Pro-Palestinian campus groups plan vigils and ‘rage’ honoring Oct 7 ‘martyrs’

Pro-Palestinian student organizations across the country are holding vigils on Tuesday to honor “martyrs” and “rally for rage” on the anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.

Campus groups — many affiliated with the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) network — are promoting events commemorating the day Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 civilians, raped and tortured others, and took 251 hostages in Israel. SJP, which has led anti-Israel demonstrations nationwide, previously described the massacre as a “historic win.”

In one post advertising its Tuesday “Rally for Rage & Resistance,” the Philadelphia SJP Coalition explicitly referred to the Hamas attackers as “martyrs.”

“October 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the zionist [sic] regime has turned Gaza into,” the group wrote on Instagram on Sept. 29. “Now more than ever, we must reject all normalization with the zionist [sic] regime, uplift indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs.”

Other SJP chapters echoed similar messages. The University of California, Davis, chapter proclaimed “Glory to all of our martyrs” on its Oct. 7 event flyer, while the Stanford University chapter declared it was organizing its event “in honor of our martyrs.” The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University chapters of SJP, along with the local chapters of the Palestinian Youth Movement and Muslim Students Association, are hosting a “vigil for our martyrs” on Tuesday.

Neither the Philadelphia SJP Coalition nor the SJP chapters at the University of California, Davis, North Carolina State University and Stanford responded to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. SJP at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could not be reached for comment.

A lawsuit filed earlier this year alleges the campus groups, including Columbia SJP, had advance knowledge of the Oct. 7 massacre and carried out violent protests on the terrorist organization’s behalf. Columbia SJP posted “we are back!!” on a formerly inactive social media account “three minutes before Hamas began its attack,” showing that the activists “had prior knowledge of” the invasion, the lawsuit alleges.

SJP also published a “toolkit” shortly after Oct. 7, praising Hamas “resistance” fighters and declaring, “We as Palestinian students in exile are part of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.” In a section dealing with “messaging and framing,” SJP told students that “resistance is justified” and to “normalize the resistance,” calling it “morally and politically necessary.”

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), another radical anti-Israel organization, is also hosting an Oct. 7 event calling for supporters to “flood New York City for Gaza” and to “honor the martyrs of Gaza.”

WOL, which is also mentioned in the lawsuit, advocates using “any means necessary” to achieve what it calls the liberation of Palestine from the “genocidal apartheid state of Israel.” Just two days after the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, the group organized an “Emergency Rally for Gaza,” urging supporters to “defend the heroic Palestinian resistance, honor our martyrs and let the world know that NYC stands with Gaza!”

Neither the national SJP chapter nor WOL responded to the DCNF’s request for comment.

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