Mick Hartley

Condemning the Hamas Oct. 7th pogrom, apparently, promotes racism towards Arabs and Muslims. 

Two days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, the president of San Diego State University did what many other college leaders were doing: She sent a campus-wide email supporting her students.

In the email, Adela de la Torre noted “the horrific reports of killings and kidnappings following the Hamas attacks on Israel during Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah, a major Jewish holy day,” and said the university was “grieving for all those who are suffering in the wake of this outburst of violence.”

The president included tips on how students could seek support and counseling and added a note of concern for all of the conflict’s victims: “We are deeply struck by the sheer scale of the loss of life – of innocent Israelis, Palestinians, and countless others. We also recognize that this follows a long history of loss of life of civilians in this region.”

Now that email, according to a university spokesperson, is at the center of a federal civil rights investigation into SDSU — tied to a complaint that the school “promoted hate and racism against Arabs and Muslims.”…

On Oct. 13, days after the university president’s email went out, the campus SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapter said in a statement that the school “has failed to acknowledge the emotions and well-being of its Palestinian and Muslim students.”

That statement has been co-signed by more than a dozen groups, including SJP chapters at other universities. The group added that it is “DEMANDING” that de la Torre “reassess this hateful and divisive rhetoric being spewed all over campus.”

Among the group’s issues with the email: “The lack of acknowledgment and condemnation of the settler-colonial state of Israel that has inflicted apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing upon the Palestinian people.” The group also pushed SDSU to divest from “corporations that are complicit in Israeli human rights violations.”