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By Sheldon L. Freilich, ZOA Michigan President
(MARCH 21, 2023 / JNS) The Zionist Organization of America Michigan Region is disturbed that known anti-Israel and antisemitic activist Huwaida Arraf was invited to speak at Bloomfield Hills High School, west of Detroit, as part of the school’s diversity initiative.
Arraf gave four presentations to a heavily Jewish student audience at Bloomfield Hills High School on March 14. Her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric made many Jewish students uncomfortable, with some leaving the assembly in tears.
She calls herself a “Palestinian human rights activist,” but her actions show she is an antisemitic anti-Israel advocate who supports terrorism.
Her Twitter account repeatedly displays antisemitic tropes and lies, calling Israelis “Jewish supremacists” and Israel an apartheid state. She has written in favor of Palestinians resorting to violence and insisted that suicide bombings are “noble.”
As chair of the Free Gaza Movement, Arraf was behind the infamous 2010 Mavi Marmara flotilla, which attempted to break the perfectly legal Egyptian and Israeli weapons blockade of Gaza. Arraf was aboard one of the boats of the nine-ship flotilla, which was linked to both Hamas and Al-Qaeda.
Flotilla organizers made clear that their intention was to violate Israel’s security perimeter. They claimed their goal was to deliver humanitarian supplies. In fact, weapons and contraband were subsequently found on the Mavi Marmara.
Nearly two dozen members of Hamas used knives, clubs, chains and metal rods to mount an unprovoked attack on the Israeli weapons inspectors who boarded the flotilla in accordance with international law. Video footage shows, among other acts of violence, an Israeli soldier being stabbed, gangs of passengers pummeling soldiers with metal rods and other objects and a soldier being thrown off one of the upper decks.
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