There have been at least 234 pro-Hamas rallies on U.S. college campuses since the October terrorist attacks against Israel, the Anti-Defamation League told Congress on Wednesday.
The large number of protests highlights the growing influence of pro-terrorist and anti-Semitic groups at American universities, a trend that has drawn condemnation from lawmakers and calls for banning Hamas-supporting groups on college campuses.
"We tracked 234 anti-Israel and pro-Hamas rallies on U.S. campuses," said ADL director Jonathan Greenblatt during a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on Wednesday. "Not calls for a two-state solution, not calls for a one-state solution. These were calls for a final solution."
Witnesses at the hearing—which included the Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Jonathan Schanzer and Israeli actress and activist Noa Tishby—called for stronger federal efforts to fight anti-Semitism on campus and for investigations into links between domestic groups like American Muslims for Palestine and foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas.
Schanzer, who helped uncover the Holy Land Foundation’s terror financing links to Hamas during his time at the U.S. Treasury Department, told the committee that "more than a half dozen individuals who previously worked for those Hamas charities now run American Muslims for Palestine." American Muslims for Palestine is one of the organizers behind Students for Justice in Palestine, according to Schanzer, which has led many of the pro-Hamas rallies at colleges.
The groups support "unabashed anti-Semitism and even calls for genocide against Israel," said Schanzer.
Tishby called on the committee to cut off federal funding for universities that allow anti-Semitic groups to operate on their campuses.
"We wouldn't fund KKK chapters in our colleges. We shouldn't fund [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapters in our colleges," said Tishby. "And if universities fail to remove SJP off of campus, if they continue to protect and fund the ringleaders of an anti-Semitic mob, then this committee should withdraw funding for them."
Talia Dror, a Jewish student leader at Cornell University, described how she has lived in fear after another student threatened to shoot and rape Jews on campus. She slammed administrators for failing to protect and speak out for Jewish students.
"Universities have failed to uphold their self proclaimed values of equity and belonging when it comes to Jewish students. The hypocrisy is glaring," she told the committee. "American Jewish students on campus deserve better."