“The U.S. has been exposing itself to grave danger by allowing a terrorist organization, Hamas, to build an extensive and expanding network of proxy organizations throughout North America.”
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), whose bullying activities on U.S. campuses have attracted people’s attention lately, are just the tip of the iceberg of what has been brewing under the radar in America and beyond.
Hamas proxies are active not just on the university campuses, and their presence is not just a Jewish problem or an antisemitic issue. The U.S. has been exposing itself to grave danger by allowing Hamas with impunity to build an extensive and expanding network of proxy organizations throughout North America.
Students for Justice in Palestine
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has been very involved in the anti-Israel, anti-American violent activities on America’s campuses and streets. I know SJP and its activities very well from the ground up. I’ve followed its development since its founding in Berkeley, California, in 1993 by UC Berkeley’s Dr. Hatem Bazian, originally from Nablus. (See here and here.)
From Berkeley, SJP has metastasized to campuses across North America. Known as Hamas on campus, SJP advocates Hamas’s agenda, including the elimination of Israel.
By design, National Students for Palestine (NSJP) is a loosely connected network of autonomous chapters. They have no national headquarters and no named leader. But it does have an anonymous national student steering committee.
SJP has not registered as a nonprofit. It never filed tax documents. Its founder, Hatem Bazian, described the SJP setup as “a symbolic franchise without a franchise fee.”
This deliberate lack of hierarchy has been crucial to the NSJP network’s ascent, allowing chapters to spring up with few obstacles; according to interviews I conducted with 20 individuals in the know, and videos, academic writings, archival news accounts, and public records, I have closely examined. The network’s constellation of tactics and rhetoric, including theatrical demonstrations with “apartheid walls” and mock Israeli checkpoints, has been replicated on campuses across the country.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
NSJP has no problem functioning due to an apparent “lack of leadership.” SJP’s cunning founder also founded and chairs American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which supports and helps coordinate SJP chapters.
Bazian’s led AMP has been a leading organization providing training and “education” to students and Muslim community organizations in the U.S. AMP places heavy emphasis on supporting and helping coordinate the activity of SJP, assisting in its development as one of the primary organizers of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas activities on campuses. In a 2010 brochure, AMP described SJP as part of a “signature project” to “organize and unify the work for Palestine on U.S. campuses.”
In this vein, AMP provides pro-Hamas training “education,” indoctrination, and incitement to the Muslim community and its various organizations across America, primarily focusing on the younger generation (see AMP’s latest Convention Highlights).
And, if that’s not enough, Bazian also co-founded the Zaytuna Islamic College in Berkeley, a private “liberal arts” college whose mission is “to educate and prepare morally committed professional, intellectual, and spiritual leaders who are grounded in the Islamic scholarly tradition and conversant with the cultural currents and critical ideas shaping modern society.”
Their mission statement defines “liberal arts,” in accordance with their perceived religious tradition: “Liberal arts, in its original sense, meant a rigorous study of learning skills (trivium) and specific subjects (quadrivium). The same structure characterizes the traditional education of the Muslims–indeed, liberal arts education came to Christendom from Islam, as the late George Makdisi demonstrated in his seminal work, The Rise of Colleges. By understanding grammar, rhetoric, and logic, a student is equipped with the tools to approach any discipline.”
For years, Bazian has been one of the “leaders” who insidiously and successfully built Hamas proxy networks that are very active in the indoctrination of young people on campuses and beyond throughout North America.
Endorsing Hamas
As documented by the ADL, in the days following Hamas’ October 7 massacre, the national leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) and many of the organization’s campus chapters explicitly endorsed Hamas’s massacre and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and voiced an increasingly radical call for confronting and “dismantling” Zionism on U.S. college campuses. Some SJP chapters promptly promoted violent pro-Hamas, anti-Israel messaging throughout their numerous channels.
One of SJP’s actions was calling for a “Day of Resistance” on October 12, during which chapters on campuses across the country would convene rallies and other actions to applaud Palestinian Hamas’s “resistance” to Israel.
They took their directive and tone from a previous NSJP statement that encouraged “not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with oppressors” in Israel.
There was also a “Day of Resistance Toolkit” in which the NSJP made clear that it advocates for Hamas or other Palestinian forces to conquer all of Israel and for the “complete liberation” of Israel and the total influx of Palestinians to Israeli land.
The toolkit also calls for chapters to bring this resistance to the U.S. by “dismantling Zionism” on its campuses and “challenging Zionist hegemony.”
Subsequently, numerous SJP chapters released inflammatory statements in support of Palestinians seizing control of Israeli territory, including some that explicitly endorse the use of violence and attacks on Israeli civilians.
