EXTREMISMIntimidation, Harassment and Support for Hamas Mark Widespread Anti-Israel Student Protests on 10/7 Anniversary
On the grim anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, anti-Israel student group demonstrations on U.S. campuses again featured extreme pro-terror messages that glorified the attack and sought to disrupt campus life. Some events were marked by vandalism, intimidation and harassment.
On the grim anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror massacre in southern Israel, when thousands of terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages, anti-Israel student group demonstrations on U.S. campuses again featured extreme pro-terror messages that glorified the attack and sought to disrupt campus life. Some events were marked by vandalism, intimidation and harassment.
On a day when Jewish people around the world were mourning the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, Jewish students and community members were repeatedly confronted with rhetoric that celebrated that violence on the ground and online.
The day’s actions were part of a campus-focused “Week of Rage” endorsed by the national leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) and other prominent anti-Zionist groups ahead of the October 7 anniversary. Monday’s actions also followed widespread off-campus anniversary protests organized by many of those same groups during an “International Day of Action” over the weekend of October 5–6, which was also characterized by significant support for terror.
Student groups on over 100 U.S. campuses sponsored activities on October 7, 2024. At many of these events, protesters’ signs, clothing, flags, chants and speaker comments explicitly venerated Hamas’s deadly attack. For example, many referred to the terror assault using Hamas’s name for it — the “Al Aqsa Flood” — or by characterizing it as a laudable act of liberation or “breaking out of prison.” Other examples included displaying paraglider imagery, a direct reference to Hamas’s use of paragliders to invade southern Israeli communities on October 7, or inverted red triangle imagery, a symbol popularized by Hamas over the past year to mark targets.
At the University of Illinois Chicago, students walked out of classes at noon and gathered to “take over the quad” on campus. A speaker representing the Chicago chapter of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) read from a statement published by the group to celebrate the anniversary of Hamas’s attack: “On October 7, the sound of freedom thundered across Palestine, and its echoes are still being heard around the world. The Palestinian resistance launched Operation Al Aqsa Flood, a mass breakout from the world’s largest open air prison, Gaza. And, in doing so, they took a historic step towards liberation.”
