Uniting as the Student Intifada, anti-Israel groups plan to further disrupt US campuses

The Student Intifada, a growing coalition of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist student groups, is making clear its intention to disrupt the fall semester on school campuses across the United States.

Across dozens of campuses currently opening their fall semesters, there are already calls for masked vigils in support of “Palestine.” Troublingly, many of the groups have gone from calling for demonstrations and encampments to condoning the use of violence and “the total eradication of Western civilization.”

The Student Intifada’s roots can be traced to the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), founded in 1993 at the University of California Berkeley. However, it’s picked up followers since the war in Gaza and then again with the media attention on Columbia University following last year’s highly-covered student encampment.

With Columbia being an epicenter of the anti-Zionist student protests, it comes as no surprise that the Instagram account for Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) has posted that it draws inspiration “not only from Palestinian resistance but from every struggle for liberation across the globe, including the student protests of Bangladesh.”

Meanwhile, the Instagram bio of Columbia University’s chapter of SJP now includes the line, “Long live the Student Intifada and Hind’s Hall” together with the inverted red triangle emoji used by the Hamas terror organization to identify its targets.

But the loose Student Intifada movement is more than a collection of student groups with a physical presence on campuses. It occupies space on the internet, from social media platforms such as X and Instagram, to platforms like Substack where writers send digital newsletters to subscribers.

For example, “The Written Resistance,” a quarterly online newsletter published by the National SJP, and blog posts such as “Research & Destroy,” is hosted on the Verso Books website. On The Real News Network, whose donors include Edward Snowden, Roger Waters, and the Scripps Howard Fund, people can access the movement’s video content, such as a recent roundtable discussion featuring various pro-Palestinian students.

Avoiding mention of the October 7 Hamas atrocities that set off the ongoing Israel-Hamas war when thousands of terrorists invaded southern Israel, brutally murdering 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 to the Gaza Strip, the Student Intifada portrays itself as a peaceful and “comprehensive movement which comprises diverse organizations and groups in society” that seeks to fight “the US colonialist and imperialist institutions,” according to a policy paper titled “The Student Intifada in the United States” by University of Michigan PhD candidate Amir Marshi.

In his paper, Marshi, who declined to comment for this story, denies the movement is antisemitic.

“We’re not going to synagogues and yelling slurs and being mean to people. We are here having a peaceful protest on campus asking for one thing and one thing only, and that’s to stop a genocide,” Marshi wrote.

Yet, the movement demands that universities sever ties with organizations such as Hillel International whose main mission is supporting Jewish life on campus, divest from charitable foundations that fund Jewish academic research and life on campus, and ban “Zionist” speakers.

With the National SJP as its guide, the movement isn’t limited to local SJP chapters. But it’s not so much the coalition’s reach that troubles some, but rather its refusal to engage with different perspectives.

“The movement is a belief cascade where those in the group compete with each other for acceptance. As they do that, their opinions become more and more extreme,” said William J. Bernstein, author of “Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups.”

“No matter how high their SAT scores were, they don’t have the critical thinking skills they need. They are incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes. They are utterly intolerant of other views,” Bernstein said.

University leaders should expect the students to become more strident in their demands this fall, said Lauren Post, an analyst with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.

“They are going to increase their efforts to drive Zionist institutions off campus. They are going to make the average Jewish and Zionist student increasingly uncomfortable. We can expect to see zero compromise from these groups,” Post said.

For example, at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California, encampment organizers affiliated with the school’s SJP chapter called on the university to “divest from all donors and funds that support and profit from the occupation in Palestine, such as programs like Koret.”

A Jewish philanthropic organization, the Koret Foundation provides grants to various causes, including student research projects at Sonoma State.

At Princeton University, organizers connected to the Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest group and the New Jersey chapter of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) continue to demand the university cut ties with the Tikvah Fund, which is a Jewish philanthropic foundation that “supports teaching, research, and publication on Jewish thought.”

It’s the movement’s repudiation of democracy and apparent support of violence that most concerns Dr. Steven McGuire, the Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

“Their animating thing is a desire for radical revolution. The groups are a mixture of radical Palestinian nationalists who do not think Israel has the right to exist. On the other hand, you have card-carrying Marxists who are revolutionary in nature and who see Palestine as a key issue for advancing a global revolution,” McGuire said.

Indeed, last December, Columbia Social Workers 4 Palestine organized an unauthorized “teach-in and discussion” which not only justified the October 7 terror onslaught but also praised Communist leaders like Mao Zedong, founder of the Chinese Communist Party. Under Zedong’s policies, between 40 and 80 million people died due to starvation, forced labor, and mass executions.

In a July 31 Instagram post, the University of Chapel Hill SJP appeared to back the right to use violence.

“We emphasize our support for the right to resistance, not only in Palestine, but also here in the imperial core. We condone all forms of principled action, including armed rebellion, necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and to dismantle imperialism and capitalism more broadly. The oppressors will never grant full liberty to the oppressed; the oppressed must seize liberty with their own hands,” the post said.

Meanwhile, in an August 15 post on X, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest and the CU Club Bangla declared their support for Muslim student protesters in Bangladesh.

“And just as the Palestinian resistance escalated the Intifada on October 7th, it is now the people of Bangladesh who are escalating the global battle for liberation…at least two hundred of our comrades in Bangladesh have been martyred by the Awami League… If we want to achieve liberation in America, we must be prepared to make these same sacrifices,” read the post.

McGuire said that statements like these shouldn’t be shrugged off.

“Students constantly bombarded on social media are being led by a vanguard that is radicalized and believes in this [illiberal] ideology that requires followers to chant things that are genocidal,” McGuire said.

Last year, campus leaders frequently ignored or dismissed the violation of institutional policies, disruptions to academic life, and the harassment and intimidation of Jewish students.

With that in mind, campus leaders must act more decisively if they hope to avoid the pandemonium that marked much of last year, said Richard Priem, CEO of the nonprofit Community Security Service (CSS).

“I’m not the ADL, but there are relevant lessons to be learned from a security standpoint, mainly that appeasement doesn’t work. What started with an encampment ended with the violent takeover of a university building. The lesson that needs to be learned is that there can be zero tolerance for this behavior,” Priem said.

There were an estimated 3,200 people, not all of them students, arrested at colleges and universities last spring, according to the Associated Press. Most of the charges against students have since been dropped.

Other universities, including the University of Chicago and Harvard, withheld degrees from some pro-Palestinian students facing disciplinary measures for their part in encampments and protests. Many of them have since received their diplomas.

As students begin moving into their dorm rooms and get ready to attend convocations, campus leaders seeking to slow the Student Intifada must do more to address what is happening inside classrooms, McGuire said.

“Universities have to ask themselves if they are giving oxygen to these ideologies through their course catalogs. Part of the problem is that too much of the curriculum focuses on all the problems society has and not on any of its accomplishments,” McGuire said.

Bernstein agreed.

“Universities have to improve critical thinking skills. [Student Intifada] groups are not doing themselves any favors staying in their self-aggrandizing bubbles,” he said.

---

This post appeared in The Times of Israel on August 25, 2024.