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students for justice in palestine
How Harris Can Win Back Voters Who Opposed Biden Over Gaza
By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy, Vice President Harris can build on this goodwill, win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency.
Jul 29, 2024
In the weeks leading up to President Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race, most of the editorial boards, party activists, and elected officials calling for him to end his reelection campaign focused on only one issue: age.
But there was another reason President Biden needed to drop out: Gaza.
Long before President Biden's debate meltdown sparked panic in the Democratic establishment, his support for the Israeli government's war in Gaza sparked outrage in the Democratic base, where 56 percent of the party's supporters have described the war as a genocide.
At least half a million Democratic voters protested President Biden's support for the Gaza genocide by voting uncommitted or submitting blank ballots during the presidential primaries earlier this year, including over 100,000 people in Michigan, 88,000 in North Carolina and 46,000 in Minnesota.
Over 1 in 5 Democrats or independents in key swing states said they were less likely to vote for President Biden due to the war, according to a YouGov-AJP-Action poll in May. Over a quarter of those voters said that an immediate and lasting ceasefire, full entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and conditions on military aid for Israel’s war were the minimum policy changes needed to secure or solidify their votes for Biden.
Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.
Many Democratic voters were alienated even more by President Biden's failure to call out reports of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobic violence with the same fervor he uses to call out reports of antisemitic rhetoric, as well as his criticism of the diverse, overwhelmingly peaceful student protests on college campuses.
Frustrated voters included Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Black Americans, young people and others who helped carry him to victory in 2020. If those voters ended up supporting third party candidates or boycotting the presidential race altogether in November—as some promised to do if Biden remained on the ticket and did not change course—they could have easily tipped the results in Michigan and other key swing states.
Now that President Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has a chance to turn the page, chart a new course, and win back those voters, including American Muslims.
That's what our coalition of American Muslim political organizations is calling on her to do.
Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.
Many American Muslims are open to supporting Vice President Harris if she distances herself from President Biden's Gaza policy, respectfully engages with all of our community leaders, picks a vice presidential nominee who does not have a history of explicit hostility towards our community like Governor Josh Shapiro, and commits to concrete policy proposals that would stop the genocide, end the broader occupation of the Palestinian people, and establish a just peace.
Taking these steps will set her apart from not only President Biden, but also from President Trump.
Most American Muslims do not want Donald Trump to return to office for perhaps obvious reasons. The former president has made it clear that he plans to round up undocumented immigrants as part of the largest mass deportation in American history, reinstate the Muslim Ban, stack the federal civil service with political loyalists, and pursue a foreign policy just as or even more, immoral than President Biden’s foreign policy.
During the presidential debate, President Trump even said that the Israeli government should be allowed to complete its war on Gaza, ignored the question of whether he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state to achieve peace, and weaponized Palestinian identity as a racist insult.
After President Trump's speech at the RNC, Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks reportedly said that he believes Trump will give the Israeli government a "blank check" to “finish the job quickly” in Gaza.
“If you need to carpet bomb the area, do it," Brooks said.
Vice President Harris now has the opportunity to contrast herself with Trump on this issue in ways President Biden could not. She has already built up some goodwill in the American Muslim community by using a noticeably more humane tone when discussing Palestinian suffering compared to others in the administration.
She just took heat from the far-right Zionist Organization of America, which ridiculously accused her of embracing "Arab Islamist criminality" because she dared to express some understanding of college students protesting the war on Gaza.
This week, Vice President Harris also declined the opportunity to sit behind Benjamin Netanyahu during his controversial address to Congress. After privately meeting with him on Thursday, Harris delivered remarks about Gaza that were far more balanced and humane than anything Joe Biden has said in nine months.
By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy, Vice President Harris can build on this goodwill, win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency. She must not miss this opportunity.
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DOE Investigating Columbia University for Anti-Palestinian Harassment
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," one lawyer said.
May 02, 2024
Palestine Legal announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Education has launched a federal investigation into "extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment" at Columbia University a week after the advocacy group filed a complaint on behalf of four students and a campus organization.
"While the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) looks into all complaints it receives, it only opens a formal investigation when it determines the facts warrant a deeper look," Palestine Legal pointed out on social media. "The complaint explains how Columbia has allowed and contributed to a pervasive anti-Palestinian environment on campus—including students receiving death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, harassed by [administration], suspended, locked out of campus, and more."
"Instead of protecting Palestinian and associated students when their voices are most needed to oppose an ongoing genocide, Columbia has taken actions to reinforce this hostile climate in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," added the group.
"The law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
Palestine Legal senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath stressed that "the law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," the lawyer added.
Since the filing, which highlighted that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik invited "the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus for the first time in decades to arrest over 100 students who had been peacefully protesting Israel's genocide of Palestinians," the Ivy League leader has called officers back to the school for more arrests.
