Tell Tufts University to ban Students for Justice in Palestine for promoting the anti-Semitic lie that Israel trains American police officers to harm minorities.
“A notorious anti-Israel group is pushing a student referendum at Tufts University that promotes the discredited libel that the Jewish state trains U.S. police forces to harm minorities,” reported the Algemeiner this week.
Specifically, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter at this Boston area school called for the “demilitarization” of the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) on a special election ballot sent out this week.
“Our referendum is seeking to promote the safety of students [especially people of color] by demanding the Tufts administration prohibit TUPD officers from attending military-led and/or similar international trips in the future, refine the vetting process to prevent prior attendees from being hired, and apologize for sending the former Tufts police chief to a militarized training trip,” SJP stated.
In reality, the only Tufts police official sent on a training program to Israel is Kevin Maguire, a retired employee who was in charge of TUPD and went to a 2017 counter-terrorism seminar.
By way of background, “SJP has been linked to terror groups. Some have defined SJP as a campus front for Hamas at University of California, Berkeley. Principal backers of SJP include founders, financial patrons and ideological supporters who have been connected to Islamist terror organizations such as Hamas, Hezbullah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),” the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported.
Tufts’ executive director of media relations, Patrick Collins, corrected SJP’s recent unfounded accusations, commenting, “The Anti-Defamation League-sponsored trip to Israel — which over 200 different federal, state and local agencies from across the US have participated in over the years — was not a military training program, nor was it intended to serve as an endorsement of any particular policy or policing strategy.”
Regardless, SJP promoted a “larger conspiracy theory,” the Algemeiner reported. According to SJP, “Since 2004, hundreds of American law enforcement officials have gone on these exchange trips. … Under the guise of ‘counter-terrorism,’ participants have learned Israeli military tactics for intelligence gathering, border security and forceful suppression of protest.”
“SJP offered no evidence to back up its charges,” the Algemeiner explained, adding, “The ‘Deadly Exchange’ conspiracy theory, which is widely viewed as an anti-Semitic blood libel, has been entirely discredited, though anti-Israel groups continue to exploit and disseminate its baseless claims.”
The Algemeiner also quoted Steven L. Pomerantz, former assistant FBI director and head of the Law Enforcement Exchange Program at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), who said, “Exchange programs began as a direct result of 9/11 at the specific request of senior law enforcement officers. It focused on counter-terrorism responsibilities of law enforcement, both prevention and response, and was aimed at only senior law enforcement officials.”
Pomerantz added that these exchange programs included “no hands-on training and no tactical training” and “concentrate on terrorism intelligence collection, ideology and methodology of terrorist organizations, coordinated response to terrorist incidents and cooperation between private security and law enforcement, etc.,” in addition to “includ[ing] subjects such as improving relations between law enforcement agencies and minority communities, and recruiting in minority communities.”
The time has come for Tufts University to remove SJP from campus for spreading lies about the Jewish state!
Send a respectful message to one of the recipients below, or use the following template:
“Dear Sir, I am writing to request that you take action with regard to the Students for Justice in Palestine group on your campus, which who has promoted anti-Semitic falsehoods about Israel and U.S. law enforcement officers. Specifically, SJP spreads the discredited ‘Deadly Exchange’ conspiracy, which is widely viewed as an anti-Semitic blood libel disseminated by anti-Israel groups to demonize the Jewish state.”
1. Send a message to Tufts University’s President Anthony Monaco by clicking here.
2. Send a message to Tufts University’s President Anthony Monaco on Twitter by clicking here.
