Marching Toward Violence: Strategic Alliance

Marching Toward Violence:
The Domestic Anti-Israeli Protest Movement (full report)
Executive Summary | Background | Four Overlapping Circles
Strategic Alliance | Conclusions | Countering the Movement
Table of Pro-Terrorist Groups | Appendix A: Pro-Terrorism Groups
Full report PDF

Strategic Alliance with Anti-Police Bigots and Other Extremists

Some militants argue for making the destructive anti-Israel campaign part of a wider offensive against law enforcement that could ally with other militants and increase overall radicalization. Palestine Action US (now Unity of Fields), for example, posted a graphic on May 12 that states:

THE MOVEMENT FOR PALESTINE MUST ALSO BE A MOVEMENT AGAINST THE POLICE.

Police departments maintain the interests of genocidal politicians and corporate elite locally, while the U.S. and Israeli armed forces maintain them on an international scale. All successful movements for Palestine will encounter them. Prepare for this, but do not let anxieties that you are not prepared enough deter action.

STAY MOBILE, STAY TOGETHER, FIGHT BACK AGAIN AND AGAIN. THE RISKS WE REFUSE TO TAKE TO END THE GENOCIDE NOW ARE SHIFTED ON TO SOMEONE ELSE, LATER. WE OWE EVERYTHING TO GAZA. [original emphasis][1]

Another example of this would be a zine published by Haters Café and reposted by Sprout Disinfo that seems to have been widely distributed among protesters and positively references the 2020 riots in Minnesota. It says:

The ability of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation to overwhelm and overextend (if only for the moment) the Israeli State shows that the imperialist powers are not all powerful. The breaking of the Gaza wall is reminiscent of the destruction of the 3rd precinct in Minneapolis…. In the United States, the first step for Palestine Solidarity is to make its position clear on Black liberation. A rudimentary starting point is to chants expressing support for Black liberation and Palestinian liberation as well as condemnation of police to become commonplace at demonstrations.[2]

The zine ends with, “Freedom for Palestine means Death to America.”[3]

An article on CrimethInc marvels at how students seized buildings and fought back against police who “were completely unprepared to face down the ferocity and intelligence of the student occupiers.[4] The police were physically repelled from Siemens Hall and massive barricades were erected out of objects from within the building including chairs, desks, trash cans, and doors that had been removed from their hinges.”[5] One of the article’s conclusions is that “the pro-Palestinian movement must be a movement against the police.”[6]

Groups in this circle often propose that this expansion of protests should be part of an even broader campaign aimed at overthrowing the system of “imperialism,” “capitalism,” or various other “-isms.”

Perhaps some pro-Hamas militants are not enthusiastic about expanding protests beyond the Israeli-Palestinian issue. However, our research to date has found no significant expressions of dissent.

Expanding the Target List

In the inner circle, there is some disagreement about how much of the destructive effort should focus on college campuses (especially any police officers present at protests) and how much should be dedicated to the broader campaign, though there seems to be almost complete unanimity that such a campaign is necessary.

Most of the groups in this circle are revolutionary communists and anarchists of various kinds. But the number of entities representing an ideology in this circle probably does not correspond to its proportion of the overall militant population in this circle. It is fair to assume that Islamist extremists (or “jihadists”) account for a major portion of the individual militants in this circle, because Hamas itself is a jihadist group. Yet it is extremely difficult to assess the ideological proportions of this circle because there is minimal visibility into undisclosed activities. It’s difficult to know who is viewing, sharing, and using the militant materials and how to categorize their beliefs. In addition, many militants who are independently issuing calls for action on social media and presumably making plans do not use the language of a particular ideology.

The groups in this circle unapologetically cheer on and incite physical altercations with police and distribute militant materials that offer lessons learned from previous “uprisings” and “direct actions,” as well as advice on weaponry, combat, rioting, tactics based on guerrilla warfare, and other ways of conducting domestic terrorism campaigns.

At least one significant SJP official has crossed over into the fourth circle and equipped an unknown number of like-minded activists. A SJP spokesperson named Carrie Zarema produced a Google drive with over 200 documents related to militancy and terrorism, including instructions for a wide range of guerrilla activities aimed at damaging nationwide targets beyond the campuses.[7] The documents advise on creating and handling weaponry, seizing buildings, rioting and combat, as well as propaganda for terrorist groups. This collection of documents was repeatedly seen being distributed by militants over the course of this study.

Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), a coalition of 116 groups that includes the school’s SJP chapter, openly encourages vandalism and causing property damage and even endorses arsonist terrorism.[8] On June 20, it published a post exalting Casey Goonan, who committed several acts of arson including igniting an explosive that seriously damaged a cop car on campus.[9] It consists of a textual call to free Goonan with flames engulfing the lettering, alongside “Glory to the martyrs” and “Resistance is love.”[10] CUAD wrote that it “stands in full support of Casey Goonan and all people resisting oppressive imperialist entities.”[11]

The two groups most aggressively inciting violence appear to be Palestine Action US and the Resistance News Network, which operates over the encrypted Telegram social media platform. Both relentlessly incite violence, equip supporters with information suitable for domestic terrorism campaigns, and distribute official statements and propaganda directly from Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist groups.

The anarchism-oriented group Ready to Escalate, also known as the Escalate Network, consistently tries to incite its sizable online audience of 6,000 to violence that qualifies as terrorism and tries to facilitate such acts by providing a library of teaching materials. The group even went so far as to tell its followers to murder the editorial board of the New York Times.[12]

In July, CUNY for Palestine issued a threatening statement in which it described itself as part of the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance,” an alliance of Iran-backed terrorist groups and militias that includes Hamas, Hezbollah, the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar Assad, the Houthis, and other Iran-linked forces in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Iraq and Bahrain.[13]

The group said it would retaliate to the New York Police Department and city government’s “brutalizing and escalating” in kind and ridiculed protesters for being too passive.[14] It said that Gaza Solidarity Encampments should “disrupt,” “dismantle,” and “abolish” the universities and colleges. It vowed to target the “pigs” and “institutions” as part of the fight for a “liberated Harlem and the destruction of the U.S. Empire.”[15]

Another group of concern is Torch Antifa, which reacted to Hamas’s October 7 attacks by writing a post declaring “Free Palestine!”[16] The organization is described by Andy Ngo, who authored a book on Antifa, as “the largest network of formal violent Antifa chapters.”[17] An article on Torch Antifa’s website by Central Texas Anti-Racist Action expresses sympathy for “Palestinians’ fierce struggle against colonization,” as well as for the governments of Iran and Syria, whom it depicts as targeted by Israel solely because of each country’s “attempts to free itself from American control of its natural resources and finances.”[18]

Torch Antifa further boasts of successful attacks on its enemies, making clear it is referring to the October 7 attacks by including a link to an analysis about Israel’s failure to stop the invasion titled, “Israel’s Military Tech Fetish is a Failed Strategy.”[19] The anarchist article reads:

While profit and capitalist ideology have led Israel and America to place their faith in high-tech toys, we know that the masses make history. Their delusions of superiority have been shattered by the rebirth of rebellion, occurring right under their noses but catching them utterly off-guard and unprepared.

All of their cell phone spyware, surveillance satellites, and “artificially intelligent” missile shields cannot elevate the IDF above concentration camp guards of the past. They will flee or fall like any other cruel jailer in the face of humanity’s struggle for liberation.[20]

It finishes by listing seven sites in Texas to target: University of Texas, Texas A&M, Austin Community College, Army Futures Command Group, ACC Rio Grande in Austin, Bush Combat Development Complex Research Integration Center in Bryan, and LBJ School of Public Policy in Austin.[21]

Within Our Lifetime’s protests and harassments have possibly received more media attention than any other group. The most controversial event was a protest against a New York City exhibit commemorating the victims of Hamas’s October 7 atrocities.[22] It also published a map of museums in the area to target for “direct action” with an upside-down red triangle above each, adopting the symbol that Hamas uses in its propaganda videos to point out the persons or objects they’ll show being killed or destroyed.[23] Five personal homes of Jewish board members of the Brooklyn Museum were then vandalized with the upside-down red triangle painted on the property, which amounts to a death threat.[24]

As was mentioned, Within Our Lifetime has a living resource—“The Crackdown on Palestine: Unveiling NYPD’s Repression Tactics”—that places it in the third circle.[25] This resource criticizes a perceived overemphasis on de-escalation training and instead calls for escalation trainings on things like resisting the police and using the best kind of expanding foam to render doors of university buildings inoperable during takeovers.

