Birzeit Universityâs Right to Education Campaign seeks to build âtactics of focused resistanceâ

In the wake of Hamasâs Oct. 7 attack on Israel, professors and students from prominent U.S. universities have participated in virtual discussions on the Jewish stateâs retaliatory war organized by a Palestinian university that hosts campus military parades honoring Hamas.
Birzeit University, which is located in the West Bank and bills itself as âa thorn in the side of the occupation,â operates the Right to Education Campaign, a self-described âgrassroots Palestinian movementâ aimed at documenting âacademic institutions under Israeli military operation.â The campaign has held a number of virtual events featuring U.S. professors and students.
Last month, for example, it held a webinar titled, âGaza Genocide: An Israeli Crime Against Humanityâ that featured Princeton University international law professor Richard Falk, San Francisco State University ethnic studies professor Rabab Abdulhadi, and University of California, Los Angeles, history professor Robin D.G. Kelley. Those academics, along with representatives from Birzeit and other activists, discussed âthe rising repression under Israeli ruleâ as well as âthe US role in enabling the Israeli genocide as well as our capacity to respond and make change.â At one point in the webinar, Palestinian attorney Ahmed Abofoul justified Oct. 7 as âthe result of 75 years of colonialism and apartheid imposed on the Palestinian people.â
The event came roughly two years after Birzeit students held a pair of military parades celebrating the 34th and 54th founding anniversaries of Hamas and fellow terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, respectively. Mask-clad activists wore the two terror groupâs uniforms and carried flags and portraits of the groupâs founders. Hamas student leaders at Birzeit pledged to âremain loyal to the path of resistance,â according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, and other participants saluted Hamas for carrying out suicide bombings in Israeli cities.
The professorsâ willingness to associate with Birzeit reflects the wave of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activism seen on American college campuses since Oct. 7.
At Princeton, an Israeli-designated terror group that is banned by PayPal and other payment platforms, Samidoun, cosponsored a December rally urging âdivestment from Israel.â Days before the event took place, more than a dozen Princeton faculty members signed a letter accusing the Jewish state of a âgenocidal assault on Gaza, of apartheid in the occupied West Bank, and of structural racism and discrimination inside the state of Israel.â
Falk, Abdulhadi, and Kelley did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to the three professors, Birzeit through its Right to Education Campaign has organized âvirtual teach-insâ with a student group from the University of Southern California, Trojans for Palestine. On Jan. 24, it held an online event titled, âConfronting Genocide in Palestine,â which included Rice University history professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti as a speaker. During that event, Samia Al-Botmeh, a Birzeit professor and Right to Education Campaign steering committee member, said âIsraelâs colonialismâ was the âroot causeâ of Oct. 7.
Last year, meanwhile, the campaign brought students to Birzeitâs campus from Harvard University, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and New York University. Right to Education Campaign organizer Sundos Hammad spoke to the students about âIsraeli violations.â
Birzeitâs Right to Education Campaign did not respond to a request for comment. The school launched the campaign, which seeks to âexpose the systematic obstruction of Palestinian higher education in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,â in 1988, according to its website. The campaign also developed âtactics of focused resistanceâ against Israeli military checkpoints in the early 2000s, its site says, and in late November, it called on American universities to âsupport in dismantlingâ Israelâs âsettler colonial and apartheid system.â
âThe world must recognize Zionism for what it is: a genocidal settler project built on false mythology and sustained through perpetual violence against Indigenous Palestinians,â Birzeitâs Right to Education Campaign said in a statement.
Beyond the Right to Education Campaign, Birzeit and its student body has long displayed an affinity for Hamas.
In a May 2022 student government vote, more than half of Birzeitâs students backed the campus group associated with Hamas, known as âthe Islamic Bloc.â The group campaigned under the slogan, âGive voice to the resistanceâ and distributed stickers emblazoned with rifles.
More than a year later, following Hamasâs Oct. 7 attack, Birzeit proclaimed âglory for martyrsâ in an Oct. 10 social media post. One week later, the school falsely accused Israel of bombing the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, which was actually struck by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket.
âBirzeit University calls on the international community to put an end to the genocide and war crimes of the Israeli occupation against Palestinians,â the school wrote in response to the incident. âThe latest and worst of which is the massacre in Ahli Arab Hospital (Baptist) in Gaza, resulting in more than 500 martyrs.â
Original News Source â Washington Free Beacon
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