Shahad Abu Salama says that the aim of the campaign is to “silence all Palestinian voices, and I am not the only one who is subjected to defamation by the media affiliated with the Israeli lobby, as there are many activists who have been victims of the same thing.”
London – The Palestinian activist residing in Britain, Shahd Abu Salama, is facing a wave of incitement from the media affiliated with the Zionist lobby, which has cost her to freeze her activities at Sheffield Hallam University.
The British University’s decision came after receiving what it said were complaints against the activist and her stances on the Palestinian issue, and accordingly the university’s administration decided to stop cooperating with the Palestinian researcher until the investigation is completed.
With great emotion, Abu Salama spoke to Al Jazeera Net about being denied the right to respond to these complaints, the university’s failure to listen to its position, and its suffering with the Israeli media’s incitement against it for years.
Who is Abu Salama?
Shahd Ismail Abu Salama was born in Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip, to a struggling Palestinian family. Her father, who was 19 years old, was arrested for his activism against the occupation, and was sentenced to life imprisonment 7 times, before leaving families after 15 years of detention.
Abu Salama tells how she was born in the atmosphere of the first intifada (1987) and lived the second intifada (2000-2004) in all its details, and adds, “I lived through the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza and the siege, with all the suffering and tragedies that it entails for the Palestinians.”
She arrived in Britain after successfully obtaining a scholarship to study for a master’s degree in 2014 at the University of Oriental and African Studies, and then succeeded in 2017 in obtaining a doctoral scholarship from the University of Sheffield. and produced in Britain.
According to the terms of the scholarship, Abu Salama had to give lectures to students in her specialty. At the beginning of this year, the university decided to transfer her to an associate professor who would receive lectures and lessons in return for payment, a decision that angered the Israel lobby.
Freezing her lectures
Abu Salama says that, immediately after her first lecture at the university, she was attacked by the media of the Israeli lobby in Britain, and then she was surprised by a letter from the university administration, “the content of which is ambiguous and unclear” to the effect that “the university received a complaint about my ideas and will open investigations into the matter, Until the investigation is over, my lectures will be suspended.”
As for why her lectures were suspended? She answers “simply because I am Palestinian” before adding that her struggle for the rights of the Palestinian people did not start with her arrival in Britain, but since her inception in the Gaza Strip.
She adds that she has been a target of the Israeli lobby for a long time, as she was subjected to a similar campaign when she participated in a campaign to prevent the organization of the “Euro Vision” competition in Israel, “at that time we produced a number of videos and I was the prominent face of this campaign, which spread widely throughout the world.” “.
She was also a prominent activist in the campaign to close an Israeli arms factory in Britain, and says, “All these activities made me a target for incitement and defamation from the media that supports the Israeli lobby in Britain, which does not respect professional standards, but rather carries out a continuous campaign of incitement because I am an easy target, because I am a Palestinian and a refugee.” .
Students supporting the Palestinian cause demonstrate against the participation of the Israeli ambassador in a panel discussion (communication sites)Constant harassment
Abu Salama says that the newspaper “Jewish History” (The Jewish Chronicle) contacted her before the university’s decision, “and her letter included accusations and not for the purpose of granting the right to respond, and therefore I ignored them and did not respond to them,” adding that her tweets had been extracted since 2012, “at the time I was in Gaza is under bombardment and siege, and I was writing and expressing my suffering and the suffering of my people, who were under constant bombardment.
She asserts that the goal of this campaign is to “silence all Palestinian voices, and I am not the only one who is subjected to defamation by the media affiliated with the Israeli lobby, as there are many activists who have been victims of the same thing.”
In a tone that is not without pride, she says that the amount of support she has received since the university’s decision “I never imagined”, as she receives messages of support from various countries of the world, and a hashtag was activated on Twitter “to support Shahd”, “and this indicates the collective thirst for justice,” according to her expression.
Among the names that support Abu Salama are the Israeli historians “Avi Shalem” and “Ilan Pappe” and a number of activists against the apartheid regime in South Africa who worked with Nelson Mandela, including “Anda Feinstein,” the son of a Holocaust survivor, and a southern African member of parliament. during the Mandela era.