The document praises Palestine Action US’s attack on an Israel-associated business. It also praises “our comrades” at the Mapping Project, which created hit lists of Israel-linked sites for destructive targeting.[26] The Mapping Project openly supports terrorism. Its operation and sources of funding are mysterious and unclear,[27] but there are indications it is linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)[28] and the government of Iran.

WOL considers itself part of a united militant front led by designated foreign terrorist organizations. It boasts of how Israeli military forces in Gaza and the West Bank are being fought “by our people’s resistance forces and the forces mobilized by our siblings in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and around the world.”[29]

WOL endorses a broader campaign of destruction in the United States:

Our duty as people here in the belly of the beast is to use all available means to support the Palestinian resistance and degrade the capabilities of the United States to wage war not just on Palestine but on oppressed people all over the globe.[30]

WOL says it is inspired by students who seize buildings, “fight off the police,” swarm police to accomplish de-arrests, obstruct police with barricades and lines of human links, and resurrect encampments on campus after police crackdowns.[31]

The group also appears to acknowledge its own participation in violence against police. It includes a screenshot of a tweet quoting a senior NYPD official saying that the police must send forces to their protests that are two-thirds larger than those necessary for other organizations’ protests because the WOL-affiliated protesters will “fight” them.[32]

Various anarchist-oriented websites create and host calls to action, declarations of responsibility for destructive activism, after-action reviews of anti-Israel protests, and guidance for a nationwide guerrilla campaign. CrimethInc, IndyBay (the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center), and Ready to Escalate (also known as the Escalate Network) are three commonly referenced resources.

A handful of organizations have seemingly threatened to become directly involved in violence for the cause.

For instance, the Bronx Anti-War Coalition describes itself as an “anti-imperialist, direct action coalition fighting state violence while advancing decolonization” by “materially supporting national liberation for all oppressed people.”[33] On the topics of violence and peace, the coalition says:

We subscribe to the Black Alliance for Peace’s definition of peace* and support the right to resist colonial imperialism by any means necessary, including armed struggle. We are not a pacifist movement and believe there can be no peace without justice.

*Peace is not the absence of conflict but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.[34]

It also states, “We view the Palestinian Resistance and the Axis of Resistance as the only realistic path toward achieving liberation for Palestine.”[35] The Axis of Resistance is an Iran-led coalition of terrorists and militias fighting Israel and the U.S. military; it includes the government of Syria, Hamas, other Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist groups, Hezbollah, the Yemen-based Houthis, and Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which identifies itself as an “affiliate” of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, stated in a declaration of support for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists that it “pledges to (politically and physically, if necessary) defend the democratic rights of all Palestinians and supporters who are coming under government, Zionist, and law enforcement attack in the U.S. and everywhere else.”[36]

In the next installment, the analysis leads to 12 conclusions about the movement and the media.

[1] Palestine Action, “The Movement for Palestine Must Also Be a Movement Against the Police,” February 8, 2024. https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/May-12-2024-Fighting-Police-Palestine-Action-US.pdf.

[2] Anonymous, “10 Anarchist Theses on Palestine Solidarity in the United States,” Anarchist Library, October 26, 2023, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-10-anarchist-theses-on-palestine-solidarity-in-the-united-states.

[3] Anonymous, “10 Anarchist Theses on Palestine Solidarity.”

[4] CrimethInc, “Lessons on Taking the School,” https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/zines/terror-incognita/terror-incognita_print_black_and_white.pdf.

[5] CrimethInc, Lessons on Taking the School.

[6] CrimethInc, Lessons on Taking the School.

[7] Eve Barlow, “Student Activists or Pro Insurgents?” Blacklisted, May 4, 2024, https://evebarlow.substack.com/p/student-activists-or-pro-insurgents.

[8] Columbia University Apartheid Divest, “Our Coalition,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest, https://web.archive.org/web/20240809164049/https:/cuapartheiddivest.org/our-coalition.

