2024-03-29 04:00:42
On Sunday night, March 24th, Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest held a “Resistance 101” webinar in support of building a worldwide coalition of aggrieved, bloodthirsty, Jew-hating miscreants. Their lofty goal: Globalize the Intifada.
Both Barnard and Columbia cancelled the event, a university spokesperson told the Free Beacon. Columbia said it rejected requests to hold it on campus and that it neither approved nor sanctioned the gathering that took place at a campus residence, according to the paper.
The program’s panelists spoke from years of experience advocating violence against Jews. They included pro-Palestine speakers with ties to terrorist organizations: Khaled Barakat, a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) activist; and his wife, Charlotte Kates, an “international coordinator” of Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network designated by the Israeli government as a terror group. They both participated over Zoom.
Also present was the outspoken Nerdeen Kiswani, leader of Within Our Lifetime, the group responsible for anti-Israel rallies like the one this past January that disrupted travel at JFK International Airport.
Kiswani also co-founded Students for Justice in Palestine during her days at CUNY Law School, where she gave a 2022 commencement address in which she complained of “facing a campaign of Zionist harassment.”
At another anti-Israel rally, according to the NY Post, Kiswani reportedly told a crowd that, “I hope that a pop-pop is the last noise that some Zionists hear in their lifetime.”
And earlier this year, Kiswani led the anti-Israel protest at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Hospital in New York City we covered here. She justified the disgraceful tactic by claiming the hospital had accepted money from a pro-Israel donor.
Apartheid Divest, the antisemitic group that organized Sunday’s program, was launched in 2016 by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Barnard/Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace to demand Columbia divest from Israel “apartheid.”
Last October, in the wake of the Hamas massacre, the group “reactivated” with a broader mission to end “all interlocking systems of oppression through collective action and solidarity with oppressed people worldwide.”
Antisemites Of The World, Unite!
The panelists saw October 7th as the moment to achieve that mission by exploiting grievance around the world in support of the Palestinian cause. The working class, students, black liberation movements, unions—all were suggested as coalition comrades in the war against the US and Zionist oppression. The goal, said Kates, is to “come together and make support for the resistance as popular as possible.”
And that resistance is justified “by any means necessary.” “There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas,” Kates said, praising its “leadership role” in raping and murdering its way through southern Israel. “These are the people on the frontlines of defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.”
“Palestinians have a right to armed resistance,” Barakat added, “whether it is enshrined in international law or not.” So, for example, hijacking airplanes—where no one ever got hurt, he claimed—was justified as “a means for Palestinians to explain to the world their struggle.”
Because the world needs to know: “When we fight for Palestine, we’re not just fighting for Palestinian freedom and liberation from oppression, we’re fighting for the freedom of all oppressed people,” Kiswani said. By tapping into the resentment of “oppressed” groups around the world, the panelists were promoting a woke, communist way of thinking—one that Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combatting Antisemitism Amichai Chikli describes in this interview:
“It’s a communist way of thinking,”
Israeli Minister for Diaspora Affairs & Combatting Antisemitism @AmichaiChikli tells Visegrad 24 that Palestine activism has become a trend & a part of group identity at neo-Marxist university campuses
Link to the interview in the comments ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Hpbz6UKXlB
— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) March 27, 2024
Barakat sees potential in this neo-Marxist brand of antisemitism: “The more we look at Palestine as a cause for revolutionaries across the world,” he said, “the more Israel fears us.”
Columbia University Target of Federal Antisemitism Probe
Sunday’s event comes just weeks after Columbia was added to the list of elite institutions under federal scrutiny for failure to protect its Jewish students from pervasive campus antisemitism. In April, its president and members of its board are scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce:
????On April 17, 2024, the Committee will hold a hearing with the President and Board Chairs of @Columbia to answer for how they have mishandled antisemitic incidents on their campus.
More: https://t.co/jHuX0kKLzD pic.twitter.com/UBLJFzCk5m
— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) March 11, 2024
The last session of House antisemitism hearings ended badly for the school presidents summoned to attend. UPenn President M. Elizabeth Magill was forced to resign only days after she testified she needed “context” to decide whether death threats against Jews violated the school’s code of conduct. The presidents of Harvard and MIT didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory either when they dodged similar questions. And while it was the plagiarism scandal that knocked President Claudine Gay off her throne at Harvard, her abysmal performance at last year’s hearings was the beginning of that end.
Columbia has, under the circumstances, reportedly made a point of distancing itself from the “Resistance 101” program, which was originally scheduled to take place at Barnard College. An organizer of the event announced they had to change venues at the last minute after a Ph.D student complained they were promoting terrorism. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the event was moved to Columbia’s “Q House,” an “LGBTQ+ special interest community at Columbia University,” and included an online option.
Ultimately, the event and the faculty’s role in supporting it caught the attention of the House Committee:
Yesterday, @Columbia students w/ faculty support held a “Resistance 101” event w/ Khaled Barakat, who has been identified as a member of US-designated terrorist org PFLP. Barakat told students how “friends at Hamas & Islamic Jihad” emphasized the importance of campus support. https://t.co/f6jmZhT5Wj
— House Committee on Education & the Workforce (@EdWorkforceCmte) March 25, 2024
Considering the cozy relationship pro-Palestinian activists have cultivated with Columbia students and faculty, the school’s earlier statements might fall on deaf ears when its officials are in the congressional hot seat next month.
Meanwhile, Khaled Barakat says that when he speaks to his “friends in Hamas and Islamic Jihad” they have their eyes on the prize—defeating Israel to “free” Palestine to do the unthinkable:
The liberation of Palestine will mean changing the entire region and the entire world. Just imagine us crazy Palestinians owning 400 nuclear warheads.
And if that happens, he laughs, “Palestine will become a very dangerous place.”
Video of the “Resistance 101” webinar was recorded by @thestustustudio and is available here as part of a multi-part thread, the first segment below:
Resistance 101 ????
This event was hosted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest. It was originally going to be at the Barnard Center for Research on Women but was moved last minute to Columbia.
This event featured the following speakers
Nerdeen Kiswani the Chair of Within Our… pic.twitter.com/5oBQvy5oKP
— Stu (@thestustustudio) March 26, 2024
Here is the entire program:
Here is my recording of the “Resistance 101” event hosted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest which features speakers from Within Our Lifetime, Masar Badil, and Samidoun.
In a world where radicalism thrives on college campuses, I believe in radical transparency. pic.twitter.com/jRuSaY1VOq
— Stu (@thestustustudio) March 25, 2024
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.