwith.

The term Amcha is Hebrew for "your people" or "your nation" and intends to connote grassroots, the masses, and ordinary people.^[2]

Activities

AMCHA Initiative's mission is to organizes and carry out campaigns to address campus antisemitism, to include communicating with university, state, and federal leaders about the issue and potential solutions, and engaging grassroots activists; and collaborating with other legal and educational organizations.^[2]

The organization identifies antisemitism using the U.S. State Department’s “Defining Anti-Semitism" criteria, to which the organization adds two defining parameters including Promotes boycott, divestment, sanctions against Israel and Targets Jewish students for discrimination, harassment, or intimidation.^[3]

Areas of focus

The Initiative's site states five key areas of activism:

• Harassment of Jewish Students
• Verbal and Physical Threats Against Jewish Students
• Professors Use of University Resources to Promote Antisemitism
• Departments Use of University Prestige and Funding to Promote Antisemitism
• Student Travel Programs Used to Promote Antisemitism^[4]

Push for University of California to adopt, “anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism” as form of discrimination

The organization led ^[5] a year-long campaign to get the University of California Board of Regents to formally recognize current manifestations of campus antisemitism which, according to AMCHA Initiative, include anti-Zionism’s participation in anti-Jewish hostilities.^[6] On March 22, 2016, the University of California Regents passed a Statement of Principles Against Intolerance which included the statement, “Anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic forms of anti-Zionism and other forms of discrimination have no place at the University of California.” When this statement passed, AMCHA co-founder Tammi Rossman Benjamin was vocal in her enthusiasm stating in a New York Times article that the UC system was the first to specifically recognize “that there are forms of anti-Zionism that are anti-Semitic. That’s huge.” ^[7] The campaign involved, according to the organization, uniting over 50 organizations in support of the final statement including Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity, American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, CUFI on Campus, Israeli-American Council (IAC), Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stand With Us and the Zionist Organization of America. According to AMCHA Initiative’s list of support for the Statement, mainstream Jewish organizations such as Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Council and Hillel International likewise expressed support.^[8] Additionally, more than 4,000 UC Stakeholders as well as California rabbis and anti-Semitism scholars voiced support.^[9]

Opposing pledge against trips to Israel

In 2014 Students for Justice in Palestine and allied groups at UCLA asked candidates for student government positions to sign a statement pledging that they will not go on any trip to Israel sponsored by three Jewish organizations. In response, AMCHA Initiative represented seven organizations - including Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, the Lawfare Project, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stand With Us and the Zionist Organization of America – in a joint statement before the Board of Regents, asking the Regents, President Janet Napolitano and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block to "condemn bigotry and review university rules regarding faculty and departmental sponsorship of events of a partisan political nature."^[10]

AMCHA also coordinated a joint letter to the Regents, Napolitano and Block from the same seven organizations.^[11] Soon thereafter, UCLA Chancellor Block ^[12] and UC President Napolitano ^[13] condemned the pledge and asked the VP of Student Affairs to intervene.

Mohammad G. Hammad

In 2013 AMCHA said that Mohammad G. Hammad, President of General Union of Palestine Students, a university-sanctioned student group at San Francisco State University (SFSU) was making public threats against SFSU Jewish students, Israelis, and any person who supports Israel. The Jewish Press published what it said was a Tumbler page with a photo of Hammad holding a knife, with the caption, “I love this blade... it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier”^[14][15] News sources said that Hammad identified an Israeli soldier and said, “the only “peace” I’m interested in is the head of this f**cking scum on a plate, as well as the heads of all others like her, and all others who support the IDF” ^[16] and “The Liberation of Palestine can only come through the destruction and decimation of this Israeli plague and it can’t possibly come soon enough.” He said that he hopes members of the student group Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life “trip down the stairs and break their necks.” ^[17]

AMCHA gave that material to university officials, the FBI, the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco District Attorney. The University said that Hammad was no longer enrolled at SFSU, without specifying a reason.^[18]

