Anti-Israel protesters march through Harvard, chanting ‘long live the intifada’
As school year kicks off, 80-strong rally held outside campus building where university president met with with activists for promised discussion on potential Israel divestment
Anti-Israel protesters at Harvard University chanted “Long live the intifada” and “Globalize the intifada,” as they marched through campus on Friday, three days after classes began, indicating the summer break did little to temper tensions over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
The chants referred to periods of deadly Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians in the late 1980s and early 1990s and again in the early 2000s in which over a thousand Israelis were killed.
The protest was held under heavy police presence, the Harvard Crimson reported.
The university newspaper said the 80-strong march, organized by the group Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, ended in a rally outside a campus building where interim university president Alan Garber met with HOOP representatives to discuss their demand that Harvard divest from Israel.
“No matter what the university says or does, our demands have always been crystal clear: Disclose and divest,” the Crimson quoted HOOP organizer Tamar Sella as saying. “These meetings were never the end goal of our campaign.”
Garber had agreed to hold the meeting in May, as part of his efforts to negotiate a peaceful end to the university’s pro-Palestinian encampment. HOOP did not comment on the outcome of the meeting, and Harvard declined to comment, the Crimson said.
The pro-terror mob is marching through @Harvard screaming "long live the intifada" and "globalize the intifada."
To be clear, they may as well be screaming "kill the Jews."
If they were screaming for the slaughter of any other minority, you know this would never be tolerated. pic.twitter.com/saHqqTnQuo
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) September 6, 2024
The demonstration reportedly featured speakers railing against the university’s decision to discipline some students who had participated in the encampment. According to the Crimson, five students at the 20-day encampment were suspended, and over 20 put on probation.
Harvard and other elite US campuses have emerged as hotbeds of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian activity amid the war in Gaza sparked by Hamas’s October 7 rampage through southern Israel, in which 1,200 were killed and 251 taken hostage.
Hours after the attack, some 30 Harvard undergraduate groups said the blame for the devastating terror assault lay entirely with Israel.
A task force charged with reporting on antisemitism at Harvard concluded in June that Israeli students at the Ivy League university were facing “dire” exclusion.
Harvard’s handling of Jewish student concerns has been under intense criticism since October 7. Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned in January, a month after a congressional hearing at which she failed to say whether “calls for the genocide of Jews” violated university conduct.
Though the university’s board of directors decided against firing her following the disastrous performance, Gay stepped down when conservative activists published evidence that her academic work contained numerous instances of plagiarism.
