Palestinian Terrorist Organizations at a US University
Material support, advocacy and indoctrination, achieved stage by stage. An examination of the events at University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH) as a prototype.
by Jonathan Slosser, Israel National News, March 25, 2019 (excerpts)
Part I: Humanize Palestine - Creative Narratives, Concealed Identities
Prologue
Palestinian activism on the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UH) has existed for many years and is similar to what is found on many campuses in the academic community. This is evident when reading Cynthia Franklin’s bio page on the university’s website.
Cynthia Franklin, PhD, is a faculty member of the Department of English. She is on the Steering Committee for the Organizing Collective of USACBI, the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. She founded UH Faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine, and co-founded the Hawaii Coalition for Justice in Palestine (HCJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace-Hawaii.
An activist is a person who acts to bring about social or political change. An advocate is a person who speaks on behalf of another person or group, pleads the cause of another. It is the advocacy at the UH that is concerning, advocacy that suggests a nexus with Palestinian terror organizations.…
This is what the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s advocacy campaign may look like:
The questions that need to be addressed are as follows: 1) Is the advocacy campaign at the University of Hawaii at Manoa “independent advocacy”, or does it provide a “service” for a Palestinian terror organization(s)? 2) Is the classroom teaching consistent with the definition of pedagogical indoctrination?
The USA Patriot Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2339B, makes it unlawful in the United States for any person who is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States anywhere, to knowingly provide material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) that has been so designated by the U.S. Secretary of State. There are four types of support: training, expert advice or assistance, service and personnel. The statute prohibits providing a service for an FTO. A service means the performance of work presided over or paid for by another, presided over or paid for by an FTO….
The Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruling (1) established for the first time that any support, including peaceful support, is illegal because it would free up the FTO’s resources which would allow it to more fully engage in terror and violence. In addition, the support has the potential to add legitimacy to the FTO. Advocacy for an FTO at the direction of or in cooperation with the FTO, is a crime pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §2339B.
The Supreme Court ruling, Holder v. The Humanitarian Law Project, also addressed advocacy on behalf of an FTO. Advocacy for an FTO, “independent advocacy”, it ruled, is not prohibited by the statute because it is not a service.
This series of essays will explore the issue of Palestinian advocacy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Do the facts support what the Supreme Court described as legal “independent advocacy” or do they reveal or suggest that a service was rendered to a Palestinian FTO? Was it material support of a Foreign Terrorist Organization or Palestinian activists engaged in legal independent advocacy?
2) The French philosopher, Oliver Reboul, presented 13 situations of teaching-related indoctrination in his 1977 book, L'endoctrinement, counterfeit facts in order to emphasize a certain doctrine, was one of them. Did this occur in a University of Hawaii classroom?
Introduction
“Life in Occupied Palestine: A Special Issue of Biography”, Biography, volume 37, number 2, spring 2014, was edited by Cynthia Franklin, Morgan Cooper and Ibrahim G. Aoude. Prof. Franklin and Prof. Aoude are faculty members, Department of English, and Morgan Cooper had been one of their students, she is currently living in Ramallah. The Biography issue was designated a “key text” for a 2017 course taught by Prof. Franklin….
Humanize Palestine, a website linked to PalestinianLives.net and cited in the introduction of “Life in Occupied Palestine: A Special Issue of Biography”, specialized in representing how individual Palestinian lives and deaths were represented or not represented. It accomplished this by utilizing a picture gallery format consisting of nuanced photographs, each of which was linked to a short ‘creative’ narrative. These photos and life writing narratives/texts were presented to students participating in a course at the UH taught by Prof. Franklin. The 2014 “web-based project”, Humanize Palestine was designated a “key text” for Section 1 of the 2017 course. The GazaNames Project was also designated a “key text”….
Pictured below is the Humanize Palestine website as it appeared on the internet in 2017. At that time, the website was archived and the images below were generated from the archived file. The website was deactivated later in 2017, about two weeks after the University of Hawaii (UH) Chancellor became aware of a nexus that consisted of University of Hawaii content, Palestinian terrorism and the Humanize Palestine website below. The Booklet website, Facebook and Twitter pages are still active.
This is what the website looked like in 2017:
Reproduced below is the Humanize Palestine ABOUT statement appearing on their webpage above:
"Humanize Palestine attempts to honor the deceased as martyrs by bringing them back to life through their pictures, stories, art, and poetry. Humanize Palestine reminds us, that contrary to Western bias, a Palestinian life is no less valuable than the life of another, by giving the life the respect and dignity that it deserves."
