This School Year, Condemn SJP’s Pro-Terrorism Propaganda

Since October 7, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters across the United States have emerged as the leading supporters of the mass murder of innocent Israeli civilians. As we start a new school year and approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, now is more important than ever that university administrations take a stand against SJP.

Last month, the Combat Antisemitism Movement(CAM)’s Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) analyzed the Instagram accounts of more than 200 SJP chapters in the US, documenting their disturbing rhetoric. This analysis identified dozens of posts and stories from SJP chapters encouraging violent attacks against Israelis and supporting US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), including Hamas, Hezbollah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. The ARC has also documented content praising Yemen’s Houthis, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist group.

In addition, the ARC has uncovered Instagram content endorsed, promoted, or created by SJP chapters on 80 American campuses that either glorifies, rationalizes, or blames Israel for, Hamas’ October 7 atrocities. (Glorifying and supporting terrorism contravenes the community standards of Meta, Instagram’s parent company.)

Several examples stand out for their sickening disdain for Israeli lives.

Bears for Palestine at UC Berkeley brayed on October 7 in a now-deleted post that “Towfan Al-Aqsa [Hamas’ name for its attack] now stands as a revolutionary moment in contemporary Palestinian resistance,” and “we indisputably support the Uprising.”

On October 9, Lehman College SJP hailed Hamas’ attacks on civilian towns in a now-deleted post saying, “The Palestinian resistance has fought back against the colonial settlements illegally occupying Palestinian land.”

Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE) at the University of Michigan also welcomed Hamas’ attacks on civilians, writing on October 7, “Palestinians in Gaza are fighting back in unprecedented magnitudes towards the Israeli colonial entity. They have launched resistance rockets towards occupied Palestinian territories, invaded colonial settlements, bulldozed down the barbed wire and walls that have trapped them in Gaza for years, and have captured Israeli soldiers.”

College of Staten Island SJP wrote on October 11, “The resistance [Hamas] has shown us that true dignity and strength can be demonstrated in the face of occupying forces, providing a sense of empowerment.”

The UCLA SJP chapter wrote on October 16, “Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’ attack] … is a response to over 75 years of brutal Zionist colonization, occupation, ethnic cleansing,” and other grievances.

At University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign on October 9, the SJP chapter promoted a “Day of Resistance” with imagery of a person flying a paraglider, which Hamas used to invade Israel on October 7. The chapter encouraged its followers to “voice your support for the Palestinian resistance on the ground.”

These examples are just some of the dozens of social media posts that SJP has used to spout antisemitism and dehumanize Israeli citizens.

Imagine the environment this creates for Jewish and Israeli students, who must grapple with the realization that significant numbers of their peers sympathize with the crimes of an anti-Jewish terrorist organization. After all, if certain SJP chapters support acts of extermination against innocent Jews in Israel, what moral qualms would stop them from committing acts of violence against their Jewish classmates?

Indeed, just last month, anti-Israel groups at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee took to Instagram to threatenthe local Jewish Federation and Hillel. In April, as anti-Israel protests rocked Columbia University, Rabbi Elie Buechler of the school’s Orthodox Union Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus urged Jewish students to “return home as soon as possible and remain home until the reality in and around campus has dramatically improved.”

I spoke with Jewish students who, amid nationwide campus turmoil, elected to simply avoid traversing the quads.

Five years ago, I argued, “Antisemitism destroys societies. It destroyed Germany, it destroyed Gaza, and now it is destroying our universities.”

SJP and its fellow travelers seem determined to prove me correct, but we can stem our universities’ dark descent into the world’s oldest hatred. University administrations must forcefully denounce SJP’s hate-mongering and sever any institutional and financial ties between the school and its local chapter if it publicly supports terrorism. Meta, for its part, must rigorously enforce the terms of its own terms of service and remove posts that glorify terrorism to blunt their reach.

And, of course, Americans in the broader public who value the fight against anti-Jewish hatred should speak out loudly against SJP’s propaganda. All bigotry deserves to be marginalized. As Jewish students face a chilling wave of it, they deserve nothing less than our steadfast support.

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Zachary Schildcrout is Research and Data Manager for the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM)