Globalists, Marxists, and Hamas: Tying Campus Protests to the Anti-Western Cabal (Pt. 1)
How America’s pro-Palestine astroturf campus protests were organized by “white privilege” elites tied to radical Islamist groups and known terrorists.
The protesters who took over college campuses this spring were as organized as they were extreme—thanks to the efforts of globalist elites who radicalized and professionalized the campus protests.
This investigative report examines the rash of “progressive” college students in America taking up the cause of the terrorist group Hamas, in response to the atrocities they committed in Israel on October 7, 2023. Hamas raped, tortured, and killed innocent civilians in the largest terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The attack resulted in the brutal deaths of over 1,200 innocent civilians, while Hamas took over 200 other people hostage. The attacks served to remind the world that radical Islamists will never stop fighting to destroy the State of Israel and that the Middle East continues to struggle to contain the terroristic intentions of malignant actors that excuse the brutalization of innocent people around the world—particularly in Israel.
In response, encampments popped up on dozens of American college campuses in spring 2024, almost simultaneously. As Israel waged war in Gaza with the stated goal of destroying Hamas, encampments that mirrored the Occupy Wall Street encampments of 2011–2012, or the Black Lives Matter (BLM) occupied zones of 2020, sprung up on university greens, with printed signs, hundreds of the same tents purchased off Amazon, professional agitators from off-campus, and the same chants shouted in demonstrations that often devolved to riot. They all shared a common enemy: Not the brutal terrorists of Hamas, but Israel.
That’s right—American college students at these campus encampments and protests took the side of the perpetrators of atrocities, and against America’s closest ally in the Middle East.
Where did these coordinated encampments come from? Why did they all look and act the same, and recycle their tactics from previous radical leftist movements? And why did they take the side of the terrorists?
Restoration News connects the dots in this deep-dive report. The astroturf movements have their roots in Big Philanthropy, the same leftist organizations that have funded anti-free speech demonstrations, incoherent riots in our cities, and cancel culture that attempts to remove “Wrongthink” from our society in the form of sponsor boycotts and protests at people’s homes and places of business. Radical nonprofits and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have added the Palestinian cause to their basket of other causes, in an overarching anti-Western philosophy that demands world governance to deliver more equitable results for the world’s oppressed people.
These astroturf movements also have more sinister connections.
This report examines the direct ties between the left-wing college students, filled with white privilege and moral certitude, and terrorist organizations in the Middle East. These protests don’t simply provide symbolic support for terrorism. They connect directly to violent Islamists, convicted terrorists, and virulent anti-Semites. Many of the college students don’t realize what they’ve committed to supporting. But many of them do realize it, and they get material assistance from organizations inside and outside the United States that wish to see our nation torn down. Israel, too.
How’d It Get So Bad?
How did we get to this point, merely one generation removed from the terrorist attacks by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, that killed almost 3,000 American civilians?
College students in America and around the globe have exhibited an increasingly anti-Semitic attitude over the past two decades to the extent they embrace the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement. Radicals on college campuses adopting the BDS movement comes in the larger context of radical nonprofits and NGOs aligning their massive resources in a power struggle. They wage a never-ending war to redefine the definition of racism and oppression, to redefine “social justice,” and to redefine what governments should do. Just like in the context of “global warming,” the fight to sustain individual liberty faces powerful foes. Those foes have adopted the BDS cause in a false moral equivalency, redefining Israel’s society as an “apartheid state.”
Equating Israel to the brutal treatment of black South Africans by the white National Party that took power in 1948 has no basis in reality, yet the myth persists. That myth fuels the greater myth that Israel has engaged in genocide against the Palestinians. These myths give moral cover for the naïve college radicals who believe everything they hear about Israel.
These myths began among radical Jew-hating Islamists; the Palestinian leaders, some of them billionaires, who foment hatred among their people while living high on the hog in foreign countries; and among anti-Western and anti-capitalist governments during the Cold War. For a long time, most Americans recognized these myths as anti-West campaigns and rejected them. But the myths slowly spread and found purchase in academia, in radical communist circles, and at the United Nations (UN).
