Dana Carter

Assata Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper and wounding another in 1973 while a member of the separatist Black Liberation Army (BLA). She escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984, where she resided until her death in September 2025. She was listed on the FBI Most Wanted Terror List under her legal name, Joanne Deborah Chesimard.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.

Hamas broadcast videos of their butchery on social media, often to victims’ accounts for families to see. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.” As of November 10, 2023, approximately 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, were murdered during the attacks. Hamas kidnapped 242 Israelis, including at least 30 children. At least 3,500 people were wounded, many severely.

A terrorist detained by Israel admitted he raped an Israeli woman when he broke into a kibbutz house during the October 7, 2023 attack. In March 2024, a former hostage of Hamas publicly stated she was sexually abused and tortured while in captivity.

For more information on the October 7, 2023 terror attacks, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.

On October 17, 2023, the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired rockets at Israel from Gaza, one of which misfired and fell on the parking lot of the al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital. Initial media reports blamed Israel. Following the incident, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib immediately accused the Biden administration of funding Israel’s “genocide” of Palestinian people.

Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.

In November 2023, after Hamas terrorists murdered nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, SDP offered teachers an anti-Israel professional development course. The curriculum claimed that Israel was carrying out the “colonization of Palestine” and that Israel’s war against Hamas was a “genocide in Gaza and the West Bank.”

The course was titled: “Decolonizing the Curriculum: Brief History of Palestine and the Creation of Israel: Contextualizing the Current Conflict and Genocide.” A summary on the SDP portal said teachers would be “better equipped to have conversations and facilitate lessons with their students” about Israel. The course was listed as "Subject(s): Social Studies/History." After local news sites publicized the course, SDP removed it from the portal.

SDP continued to come under pressure from activist groups to teach anti-Israel material in K-12 classrooms, including groups representing teachers and parents. Two such groups were the Racial Justice Organizing Committee (RJOC) and the Philadelphia Educators for Palestine (PEFP), led by SDP high school teacher Keziah Ridgeway.

RJOC organized anti-Israel “teach-ins” in late 2023 and throughout 2024. RJOC also provided “Educator Lesson Plans” for teachers, listing as a resource the Teach Palestine Project, a pro-terror and anti-Israel teaching resource. In May 2024, PEFP called on SDP to meet six demands. Among them were: “to unequivocally condemn the ongoing genocide waged on the Palestinian people” and “to release a ceasefire resolution [with regard to Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists].”

SDP had been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights since April 2024. In May 2024, a group of over 200 parents filed a complaint against the district. The complaint alleged there was “persistent harassment and bullying of Jewish students” and “inflammatory anti-Jewish and anti-Israel messages on social media and even in the classroom” by teachers and administrators at schools across Philadelphia.

The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by pro-terror activist Omar Barghouti in 2005 to turn “Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.” Barghouti has also called for Israel's destruction and the BDS movement demands would result in that same goal.

BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.

The movement’s most notable achievement has been infiltrating university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments propose resolutions to boycott or divestment from Israel or Israeli-affiliated entities. BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents and pro-terror activism on campus.