An anti-Israel activist group informally affiliated with Tulane University says the "biggest threat" facing Jews is "white supremacy," not Hamas or other terror groups that have pledged to annihilate Israel and its people.
The New Orleans-based Tulane Students for Palestine, which the university does not recognize as an official student group, on Wednesday took to Instagram to defend its use of the slogan, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," which calls for the Jewish state's annihilation. That slogan, the group said, is merely a call for a state in which "all people, including Jews, could live as equals." The group also dismissed the threat of Palestinian terrorism, arguing that "white supremacy" is a larger threat to the Jewish people than what it called "the struggle for Palestinian liberation."
"What we have seen for far too long is that it is Israel and the fantasy of Zionism that results in the expulsion and mass killing of Palestinians, not the other way around," the video says. "The biggest threat to us as Jews is and has always been white supremacy, not the struggle for Palestinian liberation and self-determination. You are hurting Jews and Palestinians when you conflate the freedom struggle with white supremacy."
The video comes just one week after the Tulane activist group held an off-campus rally that turned violent, with anti-Israel demonstrators attempting to burn an Israeli flag before attacking a supporter of the Jewish state, according to eyewitnesses and videos. Shortly before the incident, Tulane Students for Palestine noted in an Instagram post that there were "still brave individuals rallying against Zionists right now." It went on to tout the rally's "incredible turnout" before expressing sadness that the rally ended "with arrests."
The rally and subsequent violence prompted both condemnation from Tulane and confusion regarding the purported "student" group's origins. Tulane Students for Palestine's first Instagram post came just days before the rally, and a pro-Israel student who attended the event as a counterprotester told the Washington Free Beacon that most of the group's attendees did not attend the university.
Tulane Students for Palestine's Wednesday video appeared to confirm that the group's organizers and vocal supporters are not active students at Tulane and, in some cases, are not affiliated with the university at all. At the beginning of the video, a speaker identifies those who appear in the post as "New Orleans Jews, including Tulane alumni."
At least one of the group's anti-Israel demonstrators was arrested in connection with the clash at last week's rally, and that demonstrator does not attend Tulane, police confirmed. A student who witnessed the attack said it was unexpected—Tulane is home to a substantial Jewish population that before the rally held pro-Israel marches without incident.
"The violence was out of the blue. Campus is usually peaceful," the student told the Free Beacon. "It went from zero to 100, essentially."