While that went on with most of the West not taking it too seriously, the radical groups slowly amassed power and wealth as the Cold War fizzled out. The United States no longer had an existential threat in a second superpower state after the Soviet Union dissolved. Americans debated whether we should become the world’s “police.” Faith in America’s moral clarity eroded, with the help of the radical organizing of the gradually expanding NGOs.
With that historical backdrop, let us now examine the connections between America’s pro-Hamas campus encampments and the organizations that directly aid and abet Hamas and its terroristic activities against Israel—and America.
BDS & Asymmetrical Warfare
None of the protests or campus occupations can credibly be called organic, as they share so many organizational factors. The protests got progressively more violent, as demonstrated by the photojournalist assaulted at Portland State. This seems like a familiar pattern repeating itself yet again.
On top of radical nonprofits raising money and using taxpayer grants to fund them, the occupations also share a more sinister trait: Connections to America’s adversaries, and to terrorist groups hell-bent on tearing down the West in favor of an Islamist worldview. Malign forces have used the BDS movement to infiltrate college faculty and administrations with the express intent of spreading anti-Semitic hate. That influence has spread to corporate America as well. This worldview even infests much of the federal government, spreading under the Biden administration.
Radical anti-West organizations, movements, and governments have mainstreamed anti-Israel and pro-terror movements in their efforts to frame the entire world as oppressors versus freedom fighters, colonizers against indigenous people, and white supremacists and Jewish supremacists versus black and brown populations.
In other words, the terrorists, globalists, and Marxists work together because they share a common anti-Western world view. Academia falls in line in a case of convergent evolution.
In an extensive report, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) followed the corrosive influence of the BDS movement on American college campuses. NAS says the wokeness of modern college campuses allowed BDS to spread:
BDS groups present their cause through a rhetorical framework of anti-colonialism and so-called “anti-racism” that resonates with the broader left-wing political landscape. The deployment of this ideological framework embeds BDS within academia due to the predominance of critical theory, identity politics, and grievance studies in today’s colleges and universities. Groups such as SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) are increasingly effective in martialing [sic] broad support for BDS initiatives across student bodies and campus governments.
Embedding BDS within an “anti-imperialist” framework appeals to the Marxian and globalist tendencies among progressive academics. Far from an accident, it’s a deliberate attempt at synchronizing the apparently unrelated movements.
The BDS movement began during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s in the Middle East. It represents a deliberate attempt at asymmetric warfare by such coalition members as Hamas and Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, among other terrorist organizations. The BDS portion of the strategy helped these groups use what the NAS report calls “anti-Israel civil society diplomacy” to build support around the world and undermine support for Israel.
Asymmetric warfare, like the kind waged against the West by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), relies on propaganda, brainwashing, and access to mass media to demoralize citizens and make them doubt the shared vision that holds the nation together.
A main organizer of BDS efforts in America is the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI). The American branch, USACBI, works with BDS efforts on campuses all across the nation. PACBI has direct terrorist ties, as NAS details:
PACBI is structurally linked to Palestinian political groups that include terrorist organizations. In 2007, PACBI helped found the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), which serves as a coalition of organizations advocating for punitive economic measures against Israel. One of the BNC’s organizational members is the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine (PNIF), which itself comprises five different terrorist organizations: Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the Popular Front-General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The BNC, of which both PACBI and the PNIF are members, is funded in part by the US-based nonprofit US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). As of 2018, the USCPR had supported 329 different BDS groups along with the BNC. On July 15, 2017, the BNC hosted an anti-Israel webinar with Pink Floyd rock star Roger Waters that was promoted by the USCPR.
The Israeli government has tracked these groups for years. In a 2019 report, “Terrorists in Suits,” the Ministry of Strategic Affairs maps out the extensive connections between BDS groups, the BNC, and terrorist groups. In a press release, the ministry said:
. . . Hamas and the PFLP are utilizing a network of NGOs promoting boycotts against Israel as an additional tactic in their ultimate goal of dismantling the State of Israel. These organizations have successfully placed over 30 of their members, 20 of which have served time, including for murder, in senior positions within BDS-promoting NGOs. The report documents how boycott organizations and terrorist designated organizations raise finances together, share the same personnel, and showcases that contrary to popular belief, these officials have not abandoned their support for terrorism, but instead, continue to maintain organizational, financial, and active ties with terrorist groups.
