As demonstrators in the United States protest against recent incident in which police officers killed African American men, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has found a way to blame Israel.
New York University’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine shared a post on its Facebook page claiming that “the same forces behind the genocide of black people in America are behind the genocide of Palestinians.”
Aside from the extreme hyperbole in describing growth from 1.3 million to 12.3 million over the past 70 years as “genocide,” the accusations bring to mind anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the world.
SJP suggests that the Jewish State is responsible for all actions taken by police in the United States because some police officers spend a few days training in Israel.
Law enforcement agencies around the world frequently learn from each other, and officers from the US also regularly train with their foreign counterparts. Yet no other country is accused of being secretly responsible for the actions of each local station.
SJP and other anti-Israel groups are well-known for hijacking issues completely unrelated to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to push their agenda. During last year’s protests in Ferguson, Missouri, a number of activists waved banners and chanted “From Palestine to Ferguson.”
Last November, the City University of New York chapter of SJP blamed “Zionists” for their school’s high tuition.