“We reject the distinction between ‘civilian’ and ‘militant.’ We reject the distinction between ‘settler’ and ‘soldier,’ the George Washington University SJP writes. “A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”
The SJP chapter of CUNY Law shares, “If you support Palestine, understand that it necessitates supporting our right to defend ourselves and liberate our homeland by any means necessary.”
Chapters also adopted the image of a person flying in a paraglider as a symbol of their call for resistance, an apparent reference to the Hamas terrorists who paraglided over Israel’s Gaza wall to slaughter Israeli civilians.
Toolkits Galore
The ‘toolkit’ published by NSJP clearly indicates that the SJP network has been sharing and propagating Hamas’s goals: the eradication of Israel as a State and all its inhabitants.
Conor Friedersdorf, in a November 9, 2023 article in The Atlantic references the NSJP October 14th activist toolkit: ‘Confrontation by any means necessary.’
Friedersdorf writes, “The National Students for Justice in Palestine released a ‘toolkit,’ which refers to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as ‘the resistance’ and unequivocally states: ‘Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”
Its “Day of Resistance Toolkit” describes the October 7 massacre, in which more than 1,200 defenseless Israeli civilians, women, children, and men were brutally massacred, many of them raped, beheaded, and babies burned alive, as follows:
“[T]he Palestinian resistance stormed the illegitimate border fence, gaining control of the Gaza checkpoint at Erez, and re-entering 1948 Palestine… Fearlessly, our people struggle for complete liberation and return.
“Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near. As the Palestinian student movement, we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization. National liberation is near— glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and our steadfast people. …”
The document states that the Israelis murdered on October 7, overwhelmingly civilian women, children, and men, were not really “civilians” and therefore not deserving of protection:
“Settlers are not ‘civilians’ in the sense of international law because they are military assets used to ensure continued control over stolen Palestinian land.”
Hamas routinely refers to all Israelis, wherever they live in Israel, as “settlers.” To many Palestinians, Israel is just one big “settlement.”
The toolkit also guides students on organizing local protests and provides talking points and advice on handling media. It includes graphics to print out for banners. One photograph was of Hamas terrorists celebrating October 7 on a captured Israeli tank and a drawing of the paragliders used by terrorists to invade Israel.
The text continues:
“Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea, and our resistance, through their bravery and love for land, continue to bring dignity and honor to the Palestinian people. As the diaspora-based student movement for Palestine liberation, our responsibility is not only to support but struggle alongside our people back home.”
All the above, and much more, is documented by Robert Williams in Hamas on Campus: Students for Justice in Palestine: SJP, AMP, and Hatem Bazian are not just endorsing Hamas; they have been actively propagating Hamas’s agenda and messaging as part of the deceptive Hamas proxy network spreading across North America.
Muslim Brotherhood
Hamas, as its charter states, is “one of the wings of the Muslim Brotherhood in Palestine.
As detailed by Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, Director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University (GWU), in his October 2023 report entitled The Hamas Network in America: A Short History, Hamas has for years been building large, effective networks in the U.S. under the radar.
The report notes:
- Hamas supporters have long operated in the United States. Internal Hamas documents and FBI wiretaps introduced as evidence in various federal criminal cases clearly show the existence of a nationwide Hamas network engaged in fundraising, lobbying, education, and propaganda dissemination dating back to the 1980s.
- The network formalized its existence in 1988 when it created the Palestine Committee in the U.S. The Committee’s goals included “increasing the financial and the moral support for Hamas, …. and publicizing “the savagery of the Jews.”
The Palestine Committee also spawned several public-facing organizations.
- In 1993, the FBI wiretapped a meeting of top Hamas activists in the U.S. held in Philadelphia. The wiretaps show internal discussions on how to improve activities in support of Hamas within the U.S. and how to shield them from the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization. US-based Hamas activists agreed that hiding their affiliation and intentions was the best tactic to avoid negative consequences.
“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” said one senior leader, “[d]eceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way. Deceive your enemy.” “Let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag, and let’s not be barbaric-talking. We will remain a front so that if the thing [the U.S. government ban on Hamas] happens, we will benefit from the new happenings instead of having all our organizations classified and exposed.”
- Over the years, U.S. authorities have conducted several activities to clamp down on the network, including deporting and prosecuting Hamas operatives and shutting down multiple front organizations.
- Yet, US-based Hamas networks and individuals display remarkable resilience, and many core activists are still engaged in various activities.
Two-pronged approach
The evolution of the network speaks of a larger dynamic, which is the ability of the US-based Hamas network to regenerate itself and continue its activities under new guises.
