Last week it was Brandeis; this week Stanford is making lots of news. We posted earlier about the Finkelstein controversy and related op-eds; in today’s Stanford Daily junior Mishan Araujo responds with a critical look at pro-Palestinian campus groups.

According to their website, Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (CJME) is “dedicated to promoting awareness of current events and instances of human rights violations and injustice in the region.” Yet last quarter their five events were: Ending Apartheid in the Holy Land…, Lebanon, Hezbollah and Israel: What really happened?, Breaking the Silence: An Evening with Former Israeli Soldiers, The Other Side of Israel…, and …South Asian-Arab Solidarity against Israeli Apartheid. It doesn’t appear that the Coalition for Justice in the Middle East is interested in human rights violations in the “region.” It seems they are interested in singling out Israel. If they were truly interested in the region why wouldn’t they have events about the disgraceful way women are treated in many Arab countries, about honor killings, or about the horrific way members of the LGBT community are harassed and often killed in many countries in the Middle East? If, as Tala Al-Ramahi claims in her Jan. 26 Op-Ed, CJME’s “plea and struggle for seeking justice is color-blind, race-blind, religion-blind…” then why is their programming so Israel-centric?
This quarter we’ve seen the birth of SCAI, a group with largely the same membership as CJME, and so far they’ve brought us the launch of their divestment campaign followed by an event about the Jewish people’s exploitation of the Holocaust and misuse of the term anti-Semitism. I guess now that they’ve brought a Jew to campus to explain to us that cries of anti-Semitism are often unfounded, I should shy away from the topic and become reluctant to raise my voice at discrimination when I see it. Well, I won’t. If they don’t want me to use the term “anti-Semitism,” perhaps SCAI and CJME can come up with another word for their practice of singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East. Maybe they will find a word that makes their actions sound less vile. But, if this pattern of behavior continues, Stanford is headed in a very dangerous and hateful direction.

Follow the link for people’s comments on this op-ed.
And here’s a link to the Daily’s coverage of SCAI’s call to selectively divest from companies that support Israel.