Columbia Student Group Celebrates ‘Historic’ Hamas ‘Counteroffensive’ against Israeli Civilians

A Columbia University student group celebrated Hamas’s “historic” massacre of Israeli civilians, characterizing it as a long-overdue “counteroffensive” against Israel’s purported apartheid regime. It also urged the university to respond to the situation by cutting off its partnerships with higher-learning institutions in Israel and slammed university administrators’ messages condemning the terrorist attacks.

That statement comes amid the mobilization of Palestinian “resistance” groups in the U.S. in the wake of the attacks. By praising the Hamas massacres, it goes even further than a statement by Harvard students did, which blamed Israel for inviting the terrorist attacks.

“Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years — an open-air prison blockaded by Israeli soldiers via land, air and sea,” read the statement by Columbia’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which was published yesterday.

“Palestinians launched a counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor — which receives billions of US dollars annually in military aid and possesses one of the world’s most robust surveillance and security apparatuses. Any omission of this context — any rhetoric of ‘an unprovoked Palestinian attack” — is shamefully misleading,” it added, urging readers to review reports by human-rights groups that characterized Israel as an apartheid state.

The students were apparently referring to how Hamas gunmen rampaged through areas along the Gaza border and hunted down civilians, families at home, people standing at bus stops, and crowds fleeing a music festival.

The terrorist group had reportedly used a heavy rocket barrage as cover for an infiltration operation that involved hang gliders as well as the use of bulldozers to cut through the fence along Gaza’s border with Israel. The death toll from the attacks now stands at more than 900, according to updated casualty numbers.

Pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S. have mobilized to downplay those killings and instead condemn ensuing Israeli air strikes against Hamas positions throughout the Gaza Strip, with demonstrators marching in New York City’s Times Square yesterday.

In its statement praising the Hamas attack, SJP said that people calling for peace are overlooking what it characterized as previous abuses by Israel’s military: “You are not asking for peace. You are asking for quiet submission to systemic violence.”

It also took aim at Columbia administrators for condemning the terrorist attacks, citing emails that the deans of Columbia’s School of General Studies and Barnard University sent to their respective student bodies to condemn the “terrorism” and express support for students affected by the violence in Israel.

SJP also criticized Columbia for operating a dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University and for moving to open its own “Global Center” in the city.

In another statement, issued today, other Columbia student groups echoed SJP’s critiques of the school administration’s comments on the terrorist attacks and demanded that it cut all its institutional ties to Israel, though it stopped short of celebrating Hamas’s infiltration of Israel.

“The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties undeniably lies with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments, including the U.S. government, which fund and staunchly support Israeli aggression, apartheid, and settler-colonization,” read that statement, which was circulated around the university by a coalition of 16 “Palestine solidarity” groups including the Palestinian Student Union at Columbia University, SIPA’s Palestine Working Group, Columbia Law Students for Palestine, Turath, Empowering Women of Color, Muslim Student Association at Columbia University, and SIPA Human Rights Working Group.