Hamas suppressed student activity on campus by bombing them

In a staggering case of hypocrisy, Hamas leaders have accused the US government of violating the rights of anti-Israel protestors on American college campuses. “The American administration’s attempts to suppress these activities will not change the reality of the situation, whether regarding the justice of the Palestinian cause or the brutality and racism of the Israeli occupation,” Hamas spokesperson Bassem Naim has said.

The Hamas leader fails to understand that the US federal government does not enforce local laws — much less campus security — unlike in Gaza where the US-designated terrorist organization exercises central control and has all but eliminated public protest. In 2023, Freedom House reported, “Hamas generally governs in an authoritarian manner, actively suppressing criticism of its rule,” adding, “Hamas-led police have violently suppressed student demonstrations.”

Hamas’s most egregious violation of students’ rights and academic freedom did not occur in Gaza, but in Israel.

Twenty-two years ago, on July 31, 2002, a Hamas operative detonated a shrapnel-laden bomb under a cafeteria table at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, causing massive devastation. The attack inflicted grievous injuries on almost 100 students and staff of all backgrounds and took the lives of nine people, including citizens of Israel, the U.S., and France.

Coming amid its bloody terrorist campaign that became known as the Second Intifada, Hamas was eager to take responsibility for the bombing it claimed retaliated for an Israeli strike on a Hamas leader that had civilian casualties. “If they are going to attack our children, then they will have to expect to drink from the same poison,” said Ismail Haniyeh, the lately deceased chief political leader of Hamas.

The massacre was denounced by the UN and the governments of China and South Africa, among others. President Bush said, “There are clearly killers who hate the thought of peace, and, therefore, are willing to take their hatred to all kinds of places, including a university.”

With an estimated Arab student population of 10 percent at the time, Hebrew University took pride in offering a world-class education to people of all faiths and nationalities. “The attackers’ decision to strike precisely at our campus, which is a center of tolerance and pluralism, is frightening,” wrote university president Menachem Magidor. “We must not give in. We must grit our teeth and carry on. Giving up on what we are trying to create at the university is a surrender to terror.”

On the anniversary of the Hebrew University bombing, the parallels between that attack and the massacre of October 7, 2023, are striking. In both cases, Hamas struck secular, liberal institutions – a university in the former, a dance festival and kibbutzim in the latter — claiming Jewish and non-Jewish victims, as well as citizens of Israel, the US, and other nations.

Both attacks are connected to Hamas’s fundamental commitment to use any vehicle or venue — including the university campus — to reject a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and eliminate the Jewish state. The group’s 1988 charter clearly states that no part of “the land of Palestine” should be given up. “Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.”

In both cases, Hamas was motivated, in part, to put a halt to the peace process and assert its role in Palestinian politics: The 2002 massacre repudiated a series of initiatives, from the Camp David Summit of July 2000 to the Taba Summit of January 2001 to the Arab Peace Initiative of March 2002. The October 7, 2023 attack was intended to strike a blow against the burgeoning Saudi-Israeli normalization.

Hamas ideology advocated battle with Israel on multiple fronts. “Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy,” read its manifesto, “The effective word, the good article, the useful book… all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah’s sake.” Hamas urged writers, intellectuals, media, and educators to join their cause.

As late as 2017, Hamas’s revised charter reiterated that “Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws. At the heart of these lies armed resistance…”

Hamas has used the universities in Gaza and the West Bank as recruiting grounds for activists and terrorists. Dr. Matthew Levitt, an expert in Hamas operations, points out that many committed Hamas operatives have emerged from the Kutla Islamiya (Islamic Bloc) at Palestinian universities, funded in part through Hamas charities. For example, Saleh al-Arouri, reportedly assassinated by Israel for leading Hamas operations in the West Bank, headed the Islamic faction at Hebron University. Ismail Haniyeh studied at the Islamic University of Gaza and was appointed dean of the school in December 1993.

The Hebrew University bombing underscored the different approaches of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which accepted Israel’s existence and a negotiated solution to the conflict in the Oslo Accords, and Hamas, which violently rejects both. While the massacre prompted celebrations in Gaza City, the PA condemned the attack but blamed Israel for provoking violence. Two PA-oriented institutions, Al Quds University and Bethlehem University, offered condolences in paid ads in the Israeli press.

As we remember the victims of the Hebrew University bombing on the twenty-second anniversary of their deaths, we recall that for Hamas the university campus is not an end in itself, an inviolate sanctuary of learning, but a means to an end, whether for recruitment, propaganda, or terror.