Anti-Israel vandals smashed windows and poured red paint on a statue on Harvard University's campus overnight following the one-year anniversary of Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attack, leading to a police investigation.
Unity of Fields, a self-described "militant front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism," shared footage of the vandalism Tuesday morning. The group has also vowed to bring violence to America.
"Autonomous actors at Harvard smashed windows of the main admin building & vandalized the John Harvard statue in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. We are committed to bringing the war home & answering the call to open up a new front here in the belly of the beast." pic.twitter.com/k4fOuSgFFq
— Unity of Fields (@unityoffields) October 8, 2024
"In the early hours of 10/8, autonomous actors at Harvard smashed windows of the main administrative building and vandalized the John Harvard statue in an act of solidarity with the Palestinian resistance. 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," the group wrote.
Asked if any student organizations were involved in the incident, which occurred just steps away from the first-year students’ dormitory, a spokesman for the Harvard University Police Department told the Washington Free Beacon that the incident "is under investigation" and would not comment further.
While Harvard’s anti-Israel student groups have remained silent on the vandalism, several shared a joint statement Monday celebrating the Oct. 7 terror attack.
"There can be no normalcy here or anywhere as Gaza suffers massacre after massacre," the groups wrote. "Now is the time to escalate."
"Resistance will ultimately break the shackles of the Zionist entity," the statement continued. "Our role in the United States, at Harvard, in the imperial core, is to remain unflinching in our solidarity. After a year of genocide, military campaigns, and forced displacement, we only grow more committed to the struggle for a liberated Palestine."
Unity of Fields, formerly Palestine Action US, is well known for its violent protests targeting Israeli businesses. In November, the group defaced an Israeli defense company’s office with graffiti reading "War Criminals Work Here" and "We Will Be Back!" Arrested members have had their legal fees bankrolled by Fergie Chambers, a communist trust fund baby who inherited millions from his family, which controls the Cox Enterprises empire.
"We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public," Chambers said in November. "We need to make all of white America afraid that everything they have stolen is going to be burned to the ground. That’s what makes them listen."
Since Unity of Field’s August rebrand, the group has taken an interest in anti-Israel campus activism, regularly sharing footage of criminal vandalism at American colleges and universities. On Monday, the group praised "actionists" who smashed the windows of a City College of New York building and doused it in red paint. On Tuesday morning, Unity of Fields praised vandalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and warned that "autonomous actions" will not end until "Palestine is fully liberated."
The group also took credit for vandalism at Columbia University last month. On the first day of classes, a masked individual dumped red paint on the bronze Alma Mater statue. Campus access was restricted to individuals with a valid Columbia ID, suggesting the perpetrator was affiliated with the university.
"The first day of classes at Columbia University are drenched in blood," the group posted to X. "We act in full support of the Palestinian resistance. This action is first & foremost an effort to extend the successes of the Palestinian resistance to the heart of the empire itself, to translate their resilience in Gaza to unrest & violence in America."
"Divestment is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself," the group wrote in a follow-up post listing its demands. "It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of all populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it."