Campus anti-Israeli protesters have become quite explicit about their goals and sentiments

They back Hamas, support massacring Jews, and celebrate Oct. 7

According to the Washington Post, anti-Israel students on college campuses have adopted a more radical tone this semester. The Post acknowledges that earlier anti-Israeli messaging “was not gentle”— quite an understatement, as we will see. But now, “much of the protest language has grown darker, celebrating the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, echoing language used by Hamas, and declaring ‘Glory to the resistance.’”

At the University of California at Berkeley a year ago, students hung a long banner from Sather Tower, an iconic 307-foot bell tower on campus. It read: “Cease fire now. Free Gaza,” with an image of the Palestinian flag. This fall, that banner was gone and a new one was hung in its place, reading: “Glory to the Resistance,” with an inverted red triangle, a symbol Hamas has used to identify military targets and that has come to be associated with the Palestinian resistance movement.

On Instagram, the Swarthmore College Students for Justice in Palestine chapter called Oct. 7 a “glorious day” and declared: “Happy October 7th everyone!”

The Post excuses these abhorrent statements:

To [some], the new rhetoric is the natural evolution of a movement responding to a brutal war now in its second year, with no end in sight. . . .

The news from the Middle East has been incendiary in recent weeks, with the killing of Hamas leaders, Israeli incursions into Lebanon, attacks on Iranian targets and gruesome videos of civilians dying.

Students now think it will take tougher actions to bring about change, and they are no longer willing to practice “respectability politics,” said Matt Kovac, a graduate student in history at Berkeley who helps run the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

“What we are witnessing is a realistic response to people marching and protesting for a year, and that these international institutions and the U.S. have no interest in a cease-fire,” he said. “They’ve had a year.”

In other words, the anti-Israel protesters are not to blame for celebrating Hamas and the massacre of October 7. The fault lies, instead, with the U.S., “international institutions,” and (it goes without saying) Israel.

This is nonsense.

First, the Post may be exaggerating the change in the protesters rhetoric:

[Some] who followed the protests closely said they have seen signs of support for terrorist groups all along. Oren Segal, vice president of the Center on Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, said certain student groups or individuals defended the Oct. 7 attack from the start.

“Before the blood even dried in Israel, we saw the glorification of the violence on that day,” he said.

Second, to the extent the rhetoric was less inflammatory before, this wasn’t because the protesters opposed violence or objected to what Hamas did on October 7. It was because campaigning on the most hateful, most pro-Hamas platform seemed impolitic. In other words, the practice of “respectability politics” (an odd name, considering what the protesters were saying before — see below) was always just a means to an end — eradicating Israel by killing its Jewish population.

The announced end was Palestine “from the river to the sea.” But the only realistic way to create such a Palestine is to destroy the state of Israel and to kill all Jews who resist. Thus, calls for violence and slaughter were implicit in the past rhetoric of the protesters.

To my knowledge, no one ever polled the protesters on their position regarding Hamas and October 7. However, Palestinians were polled on these subjects by a Palestinian research firm.

The survey encompassed adult Palestinians in Gaza and in the area commonly referred to as the West Bank. A total of 668 adults participated.

Asked whether they support or oppose Hamas’ actions on Oct. 7th, 59.3 percent said they “extremely” supported the attacks and 15.7 percent said they “somewhat” supported the killing spree. Only 12.7 expressed disapproval. The remainder said they neither approved or disapproved.

As for Hamas, the survey found that it remains popular. Among Arab residents of the West Bank, the terrorists enjoy a 88 percent approval rating. In Gaza, whose residents are suffering great misery because of Hamas, the approval number is considerably lower — 59 percent. But 69 percent of Gazans approve of Hamas’ military wing, the Al Aqsa Brigade. And the Al Qassam Brigade, the direct terrorist arm of Hamas, holds a 78 percent approval rating in Gaza.

There was never any reason to believe that anti-Israeli protesters on campus, many of whom are from the West Bank/Gaza or have deep roots there or in the territory that is now Israel, are any less supportive of Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre than the Palestinian population. Their favorite chants during the last college year — “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and “From the river to the sea” — all smack of support for indiscriminate violence against Israelis.

The newish slogans that more explicitly glorify Hamas and the October 7 massacre don’t represent a change in sentiment. They merely reflect the urge to express noxious sentiments more shrilly.

So let’s not blame America, international bodies, or Israel for the despicable things the protesters are now saying. They are simply showing their true colors.