To regain order and discipline on our college campuses, leadership must understand the problem and who is involved. They must then take the necessary steps to ensure that every college campus provides a safe learning environment for all students. Since October 7, 2023, there have been many pro-Hamas and pro-Palestinian demonstrations on our nation’s college campuses, including in Texas. Most, if not all, of these demonstrations are led by, among several others, a radical terror-supporting organization known as the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP).
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), according to a 2018 monograph, was founded in 2010 by leaders associated with American Muslims for Palestine and the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, which have ties to U.S.-designated terror organizations. SJP is a prominent student arm of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement in the United States. It is considered by some to be a terror-supporting and anti-Semitic network. The organization has been linked to Islamist and Palestinian terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
SJP operates autonomously at numerous colleges and universities across the U.S., hosting an annual National SJP conference attended by over 200 local SJP chapters. Jewish students have reported instances of anti-Semitic incidents, including vandalism, verbal attacks, and violence, allegedly perpetrated by SJP members. The organization’s policy of “anti-normalization” with Zionist and many Jewish campus groups aims to isolate and demonize Israel, often aligning with the pro-BDS Jewish Voice for Peace.
By the end of 2017, the National SJP had reported approximately 200 SJP chapters in the U.S. Some professors who serve as faculty advisors to SJP have faced criticism for their alleged support of Palestinian terrorists and the promotion of anti-Semitic narratives about Israel within academic settings.
As reported by The Atlantic, the NSJP declared a “National Day of Resistance.” The accompanying “Day of Resistance Toolkit” document details the events of the October 7 massacre—where over 1,200 defenseless women, children, and men were ruthlessly killed, with many experiencing rape, beheading, and being burned alive—as follows:
The Palestinian resistance [Hamas] stormed the illegitimate border fence, gaining control of the Gaza checkpoint at Ereez, and re-entering 1948 Palestine … Fearlessly, our people struggle for complete liberation and return … As the Palestinian student movement, we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization. National liberation is near – glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast people.
The document states that the Israelis murdered on October 7—overwhelmingly civilian women, children, and men—were not really “civilians” and therefore not deserving of protection: “Settlers are not ‘civilians’ in the sense of international law, because they are military assets used to ensure continued control over stolen Palestinian land.” The report continues:
Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea, and our resistance through their bravery and love for land, continue to bring dignity and honor to the Palestinian people. As the diaspora-based student movement for Palestine liberation, our responsibility is to not only support, but struggle alongside our people back home.
These are the same goals as Hamas: the eradication of Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants.
It is possible that many of the students marching with Students for Justice in Palestine on campuses are not aware of NSJP’s ties to Hamas and its destructive ideology. Universities and colleges should be interested in investigating any illegal ties that their student organizations might have.
On October 25, 2023, the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law sent a letter to nearly 200 university presidents, which argued that SJP “provides vocal and potentially material support to Hamas, Foreign Terrorist Organization,” and requested the following:
We write to you today … with an urgent request that your university investigate the activities of your campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for potential violations of 18 USC 2339A and B, and its state equivalents, that is, for potential violations of the prohibitions against materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization. Many of the SJP organization’s campus chapters have explicitly endorsed the action of Hamas and their armed attacks on Israeli civilians, voicing an increasingly radical call for confronting and ‘dismantling’ Zionism on U.S. college campuses. Some SJP chapters have issued pro-Hamas messaging and/or promoted violent anti-Israel messaging channels. SJP chapters are not advocating for Palestinian rights; they are celebrating terrorism.
The letter also cites the NSJP toolkit document:
The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as ‘the resistance.’ This was followed by statements at campus events where students proudly declared ‘We are Hamas,’ and ‘We echo Hamas.’
Protesters are chanting, “From the river to the sea-Palestine will be free, long live Hamas, death to Israel, death to America.” They also display the Hamas, Hezbollah, and ISIS flags while burning the American flag at their rallies.
SJP chapters on many campuses have expressed their pride in the horrors inflicted by Hamas or refused to accept that the atrocities even happened. While some avoid using the name ‘Hamas,’ preferring euphemisms like the ‘resistance’ and others unabashedly stating their support for the Islamic terrorist group by name.
