SJP UChicago’s Statement and Demands on Zionist Falsehoods Published in the Maroon

To the Editorial Board and Editors-in-Chief of the Maroon,

We, the Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Chicago, call on the Maroon to retract its recent article entitled “We Must Condemn the SJP’s Online Anti-Semitism,” and to issue a public apology to Palestinians on campus for the many damaging and defamatory lies it has published in this article and others. The Maroon is the most widely read and circulated student-run newspaper on campus, and enjoys this status because of its perceived commitment to journalistic honesty and integrity. However, the Maroon has an established pattern—which has recently become more frequent and egregious—of allowing Zionist articles to propagate overt falsehoods which serve to advance their racist objectives, including the demonization of Palestinians and Palestinian advocates and the public sanitization of the ongoing war crimes and human rights abuses committed by the israeli apartheid regime. 

The anti-Palestinian lies that the Maroon regularly publishes slander SJP and perpetuate an unsafe campus atmosphere for Palestinian students. It is past time for the Maroon to take public accountability for the harm it has caused and live up to its professed ethical, factual, and journalistic standards. To begin with, it should publicly retract and apologize for the defamatory article it published on February 17, which includes these lies and others that have already spread across UChicago’s campus and the country:

  1. that SJP recently called on students to “boycott Jewish-taught and -related classes”.

This allegation is pure slander. It is especially egregious that the Maroon’s editors chose to broadcast such a demonstrably false and demonizing claim as their article’s subheading. SJP did not call for a boycott of the dozens of courses listed in Jewish Studies and History of Judaism and/or taught by Jewish faculty this quarter. Rather, we called for a targeted boycott of three classes pertaining to Palestine and Palestinians whose course descriptions reflected a Zionist ideological framing and normalized the israeli apartheid regime. To frame this call as “anti-Jewish” not only perpetuates the dangerous (and wholly false) conflation of Jewishness and Zionism, but deliberately diverts attention from the ongoing ethnic cleansing that the israeli colony has been inflicting on Palestinian lands and peoples from its inception to the present.

  1. that SJP’s boycott call was “posted to Instagram on Holocaust Remembrance Day” in a calculated effort “to isolate and alienate the Jewish population at UChicago and to interfere with a day of mourning”.

This claim contains two blatant and slanderous falsehoods. Firstly, SJP has never made and will never make a post with the calculated intention of demonizing an ethnic or religious population—such an act contradicts the basic tenets of our organization. Secondly, SJP  did not post our boycott call on Holocaust Remembrance Day. The authors themselves admit in their article that the call appeared on January 26, not—as the article’s subheading implies—on January 27. 

  1. that because the Jewish people use a lunar calendar, where each day begins the evening before, “[SJP’s] posting of the slides [on the evening of January 26] overlapped with Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27.”

Rather than drop the nationally-circulated lie that SJP posted our boycott call on Holocaust Remembrance Day or take responsibility for the role that one of their organizations played in spreading it, the authors go on to allege that SJP made a calculated effort to post the boycott on Holcaust Remembrance Day as it is located on the Jewish Calendar. This claim is blatantly false. On the Hebrew Calendar, International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) is on the 27 of Nisan, which in 2022 will begin on the evening of April 27 and end on the evening of April 28. However, International Holocaust Remembrance Day as defined by the UN General Assembly on the Gregorian Calendar occurs from 12 AM to 11:59 PM on January 27. SJP did not post within this timeframe.

  1. that SJP demanded a boycott of all classes “taught by an [i]sraeli professor,” thus targeting faculty on the xenophobic basis of birthplace alone.

As we have previously stated, SJP did not call for a boycott of courses based simply on their instructors’ place of birth. Rather, following the guidelines outlined by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of israel (PACBI), we called on students to boycott courses taught by israeli academic fellows who represent and/or take funding from complicit israeli and pro-israel institutions (e.g., the Israel Institute). To frame this as a “xenophobic” demand for students to boycott all courses taught by individuals who happen to hold israeli citizenship (while conveniently ignoring the fact that our call targeted a grand total of two courses taught by one israeli professor linked to the Israel Institute) is dishonest, cynical, and dismissive of israeli anti-Zionists.

  1. that SJP “approached students in the quad about banning the classes in the post, reiterating the misinformation and attempting to demonize students in those classes”.

SJP members do not accost anyone on the quad, let alone about boycotting Zionist classes. This likely refers to an event in which, while watching over the February 15 installation, two SJP members were approached by a student who inquired about the Instagram post. The two members reiterated the points made in the post respectfully, and were in fact unaware of the political affiliations, intentions, or classes of enrollment of the inquiring student.

As is abundantly clear, these allegations are not mere opinions or differences in political perspective. They are dangerous, damaging, and defamatory lies, each of which can be refuted with so much as a modicum of journalistic effort. That the Maroon approved all these lies for publication without fact-checking any of them speaks volumes about its professed commitment to factual objectivity and political neutrality. The Maroon’s actions cannot be defended on the grounds that the article in question was an op-ed. Opinion pieces allow authors to express contentious and controversial viewpoints. They do not give authors—much less the Maroon—a free pass to openly defame and slander other students, particularly students who already face bigotry and harassment from a variety of corners.

IN RESPONSE TO THESE OFFENSES, WE, SJP UCHICAGO, DEMAND THE FOLLOWING:

  • Immediate deletion of the article “We Must Condemn the SJP’s Online Anti-Semitism”, authored by Benjamin ZeBrack and Melody Dias and published on February 17.
  • A public apology issued by the Maroon to SJP UChicago and to Palestinian students for the dissemination of misinformation and the disregard of journalistic integrity and factual reporting.
  • A public recommitment to ensuring that all columns and articles abide by expected standards of accuracy and truth, particularly those written by Zionist authors or on behalf of Zionist organizations.

We reiterate that this is not an issue of opinion, discourse, or disagreement. We understand the Maroon’s commitment to “neutrality.” This is a matter of the Maroon being a mouthpiece for blatant untruths that advance Zionism on campus, and with it the harassment and demonization of Palestinians. The publication of obvious falsehoods contradicts the mission statement of the Maroon and its dedication to “maintaining professional standards of accuracy, objectivity, and fairness.” At best, this is a result of neglect; at worst, it was done to deliberately obfuscate the truth. 

Until Liberation,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UChicago

For a complete list of Zionist lies published in the Maroon, click here.