'It's Terrifying and Sad': How College Campuses Became Pro-Hamas Hotbeds for Antisemitism

Campus rallies celebrating the atrocities committed against Israel show just how deeply antisemitism has infected many of America's colleges and universities. 

After the horrific Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, students at the University of Wisconsin Madison chanted, "Glory to the martyrs."

Cornell University Professor Russell Rickford called the Hamas killings "exhilarating."

An instructor at Stanford has been suspended for allegedly making Jewish students stand in a corner while publicly referring to them as "colonizers." 

Critics call it a direct result of the Boycott, Divestments, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. 

Many colleges and universities have allowed and even promoted pro-Hamas anti-Jewish rhetoric for decades. The attack on Israel has shown just where that policy has led.

"This week on college campuses is a culmination of two generations of activist scholars using college classrooms to create indoctrination camps," says Dr. Zachary Marschall, editor-in-chief at Campus Reform. "Where they use leftist ideology and anti-Israel critiques working to perpetuate anti-Semitism."

The anti-Israel BDS movement has been allowed to flourish on campuses nationwide, and uses the chant "from the river to the sea" in protests, calling for the destruction of Israel.  

After the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the BDS movement's website posted and later deleted that it supported the slaughter of Israelis by Hamas calling it "heroic" and "justified." 

The BDS movement, which has long claimed to have originated from the Palestinian people, was, according to BDS historian Gerald Steinberg, created by the Soviet Union, the British Labor Party, and Muslim nations who oppose Israel.

Dexter Van Zile, managing editor at Focus on Western Islamism said, "Not only is it a moral failing and an intellectual failing and just a scandal, but it's a strategic threat to the American Republic to allow this to continue."

Van Zile said the Hamas terror attack finally exposed the BDS movement for what it is really about, the destruction of the state of Israel.

"It's been a long time coming and the October 7th attack exposed it," he said.

A major campus group behind the BDS movement is Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). After the Hamas attack, Boston University's SJP chapter posted that "victory is ours."

Universities like Harvard have been embarrassed and have also lost donations because of pro-Hamas support. 

It's gotten so bad that Ezekiel Emanuel, longtime Democrat and brother of Rahm (current United States ambassador to Japan) wrote an op-ed published in Wednesday's New York Times titled "The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education." 

Van Zile said "It's terrifying and sad that it took the deaths of over a thousand Jews in Israel to direct people to the totalitarian forces that are now running amuck on college campuses in the United States. But that's what it took."

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