As college campuses across the U.S. reopen for the new semester, pro-Hamas forces are returning to attacks against Jews there and their campaign against Israel.
Several dozen protesters picketed outside Columbia University Sept. 3 on the first day of class. Their flyer demanded “Do not enter campus. Do not go to classes. Do not hold class.”
Their call was largely ignored by students, who lined up at security checkpoints to get on campus. The university administration only allowed students, staff and pre-registered guests to pass through. Last year Jewish students reported being verbally and physically threatened by Hamas supporters.
Organizers of these anti-Israel actions claim they are not anti-Jewish, but “anti-Zionist.” But flags and headbands of Hamas and Hezbollah — whose goal is to kill or expel all Jews who live in Israel — are prominent.
A march of several thousand, organized by the anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime, was held in New York Sept. 2. One participant, when asked by a counter protester about the recent execution of U.S.-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin by Hamas, justified the killing, claiming “he deserved it. … What business does he have over there?”
The Palestine Youth Movement and the People’s Forum are promoting an action in Times Square Oct. 5 to mark the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7, Hamas-led assault in Israel that killed 1,200 people.
It’s billed as “One Year of Genocide. One Year of Resistance.” According to their flyer, the Oct. 7 massacre “showed the world that the colonized can fight against the colonizer and win.” Despite the mountain of proof documenting the brutal actions of Hamas assassins and rapists against Jews and anyone who works with Jews that day, organizers of the action deny any Hamas involvement in rapes or murders of civilians.
On Aug. 30 a man wearing a keffiyeh smashed a bottle over the head of a Jewish student wearing a kippah at the University of Pittsburgh.
“The labor movement must speak out against this act of Jew hatred,” Candace Wagner, Socialist Workers Party candidate for U.S. Congress in the 12th District there, said in a Sept. 2 statement. As the crisis of capitalism deepens, Jew-hatred will become “the reactionary banner fascist forces rally around as they seek to crush the working class.”