Despite glorifying Palestinian terrorists and clamoring to wipe Israel off the map, this California professor was honored for her “commitment to global scholarship that builds mutual understanding.”
By Ezra Stone, United with Israel
San Francisco State University’s (SFSU) Rabab Abdulhadi recently received the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) Georgina M. Smith Award in recognition of “her commitment to global scholarship that builds mutual understanding…evident in the collaborations she has initiated.”
Mutual understanding?
In reality, Abdulhadi has foisted a relentless anti-Israel agenda on her students throughout her career, glorifying Palestinian terrorists and promoting the destruction of the Jewish state.
Abdulhadi has “cultivated ties with Hamas-dominated universities, trivialized the kidnapping and murder of Israeli high-schoolers and endorsed hate speech,” reports Canary Mission, a leading hate group monitor that exposes anti-Semitic and anti-Israel forces in academia.
According to a 2015 Middle East Forum report quoted by Canary Mission, “Abdulhadi led a 2014 SFSU-funded ‘Academic and Labor Delegation to Palestine,’ which met with individuals like Leila Khaled and Sheikh Raed Salah, who were affiliated with American State Department-designated terrorist organizations.”
In addition to expressing support for terrorists and pushing hatred of Israel, Abdulhadi has promoted the position that “Jews who favor the existence if a Jewish state–that is most Jews–should be unwelcome not only at particular events but at the university altogether,” reported Commentary magazine in a recent piece referencing a lawsuit titled Volk v. Board of Trustees, which exposed rampant anti-Semitic discrimination at SFSU.
SFSU was forced to settle that lawsuit, issuing a statement affirming that “Zionism is an important part of [Jewish students’] identity” and allocating $200,000 to “educational outreach efforts to support education outreach efforts to promote viewpoint diversity.”
In Abdulhadi’s own tweeted words, however, “Zionists are NOT welcome on our campuses,” a position she pursues as a founding member of the anti-Israel boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) movement.
As the director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED), Abdulhadi oversaw an event in 2013 at which students made posters that said “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers,” a dishonest reference to Jews and Israelis.
The SFSU professor also served as the faculty advisor to Mohammad Hammad, a student who posted to social media a picture of himself holding a knife with the caption, “I love this blade…it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.” Hammad also “publicly threatened SFSU Jewish students, Israelis and supporters of Israel,” reported the AMCHA Initiative, which protects Jews on college campuses.
How could AAUP, which claims to oppose academic boycotts, honor a professor who champions terrorists, promotes the destruction of Israel, and urges boycotts of the only Jewish state in the world?