SJP chapters across the country have been unanimous in their pride in Hamas and its atrocities.
Material support for a terrorist organization is a serious matter, too dangerous to leave to timid university administrators. Most appear more concerned with placating the radical SJP elements on their campuses.
Currently, Florida is the only state that has ordered state universities to ban Students for Justice in Palestine for supporting Hamas.
Many of our academic institutions receive state and federal funding. Title IV of the Civil Right Act of 1964, “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.” Title IV also covers “violations based on religion.”
If a university allows material support for a terrorist organization, or discrimination against Jews, its state and federal funding should be cancelled at once.
College and university leaders can no longer pretend that they don’t see what and who SJP is. If they fail to take decisive action, they are not only collaborating with SJP but also with Hamas as well.
Decisive action includes suspensions and expulsions of those taking part in these SJP and or Hamas-led events, identifying all foreign students taking part in these pro-Hamas demonstrations, especially those in leadership roles, to be expelled, detained, and deported as soon as practical. Outside agitators who are non-students must also be dealt with. Those who claim “We are all Hamas” or supporting Hamas should be prosecuted under existing federal statutes.
None of these student protesters can masquerade as loyal Americans, especially when they are burning the American flag and screaming, “We are all Hamas, Long Live Hamas, Death to Israel, Death to America, there is only one Solution, Intifada and Revolution.”
Legislative Action
Examine and evaluate Texas higher education student groups to determine if those groups have supported or received support from terror-related organizations.
Further, identify whether these groups support or have engaged in acts of violence, bigotry, and intimidation on Texas campuses.
Examine sources of funding for these groups, such as the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Muslim Students Association (MSA), and others that support terrorist organizations or ideology.
Examine SJP’s and other like groups founders, financial patrons and ideological supporters that have links to Islamic and Palestinian terror organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood, and the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Examine higher education professors who serve as faculty advisors to these groups and act as de facto campus liaisons between these groups and terror-related groups. Determine if higher education professors are encouraging students to support Palestinian terror groups including readings in their undergraduate class curricula that encourage violent “Palestinian resistance” against Israel and have spread anti-Semitic libels about Israel.
Examine campus organizations that have explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas and their armed attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023, and voiced an increasingly radical call for confronting and “dismantling” Zionism on college campuses, including the mantras, “From the river to the Sea, Palestine will be free, We are Hamas, Long live Hamas, Death to Israel, Death to America, there is only one Solution, Intifada and Revolution, among others.”
Make recommendations to ensure all higher education campuses are free of violence, intimidation, harassment, and anti-Semitism and that all Texas campuses are free of influence by any terror-related organization.
Determine if legislation is necessary or required to prohibit actions by Texas higher education campuses that provide material support or resources to terrorists or their organizations.
Photo by Irisoptical — Wikipedia — “Taken during the April 24 2024 protests at the University of Texas at Austin In the image: A police group has arrested a protestor with zip ties. Both protest[ers] and student observers and other watchers have surrounded the police in outrage. Police have taken a defensive formation.”
While state legislative action is possible, especially in Texas that’s a slow moving, very blunt weapon. We need faster, pinpoint strikes, especially given that the evidence of who is funding these groups and what their objectives are is already out there.
See the lawsuit filed last week in EDVA:
https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2024/05/National-Jewish-Advocacy-Center-the-Schoen-Law-Firm-and-the-Holtzman-Vogel-law-firm-vs-1.pdf
What we need is for the TxAG’s office to file a similar action under the Anti-Terrorist Act and perhaps RICO against these folks AND their local supporters — including the faculty and students who proudly say they are providing support to Hamas. To paraphrase the first sentence in the complaint cited above, when someone says they are supporting a terrorist organization, *believe them.*
The regents at Texas state universities could take also action on their own, especially against administrators who are unwilling to enforce the law or to discipline students / faculty / staff who violate university rules. Unfortunately, for whatever reason Gov. Abbott has never been interested in doing what Gov. DeSantis has done: appoint people like Chris Rufo with a mandate to clear out the rot at places like UT, UNT, etc. Instead, the donor class cheerleaders he has appointed (recall he’s been in office long enough to have appointed EVERY regent on every state university board) are the same ones who let this cancer metastasize in the first place.