Mohammad Hammad of SFSU: Still Life with Knife

Mohammad Hammad, the president of GUPS studies International Relations at San Francisco State University. In what might very well be the most disturbing image we've seen since this story broke, Mohammad has posed with a knife on his Tumblr account, and has written: 

“I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier….” 

The Tumblr post has since been removed, but it lives on through the wonders of the web.

Mohammad Hammad of SFSU

This very real threat was exposed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Dec.2

Copies of the picture were forwarded to SFSU President Leslie Wong by Amcha and the Wiesenthal Center, and in a phone conversation earlier today with Wong’s office, Center officials warned that such avowedly violent statements, especially when linked with another recent GUPS campus event where participants used a stencil saying, “My heroes have always killed colonizers,” pose a potentially significant threat to the university’s Jewish students.
“It is outrageous and unacceptable that the leader of a University-funded group would invoke a message of death and violence,” said a Wiesenthal Center official.

 From Jared Sichel in the LA Jewish journal:

When contacted on Dec. 2, a member of GUPS said that the group would release a statement on Dec. 3. But by Dec. 3, the phone number appeared to have been disconnected. An email sent to GUPS by the Journal did not receive a response.

 According to Mohammad Hammad’s Facebook page , the 21-year-old was born in Ramallah in the West Bank and is studying international relations at SFSU. The Journal was not able to reach him for comment.

 On Dec. 3, Ellen Griffin, SFSU’s associate vice president of communications, wrote in an email to the Journal that the university had investigated the incident and confirmed that Hammad was the person in the photograph.

According to a statement by Lee Wong, president of SFSU, the university’s police “conducted a threat assessment” and determined that SFSU’s students are safe.

 “We will continue to explore all aspects of the incident and take additional actions that may be warranted,” Wong’s statement read.

 Incidentally on his LinkedIn profile, Mohammad writes:

I am an International Relations student minoring in Political Science and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. I plan on getting into the global political field of work and do what I can to better the ongoing situation in Palestine.

I suppose stabbing Israeli soldiers just isn't going to sound as promising on a resume.