Over the years, core activists have created new structures to support Hamas. They have been establishing alternative organizations, camouflaging the identity of these new organizations.
Faced with two conflicting needs, they opted for a two-pronged approach that differentiated between its internal and external strategies. Maintaining a façade of moderation with American authorities and media, they spawned several public-facing organizations whose Islamic hue remains inconspicuous. However, within the Muslim community, they keep support for Hamas undeterred, engaging in various activities to aid the terror organization. Many argued that “in the coming stage, the most important thing is to “support Jihad in Palestine.”
They are also exerting extensive efforts to “educate” the American Muslim community, convincing them that Hamas is the only force worth supporting. They actively spread their message among their vulnerable and ignorant youth. “We don’t want the children of the community who are raised here in schools and in Islamic schools and non-Islamic schools to grow up surrendering to the issue of peace with Jews.”
They also developed a carefully crafted Media strategy: Defending Hamas without giving the impression of supporting violence was one of the most critical aspects of the Committee’s public relations campaign.
Now run primarily by Western-born activists, these networks understand how politics and media narratives work in the West. Whereas local Muslim communities frame the conflict in religious terms, labeling Israelis as “infidels” and evoking hadiths about the killing of Jews; on college campuses, those same networks use the language of postcolonial theory to tar Israelis as “European settlers.”
Unsurprisingly, several weeks ago, a Hamas leader told a Vice.com journalist that “the same type of racism [racial animus] that killed George Floyd is being used by Israel against the Palestinians”—a comparison tailored to the ears of black audiences and Western progressives.
Moreover, by evoking the George Floyd protests, young Americans have also been brainwashed into believing that the Jews are “white” and “privileged” and that Israel is a “colonial oppressor.”
An effective strategy
Indeed, thirty years later, their Hamas Proxy network in America has proved its effectiveness.
The widespread support for Hamas’s heinous atrocities on October 7 in North America and Europe, especially by the younger generation, including numerous young Jews, shocked many people.
It didn’t emerge from thin air. What mainly contributed to the phenomenon is this pervasive form of modern antisemitism that I outlined above, and which has been gestating for years—namely, the false anti-Israel narratives effectively instilled in young minds, Jewish and non-Jewish, that portray “the Israeli army as an army normatively committing war crimes,” and Israel as an “apartheid, genocidal, illegitimate entity, an occupied colonial endeavor…”
This toxic, insidious indoctrination campaign has been led by an additional network of organizations that, under the radar, methodically and effectively use cult-style brainwashing methods to radicalize young people, turning them against Israel.
These false narratives are echoed repeatedly across the globe via advanced social media, effectively convincing students that Israel is a pariah state and an evil entity that one is morally obligated to fight and destroy.
And their methods are working. A recent survey by Harvard-Harris polling found 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 – 24 believe Israel should ‘be ended and given to Hamas.’
I have similarly studied these other organizations for years, of which SJP is only one, focussing largely on their manipulative indoctrination methods, which today is amplified and fueled by Hamas terror proxy networks’ blatantly anti-Semitic activities and messaging throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Moreover, there is open collaboration between some of the Hamas proxies and some of these subversive organizations. IfNotNow (that was founded and led by Simone Zimmerman, the ex-president of National J-Street U, J-Street’s arm on American campuses), which has for years focused on indoctrinating, radicalizing, and turning the future Jewish generation against Israel, has been collaborating with and participating in Hamas proxy SJP’s anti-Israel, anti-Zionist activities, as well as closely collaborating with and promoting anti-Israel politicians such as Rashida Tlaib (see here) and their radical agenda.
Neutralizing the Trojan Horse
Under the present circumstances, when Americans have become more aware of Hamas’ real nature and of the growing violence of Hamas proxies on American campuses and streets, it is now possible to obtain bipartisan support for legislation to outlaw the existence and activities of all Hamas agents and proxies in the U.S.
Doing this would be a game changer, neutralizing the Trojan Horse endangering America and the Free World.
It would also significantly contribute towards resolving the problems (antisemitism and anti-Americanism) on the campuses, where, under the guise of Free Speech, Hamas terror proxies, such as SJP, have been propagating Hamas’s agenda and terror activities by bullying, intimidating, harassing, and terrorizing the campus communities.
U.S. Congress’s outlawing all Hamas proxy organizations in the U.S. would encourage Western countries, such as the UK, France, Belgium, and Germany, to follow suit.
Natan Nestel is Israeli and a co-founder of the Israel Action Committee at the University of California, Berkeley and columnist for the Jerusalem Post. He has been documenting the rise of anti-Israel activism on campuses throughout North America for over a decade, as well as the activities of J-St..
