Students for Justice in Palestine organized the vigil to ‘mourn and honor those who have been murdered by the occupation.’
Washington, D.C. — “On Saturday, our brothers and sisters in Gaza were attacked,” Georgetown University’s Muslim chaplain, Yayha Hendi told a group of pro-Palestinian Hoyas on Thursday evening.
Georgetown students hosted a pro-Hamas “martyr vigil,” to light candles for and recite the names of Palestinians who died in Gaza after Hamas ambushed Israel this weekend. Holding signs that read, “Free Palestine,” “Glory to our martyrs,” and “Solidarity forever,” the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organization joined to “mourn and honor those who have been murdered by the occupation, and to stand in solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
Hamas terrorists descended upon Israel on Saturday, the 50th anniversary of the country’s 1973 Yom Kippur War, in an unprecedented attack. What followed was the deadliest terrorist attack against Jews since the Holocaust: So far, Hamas has murdered 1,300 Jewish citizens, and has taken as hostages an estimated 150 Jews.
Within hours of invading Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of civilians — one of the terrorist group’s first acts was the slaughter of 260 individuals at the Nova music festival. Terrorists reportedly raped women next to their dead friends, captured civilians on the back of motorcycles, and gunned down anyone who tried to escape.
Hamas moved from village to village over the next 24 hours, killing Jewish civilians. The group’s stated purpose is to destroy the state of Israel and kill Jews through Jihad, a mission that almost every Western leader has characterized as terrorism. President Joe Biden condemned Hamas’s acts as “pure unadulterated evil,” as have the leaders of France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and more.
But many college students reject the consensus. University student groups across the country published letters in support of Hamas terrorism this week, justifying Hamas’s killing spree with Palestinian plight. At some of America’s most elite colleges — Harvard University, Columbia University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, New York University, University of Chicago, George Washington University, Georgetown — student organizations have denounced what they call Israel’s “settler-colonialism” as the “root of all violence.”
“We cannot live in peace with an apartheid, zionist regime — an ethno-religious supremacist settler-colonial political system — in power,” Georgetown’s chapter of SJP said on Tuesday. “We fight for a Palestine in which all people are free and have dignity, and the only way for that to happen is for the zionist occupation of Palestine to cease.”
After statements like Georgetown’s — as well as former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal’s call for pro-Palestinian protestors to join together on Friday for a global day of jihad — were released, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security issued a public safety concern, warning Americans that “foreign terrorist organizations and their supporters remain committed to attacking” the United States.
“This did not start three days ago, four days ago, five days ago,” one female said at the vigil. “This has been going on for decades and decades. Palestinian people are tired, they’re exhausted, they’re saddened, they’re depressed. We go out here and we’re wearing our keffiyehs and our Palestinian flags and we fear being doxxed. We fear ending up on Canary Mission. We fear being told hateful propaganda and rhetoric by the Israeli Student Association. We fear being mocked for what we believe in.”
“Don’t fear what they think of you,” she continued. “You know what you’re doing is right. You know what you stand for.”
Another student, of Iranian descent, said she was “sick and tired of people using their nationality and country to justify senseless violence.”
Since media outlets began to publish the names of students who draft antisemitic statements, pro-Palestinian students have donned face coverings at protests to shield their identities. Yesterday at the University of California, Los Angeles, masked protestors chanted “intifada, intifada,” at a “Walk out for Palestine” march.
“We invariably reject Israel’s framing as a victim,” UCLA student organization, Bears for Palestine, said on Saturday. “Whereas to demonize and condemn indigenous resistance is to overshadow the decades of oppression, ethnic cleansing, and destruction of the Palestinian people.”
At Columbia on Thursday, an Israeli man was assaulted with a stick for posting on campus flyers with the names and photos of Hamas’s Israeli hostages. Forty-four Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Miguel Cardona, the Education Secretary, on Wednesday, and asked the Department of Education to “take prompt and appropriate action to respond to harassment that creates a hostile environment for Jewish students.”
“This is not an easy circle to be part of. Some of you are afraid to be canceled, to be labeled,” Iman Saymeh, a residential minister at Georgetown, said. “You are standing on the side of humanity. You are standing on the side of justice. You are standing on the side of ending occupation. That doesn’t mean you are wishing bad or anything evil on the other side. We welcome the other side. We are awaiting a conversation.”
Georgetown’s SJP chapter declined Reuters media access to Thursday’s vigil “due to increased harassment and threats of violence against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and anti-Zionist students across the country.”