Although college campuses are much quieter this fall than they were last spring, some of the anti-Israel language at some schools is frightening in its celebration of Hamas’s violence. What feels different is the repeated glorification of the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 people last year on Oct. 7 in a surprise attack.
About 1,000 people attended a rally on Oct. 8 commemorating the first anniversary of the Hamas attack at the University of California, Berkeley, where I am the dean of the law school. About half appeared to be students. Many of the protest signs were explicit in their endorsement of the violence on that day a year ago: “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths,” one said. “Long live Al-Aqsa Flood,” another said, using the Hamas name for the attack.
At the clock tower at the center of the Berkeley campus, a large banner was hung proclaiming “Glory to the resistance.” It displayed a red triangle used by Hamas to mark Israeli targets.
Across the country at Columbia University, the group Apartheid Divest posted an essay calling the Hamas attack a “moral, military and political victory.” The group also rescinded its criticism from last spring of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
Indeed, in its statement, the group declared, “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” It also said, “Where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
In Rhode Island, the Brown University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted this on Instagram: “Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence.”
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