As previously stated, each picture in a gallery had an embedded URL link that opened a webpage displaying a narrative for the individual(s) in the picture. These are the narratives Humanize Palestine uses to “… honor the deceased as martyrs by bringing them back to life through their pictures, stories, art and poetry”. These are the life writing narratives/texts presumably seen by the seminar students.
Not seen by the students were the narratives and pictures of the same individuals taken from the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades website and other similar terrorist websites and sources. We know this because Dr. Franklin stated that U.S. support for Israel’s human rights abuses depends on casting Palestinians as terrorists and that she will present life writing narratives that counter this.
An investigation of the 2014 photo gallery was undertaken so that each individual could be positively identified. The 2014 photo gallery was selected for analysis because it contained the largest number of photographs. Each of the 236 pictures from the 2014 photo gallery was analyzed and identified. A preliminary statistical analysis reveals that 62 photos in the gallery were Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives (26%), 27 were Palestinian Islamic Jihad al-Quds Brigades operatives (11%), 13 were al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades operatives (6%). A more detailed analysis of the deceased Palestinians in the 2014 Humanize Palestine photo gallery will be presented at the end of this section.
Creative Narratives, Concealed Identities
The Humanize Palestine life writing narrative/text is presented first below. This is followed by a narrative that identifies the individual as a terrorist and identifies the terrorist’s affiliation….
(Skip numerous profiles of Palestinian ‘martyrs’ blown up while attacking Israeli targets—but presented to UH Manoa students as if they were civilians.)
Palestinian Hasbara
The pictures and narratives displayed above are a very small sample taken from the Humanize Palestine website. To fully appreciate the content of the 2014 photo gallery and entirely comprehend what the students in the seminar were presented, we needed to examine all 236 photos in the 2014 photo gallery on the Humanize Palestine website.
Statistical Analysis of 2014 Photo Gallery
There were 236 pictures in the 2014 Humanize Palestine photo gallery. After a thorough investigation of each photo, these are the most significant findings:
1. 111 (47%) were members of a military wing of a terror organization: Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, PIJ al-Quds Brigades, al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, DFLP National Resistance Battalions, Mujahedeen Brigades, Abdul Qadir al-Husseini Brigades, Mujahedeen Shura Council of Jerusalem.
2. 31 (13%) were affiliated terror operatives: Hamas, Fatah, Fatah Youth Organization.
3. 50 (21%) were civilians killed alongside their terror operative family member during military combat.
4. 7 (2%) Individuals specifically targeted in a military strike related to Operation Protective Edge
5. 29 (12%) Non-involved civilians
6. Miscellaneous: West Bank rioting, unidentified, false reporting, not related to hostilities.
Takeaway
60% were terror operatives; There were family members of terror operatives who died with them while they were engaged in combat. Add these fatalities (50/21%) to the terror operatives killed and then we arrive at 81%, 81% of the photos in the 2014 gallery were related to FTOs.
12% were civilians who did not participate in combat and who were not affiliated with any terrorist organization….
Conclusion
Creative narratives, nuanced photographs, that represent Palestinian terror operatives as innocent civilians, this is Humanize Palestine. This website was a “key text” for a course taught in 2017 at the University of Hawaii - Manoa. Terror operatives, members of U.S. designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations were presented to students as civilians murdered by the Israeli military. Humanize Palestine was an on-line memorial to Palestinian terrorism, terror operatives and their families. These were the life narratives/texts read by students enrolled in a course at the University of Hawaii - Manoa, “Seminar in Life Writing: Human Lives, Uncivil States”….
Epilogue
Humanize Palestine was not the only website used as a “key text” in the seminar. The GazaNames Project was also assigned reading for students enrolled in the 2017 course: “we will read life narratives coming out of the US and Palestine/Israel … Key texts for this section are … the 2014 web-based …The GazaNames Project….”
“Part II: GazaNames Project - Signs of Concealment”, will document another advocacy tool deployed at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. The Gaza Names Project in some respects, is similar to the Humanize Palestine website. It uses a picture gallery format of individuals holding up signs containing the names and ages of dead Palestinian ‘civilians murdered by Israel’. Many of these ‘civilians’ were Palestinian terror operatives killed in combat during the 2014 Gaza war. Concealed identities, terror operatives represented as civilians, exaggerated fatalities of innocent women and children, all strategies of Hamas, so is there a nexus? The evidence will demonstrate that there is.
read … Full Report
Jonathan Slosser is an independent researcher who has degrees from the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison and the Univ. of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the relationship between Human Rights NGOs, The Academy, and Palestinian Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brig.
1) Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1 (2010), is a U.S. Supreme Court case, a 6-3 opinion, decided June 21, 2010. The decision concerned the Patriot Act, a statute that prohibits material support to Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).