The Pro-Hamas Movement Is Still Going Strong

• Anti-Israel activists promise another eventful school year of campus protests

• Backlash against Hamas supporters since the Oct. 7 attacks has escalated, with many calling for government action

• Much information has surfaced about the movement’s ties to terrorism

The story

Activist leaders in the US have promised that more protests of Israel’s war against Hamas are coming to college campuses this school year, and institutions are bracing for impact. Meanwhile, conservatives and pro-Israel groups are increasingly pushing for different forms of state action against protesters who are antisemitic or supportive of terrorists.

This week, the conservative nonprofit America First Legal asked the Justice Department to force certain protest-leading groups, such as Students for Justice in Palestine, to register as foreign lobbyists. This would require them to disclose funding and other information about their alleged pro-Hamas activities.

Other demands are less subtle. Some want the Biden-Harris administration to follow Germany’s lead and outlaw Samidoun, an activist group with known ties to terrorists and Iran. Samidoun was one of many radical pro-Palestine groups who helped organize the protests outside the Democratic National Convention (DNC).

Legal expert Ilya Shapiro argued in April that universities should outright ban “antisemitic student groups.” For months, GOP lawmakers have proposed bills to deport foreign students who endorse terrorist organizations — an idea that gained steam after anti-Israel campus protests spread across the nation.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) took the strongest action in November, ordering Students for Justice in Palestine to disband at Florida public campuses. The state has not enforced the ban under threat of litigation, but as the pro-Palestine movement grows ever more bold, so does its opposition.

Political pushback against the movement

Protests center around the unsupported claim that Israel is waging “genocide” against Palestinians, due to civilian deaths and humanitarian crises stemming from war. The most controversial groups or demonstrations are those praising Palestinian “resistance” — often a euphemism for the killing of civilians by Hamas and others who want Israel destroyed.

The pro-Palestine movement overwhelmingly aligns itself with the American left; even so, both major political parties largely reject the campaign against Israel’s right to exist and fight Hamas.

Despite pressure from DNC protesters, the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform — like the GOP’s — does not condemn Zionism or advocate a US arms embargo on the Jewish state. Republicans aggressively condemn the movement, drawing from the timeless GOP theme of hating radical Islamic terrorism.

Anti-activist rhetoric has escalated to the extent that critics frequently regard them as potential national security threats. In a recent political spat, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asserted that terrorist-supporting students “should be immediately added to the terrorist watch list and placed on the TSA No-Fly List.” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), a committed supporter of the pro-Palestine movement, called the idea “insanely dangerous.”

The pro-Palestine movement frames the backlash to its often violent and chaotic activities — including the arrests of protesters accused of violating campus rules — as “repression” by authoritarian forces in cahoots with Israel.

Last month, a Students for Justice Palestine chapter at the University of North Carolina declared in its manifesto, “The [Biden-Harris] administration, the injustice system, media outlets, [Z]ionists, and other oppressive forces try to fracture us along several real and fictional axes.”

“We stand firm as a unified bloc,” the activists said, warning that “liberation may require revolutionary violence.”

Beyond the headlines

Legal tactics against these activists may or may not work. What’s clear is that some operating in the US with an explicitly pro-terrorism message have foreign ties.

This month, the international coordinator of Samidoun, Charlotte Kates, traveled to Iran to receive a “human rights” award for her anti-Israel work. The Iranian regime’s awards ceremony honored the Canada-based activist, as well as the head of terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the now-deceased Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. Iran’s state-run TV aired Kates praising “the brave, heroic Oct. 7 operation.”

Samidoun is led in part by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another terror group that kills Israelis, and advocates for the release of Palestinian “political prisoners.” It has chapters in the US and has helped organize protests around the world.

Other organizations active in the US are less upfront about their malicious associations.

American Muslims for Palestine, now targeted by conservative lawyers, denies ties to terrorists — even as its director has an article published on an official Hamas website. In a 2022 document, the group Palestinian Youth Movement vaguely referred to its “coordination with movements on the ground in Palestine.”

Why it matters

Since the Oct. 7 massacre, America’s militant anti-Israel movement has boldly presented itself as an enemy of America's interests and moral sensibilities. When American politicians threatened to quell it, the faction doubled down in its radicalism.

Activist leaders are clear about who stands to benefit from their protests: US adversaries such as Hamas and Iran, which have both issued public statements praising the protesters.

This is not a grassroots movement started and maintained by passionate college students; the massive political network and well-organized, radical anti-Israel groups driving it means it isn’t going away any time soon.