Florida Politicians Launch Witch-Hunt Against Palestinian FSU Student Senate President

Credit: Ahmad Daraldik

Florida state politicians are trying to force the removal of the first Palestinian-Muslim student senate president at Florida State University (FSU) over social media posts against the Israeli occupation.

20-year-old Ahmad Daraldik is a Palestinian-American junior majoring in International Affairs, who spent part of his childhood living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank. Ahmad was elected to serve as FSU Student Senate President in June 2020 and was almost immediately attacked by anti-Palestinian groups over social media posts he made as a child and teenager.

Ahmad in front of the Nelson Mandela statue in Ramallah, Palestine.

The focus of the attacks include an Instagram post of Ahmad standing in front of the Nelson Mandela statue in Palestine last year with the caption “Iconic. #fucktheoccupation #fuckisrael,” and a post he made as a child.

Eight years ago, as a 12-year-old living in Occupied Palestine, Ahmad shared a photo of what appeared to be an Israeli soldier with his foot on a Palestinian child and captioned it with a comment that was antisemitic.

Ahmad apologized for the statement he made when he was 12 in a message to the FSU community.

“When I made that post in 2013 I was a child in Palestine witnessing death on a daily basis. They were not directed to the Jewish community as a whole or at FSU. It was directed to an armed soldier who was abusing a child,” said Ahmad Daraldik in a statement.

Like all people, Ahmad has grown and learned since he was a child and should not be punished for a post he made nearly a decade ago as a child living under a brutal occupation. 

Despite Ahmad’s clear record of supporting all students on campus, including the Jewish community, Florida officials are partaking in a witch-hunt led by politicians and administrators to intervene in college student affairs by pressuring the university and its students into removing Ahmad from the presidency.

The chorus of Florida officials includes Jared Moskowitz, Florida’s Director of Emergency Management, who has falsely and absurdly accused Ahmad of Holocaust denial for comparing conditions in Gaza to conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Florida officials like Moskowitz are notably failing to respond to skyrocketing COVID-19 numbers while meddling in the affairs of college students.

“This isn't about what Ahmad said when he was 12. This is about opposition to Palestinians narrating their lived experiences under Israeli occupation. It’s a callous attempt to bully Ahmad and other Floridians into silence around Israel’s racism and oppression,” said Amira Mattar, the Michael Ratner Justice Fellow at Palestine Legal, who is supporting Ahmad, along with local counsel.

Ahmad is being targeted by one of the most pro-Israel states in the country: last year Gov. DeSantis defied Florida law to hold a cabinet meeting in Israel – the state’s first-ever cabinet meeting outside Florida. While in Israel, DeSantis signed a controversial law, HB 741, that classifies advocacy for Palestinian human rights as discrimination against Jews and met with right-wing leaders inside an illegal Israeli settlement. 

“As the Senate President my goal is to serve everyone at FSU. Off-campus efforts to assassinate my character have divided the FSU community and made people feel like they have to pick sides. This prevents us from healing and moving forward,” said Ahmad.

Despite overwhelming pressure, the FSU student government did not pass a vote of no confidence against Ahmad on June 17, after a review of his legislative record supporting FSU’s Jewish community and opposing antisemitism.

The overzealous scrutiny of speech supporting Palestinian rights is also a sign of the kind of viewpoint discrimination encouraged by Trump’s December executive order mandating executive agencies to consider a definition of antisemitism that encompasses criticism of Israel.

Ahmad has received strong support from local human rights advocates:

FSU Students for Justice in Palestine

“[I]nsofar as the ongoing situation at FSU has functionally become a referendum on Palestine and Israel, the topic of conversation is not about the imminence of formal annexation, violation of international law or the entrenchment of apartheid, but rather it is based on hyper scrutiny of offensive posts from Ahmad’s childhood, resurfaced because someone intentionally cyber-stalked and combed through seven years of his digital footprint because he showed insufficient deference to the state that occupies his family’s land.”

“One particularly egregious aspect of this intimidation campaign is that Florida state legislators are inappropriately asserting themselves in student conduct affairs that are the purview of our university alone. We are remorseful the our student representatives are being harassed by adult legislators who should be doing their jobs, especially attending to the explosion in COVID-19 cases as a result of state negligence and the reactionary push to reopen the economy at the expense of primary workers and Black communities, as well as the popular calls to defund and assume community control of the police.”

Jewish Voice for Peace of South Florida

“As members of the Florida Jewish community, we stand unequivocally against calls to remove Ahmad Daraldik from his position as President of the Student Senate at Florida State University. Ahmad, a Palestinian American, is being recklessly accused of antisemitism simply because he has been a passionate advocate for Palestinian rights.” 

TAKE ACTION:

Support SJP’s Call to Action in support of Ahmad’s presidency here.

Read an open letter from Ahmad to the FSU student body here.

Read more about Florida’s anti-Palestinian legislative efforts here.