Over 100 faculty at Columbia University signed an open letter characterizing Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel as a "military response."
The letter, published Saturday, was in support of a student statement issued days after the attacks that argued "oppression breeds resistance" and called the Israeli government "fascist, racist, and colonial," accusing it of "aggression, apartheid, and settler-colonization."
"In our view," the faculty letter reads, "the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years."
"One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation," the faculty claimed.
They also wrote in the letter that "armed resistance by an occupied people must conform to the laws of war" and that the students' statement "reflects and endorses this legal framework, including a condemnation of the killing of civilians."
The faculty signatories also argued that the students' statement contains "language that should satisfy any measure of decency" given its opening remark that "the loss of a human life is a deeply painful and heartbreaking experience for loved ones." The students' statement, however, did not condemn Hamas's massacre of civilians or even reference the terrorist group by name.
"It is worth noting that not all of us agree with every one of the claims made in the students’ statement, but we do agree that making such claims cannot and should not be considered anti-Semitic," the faculty write. "Their merits are being debated by governmental and non-governmental agencies at the highest level, and constitute a terrain of completely legitimate political and legal debate."
The letter is one of several public statements from faculty at major universities that have attempted to minimize or excuse Hamas's attacks that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, mostly civilians. A letter from faculty at the University of Michigan claimed the attacks were the result of "structural apartheid" on the part of Israel.
The Columbia statement comes after a woman allegedly assaulted an Israeli student at the school who was putting up posters of hostages whom Hamas terrorists captured during their rampage.