On Tuesday night, the NYPD "violently arrested and brutalized dozens of student protestors, some with guns drawn, using sledgehammers, batons, and flash-bang explosives," noted Palestine Legal, which represents Maryam Alwan, Deen Haleem, Daria Mateescu, and Layla Saliba as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Columbia is one of many American campuses where administrators have called the police, who have behaved aggressively toward students and faculty nonviolently demonstrating to demand that their schools and the U.S. government stop supporting the Israeli assault of Gaza, which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in under seven months.
The Interceptrevealed last week that OCR opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst after Palestine Legal filed a complaint "on behalf of 18 UMass students who have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance, actually being assaulted."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who has supported peaceful student protests and whose daughter Isra Hirsi was suspended from Columbia's Barnard College for protesting last month—highlighted the reporting on social media and some of the verbal attacks that students have endured.
OCR has opened a probe into Emory University following a complaint filed by Palestine Legal and the Council on American Islamic Relations, Georgia (CAIR-GA), according toThe Guardian. The newspaper noted Thursday that complaints have also been filed about Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond said in a statement that the university "does not tolerate behavior or actions that threaten, harm or target individuals because of their identities or backgrounds."
CAIR-GA executive director Azka Mahmood said that she hopes the investigation into Emory helps "make sure that the systems put in place against bias are used for everyone across the board—so we can produce a comfortable, equitable place for Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students in the future."
The probes and complaints are notably being conducted and reviewed by an administration that has condemned campus protests while arming Israeli forces engaged in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign in Gaza.
After U.S. President Joe Biden delivered brief remarks on the demonstrations Thursday morning, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director at CAIR, said his "claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
"And if President Biden is truly concerned about the conflict on college campuses," Mitchell added, "he should specifically condemn law enforcement and pro-Israel mobs for attacking students, and stop enabling the genocide in Gaza that has triggered the protests."
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Columbia Sued Over 'Retaliatory' Suspension of Pro-Palestine Student Groups
"Universities should be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators, donors, and politicians squash political discourse they don't approve of," said the head of the NYCLU.
Mar 12, 2024
The New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal on Tuesday filed a lawsuit on behalf of members of two pro-Palestine student groups at Columbia University which avocates say were illegally suspended for engaging in peaceful protests and other events protected under the First Amendment.
The suit—filed on behalf of the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—seeks the groups' reinstatement. Under pressure from people including wealthy pro-Israel donors, Columbia officials unilaterally
suspended the school's JVP and SJP chapters in November, claiming the groups repeatedly held "unauthorized" events including protests and teach-ins since October 7, when Hamas-led attacks on Israel prompted genocidal retaliation against the people of Gaza.
"Universities should be havens for robust debate, discussion, and learning—not sites of censorship where administrators, donors, and politicians squash political discourse they don't approve of," NYCLU executive director Donna Lieberman said in a statement.
"These student groups were peacefully speaking out on a critical global conflict, only to have Columbia University ignore their own longstanding, existing rules and abruptly suspend the organizations," Lieberman added. "That's retaliatory, it's targeted, and it flies in the face of the free speech principles that institutes of higher learning should be defending. Students protesting at private colleges still have the right to fair, equal treatment—and we are ready to fight that battle in court."
Maryam Alwan, an organizer with Columbia's SJP chapter, said that "Ivy League institutions should not attract students who value justice and equality if they do not want to be held accountable for the ideals that they claim to uphold."
"As a Palestinian American student, I should have the same right to speak out on my campus as everyone else—and no amount of targeted policy changes or illegitimate suspensions will prevent us from advocating for the Palestinian people," Alwan added.
Cameron Jones, a JVP organizer at the school, argued that "Columbia must protect all Jewish students and voices, not just those adhering to a specific political belief."
"The university's decision to suspend a Jewish group sets a concerning precedent for safeguarding free speech on college campuses," Jones added. "It not only took away our rights as a club, but told us that our university does not support or respect anti-Zionist Jews or their beliefs."
Palestine Legal staff attorney Radhika Sainath noted that "for decades, Columbia students have been at the forefront of speaking out against segregation, war, and apartheid and SJP and JVP sit squarely in this tradition."
"It is precisely because these principled students pose a threat to the status quo that they are being targeted for McCarthyist censorship, but the law does not allow it," Sainath asserted. "Universities must abide by their own rules and may not punish student groups speaking out for Palestinian rights in the moment when they are most essential—even if donors and lobby groups complain."
"For decades, Columbia students have been at the forefront of speaking out against segregation, war, and apartheid and SJP and JVP sit squarely in this tradition."
The Columbia suspensions came amid a nationwide campus crackdown on criticizing Israel or advocating for Palestinian rights. Some students have fought back. In November, the University of Florida SJP chapter sued state education officials and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis over their move to deactivate the group over its support for Palestinians' legally enshrined right to resist Israeli occupation, apartheid, and other crimes.
Conversely, five Jewish students and two organizations last month sued Columbia and Barnard College alleging "particularly severe and pervasive" campus antisemitism, while a Jewish student at Columbia's School of Social Work filed a separate discrimination lawsuit last month.
There has been a dramatic increase in reports acts of both antisemitism and Islamophbia on U.S. campuses and in wider society since October 7.
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