A timeline of Israel’s history sitting in the center of Harvard University’s campus is riddled with factual inaccuracies, falsely accusing the Jewish state of starting the 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict, for example. One expert called it a "demonstration of ignorance" and questioned the quality of the Ivy League school’s education. Another said "pretty much everything" in the timeline is false.
The so-called art installation, "365 Days, 75 Years: A Reflection on the Ongoing Nakba," was installed by an anti-Israel student group, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, and was on display Wednesday and Thursday. It included a timeline detailing key events in Palestinian history before the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed nearly 1,200 Israelis.
"Israel launches attacks on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, unleashing the June War that results in the Israeli occupation of what remained of historic Palestine," the timeline read under the year 1973.
But that account is false. The 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict kicked off after Egypt and Syria launched a coordinated surprise attack on Israeli forces.
"This display is a demonstration of ignorance, disinformation, malice, and anti-Semitism," Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Washington Free Beacon. "It shames Harvard and makes you wonder what is being taught, and what is being learned, in its classrooms today."
"The account of the 1973 war shows a complete lack of knowledge and a desire to avoid the historical facts about the coordinated Arab attacks on Yom Kippur 1973," Abrams added. "In fact, even Al Jazeera would be a better source of information—it says, ‘Egypt and Syria decided to launch a two-front coordinated attack.’ This is pure disinformation."
Israeli legal scholar and George Mason University Law School professor Eugene Kontorovich told the Free Beacon that "pretty much everything" in the timeline was false. He said it was akin to describing World War II by exclusively noting that Allied bombings killed millions of Germans and that Soviets raped women in Berlin. The difference, Kontorovich said, is that those details on their own are true, while "most of the things" in the anti-Israel group’s timeline are not.
It’s unclear whether Harvard, which did not respond to a request for comment, was involved in the installation, though it did include a poster promoting an April roundtable, "Fragmentation: Design and Counter-Design in Palestine." The event was cosponsored by the Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging and the Graduate School of Design.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee’s timeline also described the Oct. 7 terror attack as "the largest offensive by the [Al-Qassam Brigades] since its founding" and referred to the Israel Defense Forces as "IOF," meaning "Israel Occupation Forces." It erroneously dated the October events immediately following the attack as having occurred in 2024.
The committee was among several anti-Israel student groups to issue a joint statement marking the first anniversary since the Oct. 7 attack.
"There can be no normalcy here or anywhere as Gaza suffers massacre after massacre," the Monday statement read. "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."
Meanwhile, early Tuesday morning, anti-Israel vandals smashed windows and poured red paint on a statue on Harvard’s campus, 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. The group previously vowed to bring violence to America.
"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," the group wrote. "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."