Following a heated public clash between a prominent pro-Israel activist and a member of the Muslim Student Association, representatives from Tritons for Israel began meeting with sponsors of the annual Justice in Palestine Week — an MSA-sponsored event that presents students with information about Israel’s alleged war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories — to persuade them to rethink funding an event that they perceive as hurtful.

“It’s not necessarily discouragement as much as [telling departments to] have a discussion with this organization before sponsoring these organizations, and asking them, ‘Well, what are you going to do at this event? What kind of speakers are you bringing? What are their points of view?’” Tritons for Israel President Dafna Barzilay said. “They can have this week; it’s just that the way it’s done right now is hurting our community.”

Newly elected MSA President Sarmad Bokhari said that such a retraction of funds would limit the organization’s free-speech rights.

“One of our biggest concerns is that there is big pressure on UCSD administration and the MSA to censor its discussion on conflict,” Bokhari said. “Any discussion on the apartheid — on the unconditional support of the United States for the Israeli government — is literally being censored on university campuses, and being done so by lobby groups such as [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee].”

Tensions came to a head on May 10, when the Young Americans for Freedom invited radical pro-Israel commentator David Horowitz to speak at Price Center. He arrived in the middle of the MSA’s Justice in Palestine Week — which included a Library Walk recreation of the Israeli security wall that separates Israel from the West Bank.

During Horowitz’ presentation, he began a rapid-fire debate with UCSD student and MSA member Jumanah Imad Albahri, who asked him to back up his claim that Muslim student organizations in the U.S. are funded by terrorists. The debate peaked when Horowitz asked Albahri to definitively condemn or support Hezbollah — a government that the U.S. classified as a terrorist organization in 1999.

“The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes that we will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally. [Are you] for it or against it?” Horowitz asked.

“For it,” Albahri said.

Albahri declined to comment further, but said in an online statement that she originally misunderstood the question.

“My answer, ‘for it,’ in the context in which it was said, does not mean ‘for’ genocide,” Albahri said in the statement. “I was referring to his initial question that asked me for my position on Hamas, a topic that — for his own political reasons — he was relentless in pursuing. ‘For it’ was not a legitimization of Hezbollah’s — or anyone else’s credo for that matter — that Jews should be exterminated.”

Hezbollah and Hamas are both Palestinian paramilitary governments within the disputed territories of Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, respectively. The organizations receive significant popular support from the Palestinian people, partly because they provide social services like schools and hospitals. However, their sponsorship of violent attacks against Israeli citizens — as well as official statements they’ve released condemning Zionism and denying the Holocaust — have made them controversial.

Young Americans for Freedom chairwoman Gabriella Hoffman called Albahri’s comment threatening and anti-Semitic.

“Being Jewish, it’s hurtful that someone in my university would want to kill me, my friends that I associate with, the faculty — a lot of the community [at UCSD] is Jewish,” Hoffman said.

However, students on both sides of the debate have said that, given the context of her debate with Horowitz, Albahri likely did not intend to condone genocide.

“I don’t know her personally,” MSA member Leena Barakat said. “But as an active member of the MSA, I don’t actually believe that this is what she actually condoned… because it goes so far against the beliefs and practices and teachings of Islam. She’s anti-Zionist, she’s pro-Jewish. She isn’t anti-Jewish at all.”

Bokhari said that a video posted of Albahri’s comment was misleading.

“That video is being exploited or being used to manipulate her words, because she did not mean to say the words that she did,” Bokhari said.

TFI President Barzilay said she understands the pressure that Albahri was under during her debate with Horowitz, but that the statement was nonetheless unacceptable.

“[We are] understanding that she’s human, and that she was forced,” Barzilay said. “Based on the speech and how extreme he was, it wasn’t very effective the way he asked her. But it proves these views exist. It proves that racist views that happened during the ‘Compton Cookout’ still exist.”

The main focus of Justice in Palestine Week was the wall — representing the 400-mile West Bank barrier — that stretched down Library Walk, displaying facts, maps and personal accounts supporting the Palestinian cause. MSA representatives said the wall was also meant to promote awareness of the Israeli government’s alleged human rights violations in Gaza and the West Bank.

Some pro-Israel students reacted negatively to the wall, which they said contained exaggerations and false information.

“The [West Bank barrier] is to barricade any danger coming into those areas, so people can live peacefully,” Hoffman said. “To present it as apartheid is just wrong and misconstrued — it’s not the truth.”

Students with TFI have met with Justice in Palestine Week sponsors to ask that they cease their support, on the grounds that it negatively targets their community.

The MSA received the majority of its funding for Justice in Palestine Week from the A.S. Council, with additional sources like Thurgood Marshall College, the ethnic-studies department and the Black Staff Association.

“It’s just progressed; the level of feeling alienated and uncomfortable has increased,” Barzilay said. “I do feel threatened in some respect on campus. I’m a Marshall College student; to know that they sponsored the events that for a whole week made me feel uncomfortable walking on Library Walk — it hurts me.”

Bokhari said the week-long event was not meant to target or alienate the pro-Israel students on campus; rather, he said, the goal was to raise awareness about the human rights violations the Israeli government has committed against the Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

“This week, this cause, is not Muslim versus Jews; it’s not anti-Semitism, but rather anti-Zionism — the idea of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine,” Bokhari said. “The main purpose of the event is to raise awareness and to let college students know what the Palestinian narrative actually is, because they won’t hear it from mainstream, regular media.”

Readers can contact Nisha Kurani at [email protected].