Shahd Abusalama

Shahd Abusalama  (academic, activist, artist, writer)
Alma mater	SOAS
Latest target of the CAA and the Israel lobby

Shahd Abusalama is a third-generation Palestinian refugee activist, artist, and writer. She is suing Sheffield Hallam University (SHU), her former employer, for discrimination and for publicly attacking her in the Zionist press. She recently got a PhD from SHU.

Background

I was born in Jabalia Refugee Camp, occupied Gaza, after my grandparents’ expulsion from their villages Beit Jerja and Isdud during the 1948 Nakba that condemned us to a life of oppression under Israeli occupation. After finishing my undergraduate degree, and surviving multiple Israeli military attacks on the besieged Gaza Strip, I left in 2013 to further my higher education in Media Studies. I obtained an MA at SOAS (London) before taking up a PhD scholarship at SHU, where I completed my dissertation between 2018 and 2021, and also worked as a teaching assistant.

I continued to work amplifying the Palestinian aspirations for freedom, justice, equality, and return from abroad, including after my appointment as a lecturer in January 2022. I was repeatedly investigated, and exonerated, by SHU under the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, and was adopted by SHU in the face of government threats to withdraw funding. I attended my graduation ceremony on 17 November 2022, the week after the Jewish Chronicle attacked me in an article citing derogatory assertions about me by SHU, in breach of confidentiality.

Like so many Palestinians in the UK, I am subjected to tactics of vilification and censorship to try and silence opposition to Israel’s systematic oppression of Palestinians. We are criminalised and hounded for celebrating our existence, speaking of our experiences and challenging vilifications of our history and image.

Activism

Shahd Abusalama spoke to The Canary at a protest rally in Sheffield in May 2021. She called on the world to act as Israel besieged Gaza. Israel bombed Gaza from land, sea, and air and killed over 130 Palestinians on that occasion, the majority of whom were civilians. She told The Canary:

"Reporting from the ground what is happening, the repression of Israeli military and settler extremist groups is beyond description, and no one is safe in their homes. It is indiscriminate repression. …

"The inherent recent racist character of the supremacist ideology of Zionism, that that is basically dictating the policies and practices of dehumanisation against the Palestinians.

"We are counting one massacre after the other, one victim after the other. And it’s just non stop. And we don’t want more condemnation or declarations. We don’t want to hear calls for de-escalation. We want Israel to be held accountable. And it’s long overdue, that justice is served for the Palestinians. It is long overdue that Palestinian refugees, like me, return to their home.

"It’s wrong; it’s morally disturbing that Jews anywhere in the world, in the US, can go and claim a right to return to Palestine when I, the indigenous people of Palestine, cannot return.

Antisemitism accusations

Smeared, censored and fighting back

Shahd Abusalama has been accused three times of antisemitism based on complaints using the IHRA so-called working definition of antisemitism. Dr Abusalama has been smeared, subject to confidentiality clauses that seem not to be followed by the University, given the coverage in the media.

Each time she has been exonerated, but having been suspended and obliged to devote time and energy to fighting the allegations, Dr Abusalama felt obliged to leave the University, thus depriving her of her livelihood and her students of her wisdom and experience.

She is now taking legal action which she hopes “will make sure that no other individual faces persecution for their legitimate beliefs.”

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