PSA's History of Jew Hatred So Far
The officially registered student organization has been posting racist vitriol since October 9th.
At the onset of the Simchat Torah war, the UCF Palestinian Student Association had a choice between two paths: they could either support the Palestinian people in their time of dire need by condemning their terrorist dictators, and the violence they perpetutated against innocent men, women, children and babies; or they could support the same terrorists and celebrate the killing of Jews – even calling for more Jews to be killed.
They chose the second path.
The first Instagram story post on record which details UCF PSA’s endorsement of Jewish killings came on October 9th, where they posted a statement from another account reading, in part:
As you watch news in Gaza & Israel today, keep 1 thing in mind: The largest terrorist org in all of Palestine & Israel (known as the Israeli military) has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians in hundreds of raids into Palestinian towns over the past decade.
The post may have been referencing raids on particular cities in the West Bank which the IDF (Israeli military) believes harbor members of terrorist organizations. While some of the dead and those arrested in these cities have been confirmed by the organizations themselves as terrorists, others have not, and any civilian death in these operations is not only tragic but condemnable.
The post appears to view the intentional targeting and killing of civilians in the non-occupied territories (i.e., those internationally recognized as part of Israel) as justified because of the aforementioned raids in the West Bank, which did not target civilians. Besides justifying an attack on civilians, the post draws a false comparison between operations which have unintentionally killed civilians (even negligently so, although it is the policy of both West Bank and Gaza Strip terror groups to use civilians as human shields) and the pogrom on Simchat Torah which intentionally killed civilians. Even if the author had correctly pointed out Israeli misconduct in related incidents, using such misconduct to celebrate and justify a pogrom is indisputably antisemitic.
A follow-up video post on their Instagram story later that day explicity refuses to condemn the killings of civilians. In part, the video says:
Do you start by asking [the Israelis] to condemn themselves? Have you? You don’t, you don’t. No, no, I’ll answer that question. You don’t. You know why I refuse to answer this question? Because I refuse the premise of it.
Apart from the fact that they do, in fact, condemn Israel in situations of civilian harm, refusing to condemn the pogrom because of the “premise of [the question]” is blatently dishonest. The premise of the question is that civilian deaths are terrible, regardless of the context, reason, or attempts to avoid them. Making every available effort to not harm civilians in any way is the bare minimum expected of any party to any conflict. Making civilian harm the objective of said conflict is thus unequivocally evil. The speaker in this video, endorsed and posted by the PSA, thus refuses the premise that Jewish civilian lives are worth preserving.
While this statement endorsed the racist perspective that Jewish lives are worth less than others, it stopped short of condoning Jewish deaths and calling for more. That would not be true of the next video, posted to their Instagram story on October 10th, which stated:
It needs to be understood that there’s no such thing as “innocent civilians” under the context of settler colonialism. Every Israeli settler is complicit in the occupation and ethnic cleaning of Palestinians. These are people who choose to live on stolen Palestinian land.
A few things make this statement particularly concerning, and potentially life-threatening to the UCF Jewish community. In particular:
The term “settler colonialism”, when applied to Jews in the State of Israel, denies that Jews have any right to live in Israel. It casts our existence on the land where we have lived for thousands of years as a parasitic presence which should be eradicated.
“Every Israeli settler is complicit” implies that the murdered civilians in the south of Israel were settlers. The concept of settler was previously defined as someone living outside the defined boundaries of the State of Israel under international law while being protected by the same state (which is a violation of international law). UCF PSA is now characterizing all Israelis as settlers (which is patently untrue under international law), and endorsing their deaths as legitimate for this reason.
“These are people who choose to live on stolen Palestinian land” again characterizes Israelis (in practice, Jews) as a parasitic or occupying force. Given this statement is coupled with a claim that we are not innocent civilians and was preceded by statements celebrating our deaths, it is reasonable to say that UCF PSA views the Jews in Israel as parasites to be exterminated and may extend their perceptions outside of the land.
There are well-documented instances of Jews being attacked and murdered by antisemites in order to glorify themselves in the aftermath of attacks on Jews in Israel. These efforts are furthered by statements such as those posted by UCF PSA. It is thus reasonable to say that these posts, which endorse our deaths and call for more (by removing any designation of “innocence” from Jewish people as a collective) are intended to incite violence and hatred against Jewish people around the world, including at UCF.
We will keep you informed about UCF’s response to antisemitic incidents (harassment, violence, etc.) on and off campus.