Now Columbia students back Hamas terrorists’ bloody attack on Israel calling it a ‘counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor’: Comes after 31 Harvard organizations also blamed Jewish state for terror group’s barbaric assault
After Harvard University students released a statement accusing Israel of being “fully responsible” for the “unfolding violence” in the region following Hamas’ surprise attack last weekend, a Columbia student organization at the chorus of ambiguity joined by the terrorism a ”counteroffensive.”
A shocking statement released by the Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine on Monday said that Hamas’ actions were a “counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor.”
“The weight of responsibility for the war and casualties lies undeniably with the Israeli extremist government and other Western governments,” said the statement, which was also signed by a group called Jewish Voice for Peace.
The Ivy-League schools were also joined by a Northwestern University group called Justice in Palestine that said they “stand steadfast in our commitment to address the profound injustices facing the Palestinian people light.’
The Harvard statements were widely condemned, including by former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who wrote on X: ‘In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation I have never been more disillusioned and alienated than I am today.’
The first space of the statement released by the Students for Justice in Palestine and a Jewish Voice for Peace from Columbia University
‘Organised on democratic principles to promote justice, human rights, liberation and self-determination,’ the group describes itself on Facebook
“As long as you perpetuate this narrative, fights will continue to break out until justice is achieved. Because nothing else works,” reads the coalition’s statement.
“As Columbia students, our classes regularly discuss the inevitability of resistance as part of the struggle for decolonization. We study under renowned scholars who denounce the fact that the media requires oppressed people to be ‘perfect victims’ in order to earn sympathy.’
“Yet our institution not only fails to align its actions with its ostensible values, but actively normalizes Israeli apartheid and the subjugation of Palestinians,” the group continued.
The group repeated previous statements demanding that Columbia University divest from Israel.
In April 2023 it was reported that Columbia’s plans to build a campus in Tel Aviv have met with fierce opposition from staff and students.
“We call on our administration as a whole to begin verbally recognizing Palestinian existence and humanity,” the statement continued.
Meanwhile, Northwestern Students also wrote that it is a ‘grave miscarriage of justice to portray Palestinians as the aggressors in this occupation’ and added that it is ‘morally untenable to portray Israel as the victim’.
The Palestine Solidarity Committee holds banners outside Harvard University
Harvard President Emeritus Larry Summers Says He’s ‘Sickened’ by Ivy League School’s Response to Hamas Attack on Israel
Fire and smoke rise from an explosion on a Palestinian apartment tower following an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City just hours after the festival attack as the Israeli counter-offensive began
On Monday, Israeli warplanes continued to pound central Gaza City, home to Hamas’ government centers, with relentless bombing until early Tuesday, after Israel’s prime minister vowed retaliation against the Islamist militant group that “resonates for generations”.
The 4-day-old war has already claimed at least 1,600 lives, as Israel saw gunfights in the streets of its own towns for the first time in decades and devastated neighborhoods in Gaza. Hamas also escalated the conflict, vowing to kill captured Israelis if attacks targeted civilians without warning.
Israel’s military said it found the bodies of around 1,500 Hamas militants in Israeli territory as it gained effective control in the south and “restored full control” of the border. It was not immediately clear whether these numbers overlapped with deaths previously reported by Palestinian authorities.
Israel said Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza were holding more than 150 soldiers and civilians abducted from inside Israel after the attack caught its vaunted military and intelligence apparatus completely off guard.
As the Israeli army activated 300,000 reservists in a massive mobilization, a big question was whether it would launch a ground attack in the small Mediterranean coastal region. The last ground attack was in 2014.
The moves, along with Israel’s formal declaration of war on Sunday, signaled that Israel is increasingly moving toward the offensive against Hamas and threatens greater destruction in the densely populated, impoverished Gaza Strip.
“We have only begun to strike at Hamas,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a nationally televised address. ‘What we will do to our enemies in the coming days will reverberate with them for generations.’