The Ministry of Strategic Affairs further revealed the support these groups have received—millions of euros in donations from foreign NGOs and grants from several European nations. These groups coordinate and fundraise with known terrorists, such as Leila Khaled and Mustafa Awad. Awad represents Samidoun, an NGO that trains BDS activists globally. He has trained with Lebanon’s Islamist group Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both designated terror organizations. NGO Monitor, an Israel-based think tank, says of Samidoun:
In February 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense designated Samidoun a terrorist organization and “a subsidiary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).” According to the Ministry, Samidoun was founded by “members of the PFLP in 2012,” and Khaled Barakat, identified by the PFLP as “coordinator” of Samidoun, “is involved with establishing militant cells and motivating terrorist activity in Judea & Samaria and abroad.”
Supporters of BDS often claim they are merely anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic, distinguishing between the State of Israel and the Jewish people. This supposedly justifies extreme criticism of Israel and its government for practicing apartheid and other such moral equivalencies. The clear connections between terrorism and BDS put the lie to those claims. Indeed, BDS has its very foundations in terror groups, which created the entire movement as another weapon in its asymmetric warfare campaign.
Protest Consultants and Professional Agitators
Matt Wolfson, writing for Restoration News, has reported that veteran “protest consultants” have featured prominently in the organization and execution of several of these campus protests:
From October through April, the Florida International University (FIU) chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), which a past Restoration report documented advancing the cause of the Cuban Communist regime, held at least eighteen events related to the Israel-Hamas conflict. These included its October event promoting “the fight against capitalism and for a free Palestine,” and its January participation in “the HISTORIC 400,000 person March on Washington for Gaza.” They also included “a Panel on the connections between LGBTQ Liberation and the Fight for a Free Palestine” that same month as well as a “Vigil for Palestinian martyrs” in April, complete with rose petals.
Wolfson’s research reveals YDSA “coordinators” at several of the campus encampments, including New York University, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Northeastern, Emerson, and University of Oregon. YDSA leaders bragged all over social media of their involvement in organizing the protests.
Veteran protesters have also shown up, according to Wolfson. Lisa Fithian has worked as a “protest consultant” in and around academic institutions since the 1970s. She has published books on creating social disorder in the name of social change. Fithian was one of the identified paid leftist agitators at the January 6, 2021 Capitol protest, “planning actions in Washington, D.C. . . . under the motto ‘Chaos is the soup by which change emerges, let’s get cooking.’” Fithian was seen helping the pro-Hamas protests at Columbia University.
Another leftist Jan. 6 agitator, Talia Jane, describes the Jan. 6 protesters in Rolling Stone as “white nationalists” and equates them to the oppressors of Palestinians. She and Mark Bray, a Rutgers professor, urge all “anti-fascists” to take up the Palestinian cause.
YSDA is, of course, an offshoot of the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY) and the rest of the “Squad” as its most notorious members. Wolfson writes the donors to the Democratic Socialists of America hold several elective offices around the U.S., as well as working for MSNBC and formerly for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.
The New York Post revealed the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), funded by the worst of the radical nonprofits, pays for a “community-based fellow” program. Fellows in the campus program can earn between $2,880 and 3,660 for an eight-hour work week organizing campaigns led by “Palestinian organizations.” The program trains fellows to “rise up, to revolution.” The program specifically prohibits support for “reform,” demanding instead, “transformative change.”
Campus protests also received significant support from the U.S. Palestine Activism Program of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)—the Quaker Church that has agitated for peace for decades. That campus support includes funding and strategic coordination from professional organizers.
Many of the professional “protest consultants” have direct ties to the communist regimes of China, Cuba, and other governments adversarial to the United States. In fact, several of the outside agitators have trained in Cuba, according to reports by ADN America and the New York Post. ADN wrote:
ADN’s investigation coincides with a recent Sunday report published by the New York Post that revealed a radical NYC based organization known as The People’s Forum familiarized anti-Israel activists with Black Lives Matter protest techniques just hours before they stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, and that the group was incited by Manolo De Los Santos–a radical activist organizer with deep ties to communist Cuba.