Faculty use of resources to Endorse BDS, PFLP or Hamas

AMCHA has drawn attention to incidents that it states are inappropriate uses of public/university resources to participate in politics that AMCHA identifies as anti-semitic, including the promotion of the BDS ("boycott, divest and sanction") movement.^[19] In 2013 the Initiative drew attention to California State University Northridge mathematics professor David Klein's pro-BDS website on his CSUN space. Over the course of 2012-2013, the organization submitted memos and legal complaints to California authorities regarding Klein's page, but the university authorities and the California Attorney General declined to take action, citing lack of evidence of misuse and free speech protections.^[20]

In 2014, AMCHA filed a California Public Records Act inquiry, regarding that San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi had received more than $7,000 ^[21] to fly to Jordan, the West Bank and Israel to meet with individuals who are members of Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both considered terrorist organizations by the United States.^[22] In response, AMCHA Initiative coordinated a letter from 8 organizations to CSU Chancellor White, SFSU President Wong and other University administrators declaring this an abuse of university and taxpayer funds and urging an investigation. The letter was sent from AMCHA Initiative, Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Stand With Us and the Zionist Organization of America. An SFSU spokesman issued in reply a statement that we conclude that the allegations made against Professor Abdulhadi have no merit...Faculty can and do communicate with others relevant to their research, communicating by various methods that can involve travel.^[23][24]

Institutional Endorsement of Speakers Using Antisemitic Rhetoric

Barghouti speeches

The organization believes some events that were funded by university departments or administrative offices contained anti-Semitic content. In 2014, three UC schools – UCLA, UC Riverside and UC Davis - sponsored official events featuring Omar Barghouti, the founder and vocal advocate of the academic boycott of Israel. AMCHA alleged that Barghouti's presentations violated UC policies on partisan use of campus resources, and contributed to a hostile environment for Jewish students by using "blood libel" in his speech. UC leadership responded by stating that they were not in support of a boycott of Israel, but considered Barghouti's presentations to be free speech.^[25]

In response, AMCHA delivered a petition to members of the California Senate and Assembly education committees, demanding that the legislators stop UC faculty from using taxpayer dollars to promote anti-Semitism.^[26] In addition, AMCHA co-founders went before the UC Board of Regents, the governing body of all UC schools, to ask the Regents to intervene.^[27]

Edward Said memorial

In 2013, a San Francisco State University student group, the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), hosted an event honoring an Edward Said memorial where participants could make posters that said, “My heroes have always killed colonizers”^[28] as well as images of a convicted hijacker Leila Khaled holding a gun. AMCHA said that the posters of “My heroes have always killed colonizers” meant that the colonizers were Jews. The GUPS event received several thousands of dollars of funding from the university and was co-sponsored by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities Initiative (AMED) in the College of Ethnic Studies.^[29]

When AMCHA Initiative uncovered the posters its response was to alert President Wong about the event.^[30] Thereafter, President Wong issued a statement condemning the posters and stating, “celebrating violence or promoting intolerance, bigotry, antisemitism or any other form of hate mongering” would not be tolerated at SFSU. He also ensured “a safe and civil campus environment” for Jewish students.^[31]

Student Voices Webpage

The organization published a webpage that documents published quotes detailing the experiences of Jewish students on America’s campuses who have been "targeted, intimidated or frightened because they are Jewish." ^[32] The quotes were collected starting in 2014. The webpage had more than 100 students, located at 47 different schools, in 20 states as of June 24, 2015. The organization gathered the testimonies from publications nationwide including school papers.^[33]

Criticism

The Middle Eastern Studies Association issued a statement expressing grave concerns about "the contents and apparent intent" of an AMCHA report on Middle East studies: "Its real goal seems to be to restrict or even stifle the free and open discussion of, and the vigorous exchange of opinions on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college and university campuses."^[34]

Following AMCHA publishing a list of Middle East Studies Professors who had endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, a group of 40 professors signed a statement opposing AMCHA’s actions as they felt it would lead to some students boycotting professors who endorsed a boycott of Israel.^[35]

References

External links

• Official website