[9] Columbia University Apartheid Divest (@cuapartheiddivest), “CUAD stands in full support of Casey Goonan,” Instagram, June 20, 2024, https://www.instagram .com/p/C8cjXIkN4Yl/?img_index=1.

[10] Columbia University Apartheid Divest, “CUAD stands in full support of Casey Goonan.”

[11] Columbia University Apartheid Divest, “CUAD stands in full support of Casey Goonan.”

[12] Ryan Mauro, “Kill the New York Times Editorial Board, Urges Major Anti-Israel Anarchist Group,” Capital Research Center, May 30, 2024. https://capitalresearch.org/article/kill-the-new-york-times-editorial-board-urges-major-anti-israel-anarchist-group/.

[13] Ryan Mauro, “CUNY for Palestine Vows to Destroy University and Target NYC,” Capital Research Center, July 30, 2024, https://capitalresearch.org/article/cuny-for-palestine-vows-to-destroy-university-and-target-nyc/.

[14] Ryan Mauro, “CUNY for Palestine Vows to Destroy University.”

[15] Ryan Mauro, “CUNY for Palestine Vows to Destroy University.”

[16] Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo), “As the mass civilian atrocities and kidnappings were unfolding,” X, October 12, 2023, 2:30 PM., https://x.com/mrandyngo/status/1712536350103318732.

[17] Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo), “As the mass civilian atrocities and kidnappings were unfolding.”

[18] Central Texas Anti-Racist Action, “Digital Imperialism from Tel Aviv to Texas,” Torch Network, October 26, 2023. https://torch-antifa.org/digital-imperialism-gaza-texas/.

[19] Franz-Stefan Gady, “Israel’s Military Tech Fetish Is a Failed Strategy,” Foreign Policy, October 26, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/10/26/israel-hamas-gaza-military-idf-technology-surveillance-fence-strategy-ground-war/.

[20] Central Texas Anti-Racist Action, “Digital Imperialism from Tel Aviv to Texas.”

[21] Central Texas Anti-Racist Action, “Digital Imperialism from Tel Aviv to Texas.”

[22] Luke Tress, “What Is within Our Lifetime, the Anti-Israel Group behind the Protests at the Nova Exhibit?,” Jerusalem Post, June 20, 2024, https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-806976.

[23] Luke Tress (@luketress), “This vandalism comes immediately after leading protest group,” X, Jun 12, 2024, 11:10 AM., https://x.com/luketress/status/1800908522357661763.

[24] Artemis Moshtaghian and Zenebou Sylla, “NY Governor Calls Vandalism at the Homes of Jewish Board Members of the Brooklyn Museum ‘an Abhorrent Act of Antisemitism,’” CNN, June 13, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/12/us/nova-music-festival-exhibition-protest-in-new-york-called-heartbreaking/index.html.

[25] Within Our Lifetime, “The Crackdown on Palestine: Unveiling NYPD’s Repression Tactics,” February 17, 2024, https://wolpalestine.com/resistrepression/.

[26] InfluenceWatch, “Mapping Project,” December 8, 2023, https://www.influencewatch.org/organization/mapping-project/.

[27] Ryan Mauro, “Massachusetts Mapping Project Linked to Terrorists,” Capital Research Center, October 9, 2023, https://capitalresearch.org/article/massachusetts-mapping-project-linked-to-terrorists/.

[28] InfluenceWatch, “Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine,” April 29, 2021, https://www.influencewatch.org/organization/popular-front-for-the-liberation-of-palestine/.

[29] Within Our Lifetime, “The Crackdown on Palestine.”

[30] Within Our Lifetime, “The Crackdown on Palestine.”

[31] Within Our Lifetime, “The Crackdown on Palestine.”.

[32] Within Our Lifetime, “The Crackdown on Palestine.”

[33] Bronx Anti-War Coalition, “Bronx Anti-War Coalition,” https://www.bronxantiwar.org/.

[34] Bronx Anti-War Coalition, “Bronx Anti-War Coalition.”

[35] Bronx Anti-War Coalition, “Bronx Anti-War Coalition.”

[36] National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, “Resolution on Solidarity with the United Palestinian Resistance & The Struggle for National Liberation,” January 14, 2024. https://naarpr.org/updates/resolution-on-solidarity-with-the-united-palestinian-resistance-the-struggle-for-national-liberation/.