City officials question who is funding anti-Israel protests that are rife with anti-Semitism at Columbia University and New York University, and near-identical equipment used in these “camps” occupying campuses tent, an expert told Fox News Digital about the apparent organization and recent “training” of students. “session” suggests “foreign aid.”
“I think there is good reason to suspect that there is foreign aid and coordination that is fueling the campus protests,” said Dr. Jay Green, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation Education Policy Center, a conservative think tank, on Fox News. told. Digital. Green said that while “the hard evidence proving this is still vague,” given that organizing happens “sometimes indirectly or covertly,” it is “reasonable to suspect that organizing is occurring.” “There are enough signs that this will happen,” he said.
“Those signs include having a common tent, buying all those tents and having them ready for use. Even the timing of the protests was on the eve of Passover. , the timing is opportune to put Jewish students at a disadvantage. And there are also striking similarities in the language used by protesters and foreign actors, including Hamas and Hezbollah,” he said. Ta.
Mr. Green also announced that the Palestinian group will be working in Colombia to help train students on the same “talking points” that Hamas and Hezbollah leaders have repeatedly made in speeches calling for “a global intifada and aid.” He also mentioned how the “training sessions” sponsored by such organizations have been conducted. of foreign allies. ”
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“We know there were these training sessions, we know there were speeches, we see similarities in equipment, we see similarities in language,” Green said. “But this is not to say that these movements don’t have domestic origins. I mean, I think they certainly do, but they are promoted and abetted by foreign agents. .”
Days after Columbia University President Minoush Shafik testified before Congress about anti-Semitism on campus, and weeks before anti-Israel demonstrations reached their climax, Columbia University had already hosted three demonstrations in on-campus residential facilities. The school announced that it had suspended several students for the event on Monday. It is prohibited to occur twice.
A video showing a virtual portion of a two-hour “Resistance 101” seminar hosted by Columbia University Apartheid Divest has gone viral on YouTube, featuring Charlotte Cates, international coordinator of the Palestine Prisoners of Solidarity Network Samidoun, and Her husband Khalid Barakat appeared in the film.
Israeli government documents link Barakat to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a foreign terrorist organization designated by the US State Department.
“There’s nothing wrong with being a Hamas fighter,” speakers told students in a conference call, according to the New York Post. Appearing remotely, Cates said of the most extreme anti-Israel agitators at Columbia University and its sister university, Barnard College, “These are the people who are on the front lines defending Palestine and fighting for its liberation.” .
The House Education and Labor Committee on March 25 also condemned Mr. Barakat’s association with the PFLP terrorist organization, saying in a webinar that Mr. Barakat told Columbia University students that “friends of Hamas and Islamic Jihad” are on U.S. college campuses. “They don’t care what Biden says, they don’t care what Kamala Harris says,” he added. .
“All the protests in New York are more important than all this nonsense going on in the mainstream media,” Barakat told the students. “Your work is more important than ever to the Gaza resistance.”
New York City police officers remove tents from an encampment set up by anti-Israel demonstrators on the campus of New York University (NYU) on April 22, 2024. (Alex Kent/AFP via Getty Images)
Fox News Digital reached out to Kates’ group, Samidoun, for comment, but did not immediately receive a response.
Students for Palestinian Justice are a “remarkably shadowy group,” Green said, given that they have been integrated into anti-Israel protests at several elite universities and do not operate under their own 501c3. “It is difficult to accurately observe the actual situation,” he said. Organized and funded. ”
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, Greene told Fox News Digital how terrorism-related NGOs, including the Holy Land Foundation, were charged by the U.S. government with supporting terrorism.
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“The government has gone out of its way to scrutinize these organizations and their financial flows to find organizations that are essentially abusing nonprofit tax laws to promote foreign influence and support for terrorism,” he said. Stated. “Over time, a similar investigation could be conducted here, and there is a good chance that similar issues will be uncovered, but that would require major government intervention.”
“We’re going to need a presidential administration that makes this a top priority,” he continued. “The Biden administration is not considering this as a priority.”
Anti-Israel demonstrators at an encampment outside New York University’s Stern School of Business in Greenwich Village, Monday, April 22, 2024. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
New York City Mayor Eric Adams and NYPD Chief of Operations Kaz Daughtry separately criticized the tents used in the demonstrations on Tuesday, saying they all appeared to be similar, if not identical.
“Was there a fire sale of those tents? So there’s a lot of organizing going on,” Adams said. “And what is the purpose of that organizing? That’s what we have to ask ourselves.” Similar to the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations where “anarchists came to the city.” The mayor said “outside agitators” were making inroads into the protests at Columbia University and New York University.
Adams said authorities have identified “people who don’t attend school on campus” as fanning the flames of unrest.
In an interview with local news Tuesday morning, Daughtry said the NYPD was trying to “inflame the mob mentality and incite the officers to react and get one of them to fight back” at Monday night’s protests. It said it had identified a “known professional agitator”.Assaulting one of the protesters and forcing him to take an image of him [that shows] “Look, I’ve been brutally assaulted by the police.”
On April 22, 2024, in New York City, anti-Israel students and faculty at New York University, inspired by Columbia University, occupied a campus plaza and declared it a Gaza Solidarity encampment. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images)
“It’s great that New York City officials are sensitive to the potential difficulties here and are asking for more information,” Green told Fox News Digital. “But the government alone doesn’t have the resources or authority to conduct these types of investigations. We really need a federal effort, especially since these are international and sometimes involve sensitive material.”
Green added: “It would be especially tragic if it took some horrible tragedy to trigger an investigation into how it happened.”
“You know, we went through the terrible tragedy of 9/11, and let’s hope it doesn’t happen again as we go after the bad guys,” he said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia University’s campus on Wednesday to show support for Jewish students, as the timing of demonstrations culminates in the run-up to Passover. “If the situation is not contained quickly and these threats and intimidation are not stopped, then there will be an appropriate time to deploy the National Guard,” Johnson said over screams from the crowd.
“We have to bring order to these campuses,” he said. “We cannot allow things like this to happen across the country.”
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NYPD officials say they need permission from Columbia leadership to enter campuses and make arrests, and officers are prohibited from entering private property unless a crime is in progress, in which case officers may He explained that he intervenes when someone’s life is in danger.
Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (RN.Y.) on Wednesday denounced “terrorist sympathizers” on campus, saying, “To the protesters who are proud to be supported by Hamas, you too. That’s part of the problem.”
