A group of keffiyeh-clad people gathered around a computer on Sunday to talk about the” Israeli resistance.” Charlotte Kates, a part of the Zionist- designated evil party Samidoun, praised Hamas’s Oct. 7 evil strike for showing” the potential of a future for Palestine liberated from Zionism”. A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Khaled Barakat, praised flight hijackings as “one of the most significant techniques that the Arab resistance have engaged in.”
Although those speakers and various guests made clear that they opposed violence against Jews, the occasion did not take place in Tehran, Doha, or Gaza. A student organization affiliated with Columbia University, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, who was against the law, invited the listeners to give a presentation titled” Palestinian Weight 101″ on” the struggle for liberation” in New York City.
The occasion, which the Washington Free Beacon attended basically, reflects the extraordinary anti- Celtic engagement seen on university campuses in the wake of Hamas’s attack. In some cases, instructors people have advanced that engagement.
A Columbia university party, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, promoted the function in an Instagram post that featured a Arab boy throwing rocks at an Israeli pond during the next revolution. The party launched in January, pledging to walk with anti- Celtic student protesters and “take up our University”. Professors of story, Marwa Elshakry, Manan Ahmed, and Joseph Howley, among others, make up its membership.
Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of Within Our Lifetime, who has called for Israel to become “wiped off the map,” was a guest at the Sunday event along with Kates and Barakat. The three listeners frequently praised Hamas and Hezbollah, supported armed resistance against Israel, and urged visitors to “be of support” to the opposition motions that are on the front lines of Zionism.
The occasion was immediately scheduled to take place at Columbia’s Barnard College, the school’s all- feminine undergraduate school. The Barnard Center for Research on Women was named the number on a brochure that promoted the celebration. At the start of the event, yet, pupil organizers said they were forced to” alter areas” at the last minute after a Ph. D. pupil lodged a complaint to the school. The shift was “part of a long series of Columbia’s long series of repression”, the organizers said.
Whether the updated event took place on college or in a nearby location is unknown. A Columbia spokesperson said the school is “aware of an unsanctioned, illegal event that took place last day” at an unknown “residence”. While Kiswani personally addressed participants via Zoom, Kates and Barakat did not.
” Columbia canceled the event, denying calls to employ school room, as did Barnard”, the spokesperson told the Free Beacon. The event organizers held the event at a residence with an online option, despite this.
The spokeswoman stated that” we are investigating this matter and will not tolerate violations of university policy.”
Requests for comment were not responded to by Barnard nor Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
The Sunday event featured a who’s who of anti- Semitic activists. Kates serves as “international coordinator” of Samidoun, a group that advocates for” Palestinian prisoners”, many of whom are convicted terrorists. In addition to its Israeli terror designation, Samidoun is banned in Germany over its support for Hamas terrorism.
Palestinian media outlets label him as the leader of the terror group because he has conducted interviews for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine ( PFLP). Israeli intelligence officials claim to have internal documents that establish him as a leader of the PFLP.
Kiswani, meanwhile, has led pro- Hamas rallies in New York City through Within Our Lifetime, which she founded in 2015. Last month, Instagram removed the group’s account after Kiswani used it to support Hamas ‘ attack and advocate for “whatever means necessary it takes” to overthrow Israel.
Kates praised Iran as a “national on the side of the Palestinian people, intervening and creating a movement of resistance to free this entire region from U.S. imperialism” during the event. She also backed a campaign to remove America’s “entirely” list of designated terrorist organizations, saying it prevents Palestinian activists from maintaining “in touch” with foreign actors.
” It is important to popularize campaigns to … scrap the U. S. terror list entirely, or at the very least to get Palestinian, Lebanese, Yemeni, Filipino, and other revolutionary organizations off the terror list”, Kates said. Because of the fact that it is being used as a weapon against the Palestinian people, the Arab people, and the solidarity movement as a whole, and to kind of fundamentally deform the politics of the movement.
For his part, Barakat glowingly discussed the PFLP’s wave of terrorism during the 1960s and 1970s. He praised the terror group for the hijacking of aircraft, which he claimed “introduced the Palestinian questions to the world.” Barakat falsely claimed that the hijackings were carried out peacefully; in fact, PFLP hijackers killed at least two pilots and one Israeli passenger.
” If we take, for example, certain tactics that the Palestinian movement have practiced—take, for example, hijacking airplanes”, Barakat said, “it was one of the most important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in”.
” If it was n’t for these tactics, we would ]have ] never heard of … Palestinian women who led these kinds of heroic operations that introduced the Palestinian questions to the world”, he continued. Take the speeches that Palestinian fighters gave to the people on the airplanes because they all focus on what our struggle is about, for instance.
Kiswani urged other activists to openly call for reprisals against Jews. In the wake of Oct. 7, she said, anti- Israel “organizations” asked her not to discuss Oct. 7 or “resistance” during her speeches. Now, according to Kiswani, those organizations “mention resistance—now they’ll talk about it three months later or five months later because they saw we did it, we got away with it, we got support for it”.
” Do n’t acquiesce to the idea]of], well,’ Oh, they’re considered a terrorist organization, so we should n’t talk about resistance,'” Kiswani said of Hamas. We’re akin to the guinea pigs or the test subjects. We’re going to put ourselves out on the line, and you know, if people are okay with it, then they’ll jump on it later”.
” We have the right to return home, and we will get that right by any means necessary”, she said.