De Los Santos, who has long been the subject of past ADN investigations, has a lengthy, storied history of working with some of Cuba’s top communist party leaders including its president, Miguel Diaz-Canel.
De Los Santos even bragged on X/Twitter about his revolutionary training in Cuba and hosted a pro-terror rally which featured a speech by squad member, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D–MI).
The Free Press reported:
The conference was organized by over a dozen pro-Palestine groups, including The People’s Forum, which owns the conference’s website domain. As a recent Free Press investigation showed, The People’s Forum is funded by multimillionaire Marxist Neville Roy Singham, who was born and became wealthy in America but now lives in Shanghai where he funds a number of propaganda sites boosting the Chinese Communist Party. People’s Forum’s executive director Manolo De Los Santos also spoke at the conference, calling for the end of America. “We have to bring down this empire with one million cuts, and those one million cuts have to come from every sector of struggle in this room,” De Los Santos said.
“Death To America”
The ultimate goal of the campus occupations is crystal clear: Support for Hamas terrorism, and the death of America and its allies. On April 23, Columbia University made the decision to end all in-person classes for the remainder of the semester, a decision met with outrage from parents and students forced to fork over the $70,000+ tuition anyway. The reason? They couldn’t get control of the pro-Hamas protests on campus—especially after they refused to allow the New York Police Department on campus to restore order.
Restoration News covered the Death to America occupation that sprang up at the University of Michigan: “Dusting off their ‘Occupy’ and ‘CHAZ’ playbooks, radicalized students at the University of Michigan have set up the ‘Liberated Encampment Zone.’ This consists of a tent city on campus, anarchist propaganda, and calls for ‘the Third Intifada’ and the defeat of the ‘liberal-fascist associates’ of Zionists.”
A student at the University of Michigan, Josh Brown, told Restoration News the administration has allowed an escalation of the pro-Hamas protest and encampment. In an exclusive interview, Brown said, “The encampment at the University of Michigan represents yet another step in a consistent pattern of escalation by student groups on campus and inaction by university administration.” The student groups actually glorify terrorists, Brown said. “These student groups have a history of advocating for violence . . . while flagrantly violating university policy and the law. University administrators must take immediate and decisive action to ensure the safety of Jewish students on campus.”
Brown blasted the university in March in an op-ed in the Michigan Review for honoring a student group, Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE), with a Martin Luther King, Jr. Spirit Award. Brown wrote, “SAFE is the University of Michigan chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, an openly anti-Zionist organization advocating the destruction of the State of Israel. From inviting known antisemites to speak to members’ forcing their way into university buildings, SAFE is quite active on campus.”
He related the story of a campus event less than a week before the Oct. 7 attacks, in which SAFE held an annual “apartheid wall” demonstration:
This event showcased a mock wall resembling the Gaza–Israel security barrier adorned with Palestinian imagery. Most disturbing of all was the depiction of a woman holding an AK-47 rifle surrounded by the words “Power to Our Freedom Fighters. Glory to Our Martyrs.” This woman is Leila Khaled, notorious for hijacking not one, but two civilian aircraft using firearms and explosives. Since retiring from plane hijacking, Khaled has continued to advocate violence in various interviews.
Brown took the following photo of one of the banners displayed at the Death to America encampments, which features the stylized image of terrorist Leila Khaled.
In response to the Oct. 7 atrocities, SAFE, the student group that organized the demonstrations at Michigan, made a social media post calling the attacks “100% predictable and justified.”
Michigan was far from unique.
Shocking as they may appear on cable news, pro-Hamas and anti-Western protests on campus didn’t just start in April. They’ve gone on since the horrific terrorist attacks in Israel. In November, students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison protested an appearance by Ben Shapiro. Protesters even shouted down First Lady Jill Biden in a March appearance in Arizona.
In Part Two, we expose the ties between these radical campus occupations, Big Philanthropy, corporate America, and known terrorists. Available now.
Jeff Reynolds is a senior investigative researcher for Restoration News.
