EI: UK Israel lobby takes aim at Palestinian university lecturer
Posted by sashimi on January 23, 2022, 1:19 pm
Nora Barrows-Friedman, 22 January 2022
(quote) A British university has suspended a Palestinian graduate student from teaching amid a smear campaign by supporters of Israel.
Shahd Abusalama, a longtime activist and contributor to The Electronic Intifada, is a PhD student at Sheffield Hallam University.
Abusalama has written about her experiences in the Gaza Strip, where she was born and grew up under Israeli occupation, siege and military assaults.
She has also written about the terror of being separated from her family in Gaza while they were under Israeli bombardment in 2014.
The campaign against her resembles the tactics used last year to target David Miller, a professor at Bristol University.
Miller was fired from his job even though he was cleared of all accusations of anti-Jewish bigotry by two independent investigations commissioned by Bristol university.
Abusalama was recently hired as an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University in the north of England.
Zionist racist publications/trolls have renewed online #bullying to discredit my academic reputation, protesting my recent appointment as an Associate Lecturer at SHU. Meanwhile, I'm getting creepy emails about people trying to hack my twitter. Don't let them silence #Palestine. pic.twitter.com/hturWy64HG - ShahdAbusalama (@ShahdAbusalama) January 19, 2022
She was preparing to teach her first class on 21 January when an administrator informed her the evening before that her class was canceled and her students would be notified.
The official said that a complaint had sparked an investigation and that due to the university's rules she would not be allowed to teach until the investigation concludes.
Abusalama has endured repeated attacks by anti-Palestinian groups and publications in the past.
She and her family are refugees - Palestinians ethnically cleansed from their home in what is now Israel by Zionist militias in 1948. Like all other Palestinian refugees, they are barred by Israel from returning to their original homes because they are not Jewish.
She has been a high-profile Palestinian rights campaigner since arriving in the UK as a student.
Abusalama has been an organizer against adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which falsely conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish bigotry, and in 2019, around the boycott of Eurovision.
The controversial IHRA definition is regularly used by Israel lobby groups to smear and censor supporters of Palestinian rights.
Abusalama said that her activism in both of those campaigns has been a focus of attacks by Israel lobby groups and publications.
She told The Electronic Intifada that the latest smears began in December, when Jewish News and the Israel lobby group Campaign Against Antisemitism accused her of fostering hostility towards Jews.
Previously, Joe Glasman, the head of "political investigations" for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, took credit on behalf of the group for the December 2019 electoral defeat of the Labour Party, then headed by Jeremy Corbyn. Following the loss, Corbyn announced he would resign as party leader.
"The beast is slain," Joe Glasman gloated in a video he later tried to remove from the Internet. Corbyn had been "slaughtered," the video said.
A vocal supporter of Palestinian rights, Corbyn - along with his grassroots backers - was the target of a years-long smear campaign falsely accusing him of anti-Jewish bigotry.
Glasman claimed that he and his associates beat Corbyn with a coordinated campaign using methods including "our spies and intel."
The video Glasman attempted to erase can be seen here.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism's chief executive, Gideon Falter, is vice chair of the Jewish National Fund UK, which raises money for Israeli colonization projects on Palestinian land.
Accounts for the JNF UK show that it provides financial backing to recruitment drives for Israel's army, and to Ein Prat, a group which arranges training courses for North Americans who join that military.
Spurious claims These bad-faith accusations by supporters of Israeli settler-colonialism are clear attempts to harass and intimidate activists and academics like Abusalama into silence.
Abusalama only found out that the university had potentially investigated her social media posts by reading the smears from Campaign Against Antisemitism and the Jewish News.
This is outrageous. I hope as many people as possible can get the word out, share this article etc. I've met Shahd. She's a co-founder and member of the Hawiyya Dance Company. They performed at an event last year where we took over part of our local pier ('Palestine on the Pier'). It meant for her a 480 mile round trip! Shahd epitomises the very best of the Palestinian revolutionary spirit (not that there's anything bad in it!). She was born in the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza. Her father was a long time political prisoner. She's studied in the UK and has attained her doctorate.
on January 23, 2022, 1:19 pm