Stanford student resigns RA position over anti-Israel Facebook post
“Mr. Daoud’s statements reveal him to be a danger to the safety of students on Stanford’s campus,” the Stanford College Republicans wrote in a Facebook post.
By EMILY DERUY/EAST BAY TIMESUpdated: AUGUST 5, 2018 15:27Stanford University(photo credit: REUTERS)
(Tribune News Service) - A Stanford student has stepped down from his position as a resident assistant amid blowback from a controversial Facebook post.Knesset passes controversial Jewish nation-state bill into law, July 19, 2018 (Reuters)The announcement comes weeks after the incident that sparked the controversy. Rising junior Hamzeh Daoud, who identified himself as a “third-generation Palestinian refugee” in a Stanford Daily post published Friday, was upset after Israel passed a controversial bill in mid-July defining itself as the nation-state of the Jewish people.“I'm gonna physically fight zionists on campus next year if someone comes at me with their ‘Israel is a democracy’ bullshit,” Daoud wrote in what he later described as an “emotion-filled” moment.Just a few hours later, Daoud edited the post to say he would “intellectually fight Zionists” and said he never meant to imply he intended to physically harm anyone.“I apologize from the bottom of my heart to everyone who was triggered by it. I recognize that I was projecting my own trauma onto others in a way that is never acceptable,” he wrote in the Daily.But the fallout from his original post had already begun to snowball across campus and beyond.“Mr. Daoud’s statements reveal him to be a danger to the safety of students on Stanford’s campus, and such an individual should never be put in any position of authority over other students, particularly in a dormitory that includes freshmen,” the Stanford College Republicans wrote in a Facebook post accompanying a screenshot of Daoud’s profile.For days, Stanford remained silent on the issue. But on Friday, just several weeks before the start of the new school year, the university posted a statement saying that not only had the post sparked outrage, but it had generated additional threats against Daoud.“The effects of the original post have continued rippling through our campus community and beyond,” the university said. “There have been many expressions of concern for the safety of Jewish students at Stanford. There also have been expressions of concern at the social media campaigns, including death threats, which have been targeting the author of the post, along with concern for the well-being of other communities as they return to campus this fall.”In an unusual move, the school revealed that it had conducted its own assessment of whether Daoud posed a threat to others on campus and concluded he does not.
