Gulfara Bekbolatova
Overview
Gulfara Bekbolatova [Gulfy Bekbolatova] was president of her university’s student union when it expressed support for Hamas terrorism against Israeli civilians in October 2023. Her student union’s statement also spread hatred of Israel and promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.The incident occurred following a series of Hamas terror atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023.
The Hamas terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”
Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 2] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.
As of January 2024, Bekbolatova was the president of the University of Toronto Mississauga’s (UTM) students union (UTMSU) since May 2023.
As of January 2024, Bekbolatova’s LinkedIn said she was studying for a bachelor’s degree in financial economics, mathematics and political science at UTM since 2021, slated to graduate in 2025. It also said she was a Research Opportunity Program Student at UTM since January 2023, research assistant since September 2022 and junior analyst for UTM Capital Management since September 2022.
As of January 2024, Bekbolatova’s LinkedIn said she lived in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Support for Hamas Terrorism and Spreading Hatred of Israel
On October 10, 2023, the UTMSU with Bekbolatova as president, issued [slide 1] a pro-BDS statement in support of “all Palestinians” and [slide 3] the “right to resist an apartheid regime.”
Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti- Semitic violence.
The statement accused [slide 2] Israel of “ethnic cleansing and mass genocide” and said that Israel has “besieged” Gaza since 2007, transforming Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
The UTMSU statement also said [slide 2]: “For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians…”
The modern State of Israel was founded 75 years earlier, in 1948.
The UTMSU statement also called [slide 3] for the “divestment of weaponry, arms-manufacturing and any investment in apartheid.” UTMSU also accused [slide 3] Israel of “Apartheid and Colonialism.”
On October 17, 2023, speaking in the Ontario parliament, Ontario’s minister of colleges and universities, Jill Dunlop, condemned [00:03:42] the statement and others who celebrated or justified Hamas’s massacre 10 days earlier.
On November 26, 2023, Bekbolatova was quoted as saying: “it is [the UTMSU’s] job to stand [with] people who are being oppressed, people who are being impacted by military occupations, by genocide.”
Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti- Semitic violence.
The statement accused [slide 2] Israel of “ethnic cleansing and mass genocide” and said that Israel has “besieged” Gaza since 2007, transforming Gaza into an “open-air prison.”
Referring to Gaza as an "open-air prison" is a way to delegitimize the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41] joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed in 2011 to prevent Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
The UTMSU statement also said [slide 2]: “For 75 years, the Israeli government has maintained a military occupation over Palestinians…”
The modern State of Israel was founded 75 years earlier, in 1948.
The UTMSU statement also called [slide 3] for the “divestment of weaponry, arms-manufacturing and any investment in apartheid.” UTMSU also accused [slide 3] Israel of “Apartheid and Colonialism.”
On October 17, 2023, speaking in the Ontario parliament, Ontario’s minister of colleges and universities, Jill Dunlop, condemned [00:03:42] the statement and others who celebrated or justified Hamas’s massacre 10 days earlier.
On November 26, 2023, Bekbolatova was quoted as saying: “it is [the UTMSU’s] job to stand [with] people who are being oppressed, people who are being impacted by military occupations, by genocide.”
Hamas Terrorist War Crimes of October 7, 2023
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, over 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.
As of December 25, 2023, Hamas had fired over 10,600 missiles from Gaza at Israeli communities, with Hamas claiming 5,000 the day it launched the attack. While Hamas was the main group involved, members of other terror groups also joined in the atrocities.
Many Palestinian civilians, including women and children, also participated in the attack. In several instances, Gazans who worked in the targeted Israeli communities gave intelligence to Hamas on where to strike.
In a December 2023 poll, 57% of Gazans and 82% of Palestinians in the West Bank supported the terror attacks. 42% of Gazans were supportive of Hamas rule, up from 38% before the attacks, and 44% in the West Bank supported Hamas, up from 12%.
Hamas began by launching thousands of rockets at Israel and using motorized paragliders “to infiltrate Israeli territory and secure terrain.” Terrorist ground forces destroyed parts of the border fence with Gaza, murdering and kidnapping soldiers.
Terrorists then turned their attention to 22 communities around Gaza, where they went house to house to savagely murder, mutilate and kidnap anyone they found. They executed children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.
Terrorists beheaded children and babies, and massacred entire families, burning some alive who hid in their homes. Hamas terrorists kicked around the heads of beheaded victims like soccer balls. Israelis as young as an infant of nine months and as old as 85 were kidnapped and taken forcibly to Gaza. Hamas has not allowed the Red Cross access to the hostages.
Over 360 unarmed young men and women were surrounded and slaughtered at one music festival alone. Bodies were publicly desecrated, with some dragged through the streets of Gaza, then beheaded.
Women were raped next to the bodies of dead friends. Some were raped and then shot in the head. Others, including young girls, were raped and murdered or mutilated in other ways. Israeli officials opened an unprecedented investigation into the widespread sexual assault. Forensic analysis of corpses showed evidence of torture and rape. Hamas terrorists said they were given explicit orders to carry out the atrocities, including chopping off legs and raping the corpses of murdered victims.
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.
Hamas intentionally targeted youth centers and elementary schools to execute and kidnap children. They also took stimulant drugs to give added energy to murder and maim. Nazis also took drugs during World War II to fuel their anti-Semitic massacres.
The atrocities were acknowledged as the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, including by U.S. President Joe Biden, who also compared Hamas to ISIS. Hamas attacked on the annual holiday of Simchat Torah, which that year was on Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath.
The Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians are crimes against humanity according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The mass murder generated great sympathy for Israel from many countries but led to countless celebrations among Palestinians and anti-Israel organizations in America that back the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Hamas called the October 7, 2023 terror attacks “Al-Aqsa Flood,” a reference to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The allegation that Jews “threaten” to destroy the mosque has been a pretext for Arab attacks on Jews long before Israel was founded in 1948. Such propaganda has led to multiple periods of violence against Israeli civilians.
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
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 the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
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 on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gulfara.bekbolat/ [Private]
- Status:
- Student
- University:
- Toronto-Mississauga
- Organizations:
- BDS
- Related Profiles:
- Last Modified:
- 05/04/2026
Photos & Screenshots
18 images