UC-Berkeley Professor Hatem Bazian has a notorious record of promulgating Jew hatred, dating back to his days as a student at San Francisco State University where he served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students, an extremist anti-Israel group that fomented a virulent anti-Semitism on campus. In 2001, while a graduate student at UC-Berkeley, Bazian co-founded the Hamas front group Students for Justice in Palestine to support the Second Palestinian Intifada. The Second Intifada introduced suicide bombing into the attacks on Israel’s citizens in September 2000.
In the two decades since its founding, chapters of SJP have proliferated across the nation, and are now active on approximately 200 American college and university campuses, broadcasting Hamas propaganda and advocating the destruction of the Jewish state. Bazian also founded the Hamas front group American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and serves as the chairman of its board. AMP funnels Hamas funds to SJP chapters on American campuses to aid the BDS movement to destroy Israel.
Throughout his academic career, Bazian has promoted classic anti-Semitic tropes and fostered Jew hatred. In May 2002, Bazian participated in a Middle Eastern “cultural assembly” at George Washington High School. Under his leadership, the event the was dedicated to extreme anti-Israel rhetoric including a student-sung rap song that compared Zionists to Nazis, which was accompanied by other students parading with Palestinian flags behind the performer. The high school sent out letters of apology after the event.
At a 2004 anti-war rally in San Francisco, Bazian called for an Intifada, or violent uprising, in America:
“Well, we’ve been watching [an] Intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an Intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream … giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an Intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know … they’re gonna say some Palestinian [is] being too radical. Well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet!”
In July 2017, Bazian retweeted an anti-Semitic meme which plays on classic tropes of Jewish blood libel and also compares Jews to the Nazis. The meme was originally tweeted by infamous anti-Semite Ron Hughes, whose account Bazian follows. It featured a photo of a man presumed to be Jewish, with Hasidic style curls, with the quoted statement: “MOM LOOK! I IS CHOSEN! I CAN NOW KILL, RAPE, SMUGGLE ORGANS & AND STEAL THE LAND OF PALESTINIANS *YAY* ASHKE-NAZI”
Bazian has promoted the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy, telling student protestors on one occasion to “look at the Jewish names on the school buildings” and adding “Take a look at the type of names on the buildings around campus — Haas, Zellerbach — and decide who controls this university.” He has also called the U.S. Congress “an Israeli-occupied territory” and has suggested that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) controls U.S. foreign policy.
Professor Bazian’s Jew hatred extends to his role as an instructor. He now serves as a lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He also founded the Center for the Study of Documentation of Islamophobia on campus in 2009. The Toronto Sun reported in 2014 that Bazian requires students enrolled in his course on “Islamophobia” to create a Twitter account and tweet weekly on Islamophobia. “I can’t help but feel this is unethical,” commented a student taking the class. “This is his agenda not mine.”
The student noted that Bazian “excludes both the Twitter account requirement AND the final project from his official syllabus”—perhaps an indication that he is trying to conceal his use of the classroom to promote Jew hatred.
The controversial professor has repeatedly defended the anti-Israel terror group Hamas, tweeting an article which disputed Hamas’s status as a terrorist organization. The article claimed that “The Europeans who fought Nazism with arms were labeled ‘terrorist’ by Hitler. Hamas is fighting against the occupation of Palestinian lands and is labeled ‘terrorist.’” Bazian also spoke at a 2018 event hosted by American Muslims for Palestine and other Hamas-linked anti-Israel groups which promoted the cause of Hamas-affiliated insurgents who participated in the so-called “Great Return March,” which in truth was an attack on Israel’s borders.
In truth, Israel does not occupy one square inch of Palestinian or Arab land. It was built on land confiscated from the Turks who are neither Arabs nor Palestinians, and given to the Jews by the United Nations in 1948. The Arabs who were given 80% of the so-called Palestine Mandate promptly attacked the new Jewish state with the goal of “pushing the Jews into the sea.”
These facts do not stop Bazian from delegitimizing and demonizing Israel. The professor retweeted a February 2021 tweet which asked rhetorically: “Is there a single Jewish politician of prominence in Israel who does not publiclly call for ethnic cleaning of all Palestinians?”
For his voluminous record in spreading Jew hatred and defending Israel’s terrorist enemies, Professor Bazian belongs on the list of America’s worst Jew-hating professors.