‘Bring the War Home’: Anti-Israel Ivy League Students Vandalize Campuses on Oct. 7 Anniversary

As Jews across the world mourned the victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel on the first anniversary of the tragedy, pro-Hamas students at America’s elite college campuses perpetrated a series of violent property crimes apparently aimed at celebrating terrorism and intimidating administrators into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“Bring the war home,” a group at Harvard captioned a video they filmed of themselves smashing the windows of University Hall and discharging red paint, symbolizing the spilling of blood, on a statue of John Harvard which stands outside the building.

The group of students responsible for the act, who describe themselves as “anonymous,” later said in a statement, “We are committed to bringing the war home and answering the call to open up a new front here in the belly of the beast.” On the same day, the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) also proclaimed that “now is the time to escalate,” adding, “Harvard’s insistence on funding slaughter only strengthens our moral imperative and commitment to our demands.”

Princeton University also saw a shocking vandalism for which an anonymous student group claimed responsibility. Targeting the building which houses the Princeton University Investment Company (PRINCO), it involved splattering red paint on the entrance door and graffitiing the perimeter of the building with the slogan “$4genocide.”

Neither Harvard nor Princeton have commented on the behavior. Only a spokesperson for the Harvard University Police Department has issued a statement, shared by The Harvard Crimson, which said the incident there is “under investigation.”

The two Ivy League universities were not the only schools where pro-Hamas students engaged in activities seemingly intended to demonstrate support for mass casualty events inspired by Islamist extremism.

At Columbia University, Jewish students were swarmed by a pro-Hamas mob which heeded the call of Within Our Lifetime (WOL) to walk out of class in celebration of Oct. 7.

“Today, Columbia students gathered to honor our martyrs who were massacred by the Zionist entity, as well as commemorate the historic Al-Aqsa Flood operation,” Columbia’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter said in a statement posted on X. “We will continue to mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living. Resistance until victory and return.”

On Tuesday, The Algemeiner spoke with a Barnard College student, first-year Shoshana Aufzien, who witnessed the harrowing pro-Hamas demonstration on Monday as well as antisemitic incidents since arriving at campus just six weeks ago. During the protest, she explained, pro-Hamas students mocked and laughed at a display created by Jewish students to raise awareness of the plight of Israelis still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.

“My classmates have lost their humanity,” she said. “That’s what it really comes down to. I used to chalk up their behavior to ignorance, which is inexcusable because Columbia students are supposed to be the creme de la creme, but I’ve seen the way they’re indoctrinated by organizations that have very, very explicit objectives.”

Their hatred for Jews and Israel is palpable, she added, noting that after the demonstration, the SJP-spinoff group Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) issued a statement defending Khymani James, a student who was suspended last year for filming himself proclaim that Zionists should be murdered and that they are fortunate he is not killing them.

“It’s telling,” Aufzien said.

Pro-Hamas groups ensconced in the Ivy League have been telegraphing their plans for this academic year since summer.

In September, CUAD distributed literature calling on students to join the movement to destroy Israel during this year’s convocation ceremony. Several sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose was to build an army of Muslims worldwide. At Harvard, after encampment protesters were amnestied by the administration and restored to good standing, the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) declared that the university had “caved in” and, vowing to disrupt the campus again, called their movement a “student intifada.”

At Cornell University, ant-Zionists recently vandalized an administrative building, graffitiing “Israel Bombs, Cornell pays” and “Blood is on your hands” on Day Hall. They also shattered the glazings of its front doors.

“We had to accept that the only way to make ourselves heard is by targeting the only thing the university administration really cares about: property,” the students told the Cornell Daily Sun. “With the start of this new academic year, the Cornell administration is trying desperately to upkeep a facade of normalcy knowing that, since last semester, they have been working tirelessly to uphold Cornell’s function as a fascist, classist, imperial machine.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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