On March 5, 2024, Modha was featured in a TikTok video posted by USF Hunger Strike for Palestine, speaking at an anti-Israel protest on the USF campus.
In the video, Modha claimed [00:00:01]: “Colonial powers grant Zionists permission to carry out mass slaughter without accountability. They flatten lands and starving men under their bulldozers.”
On March 17, 2024, 18 USF activists reportedly initiated “an indefinite hunger strike beginning Monday, March 18.” The activists demanded that USF divest from companies doing business in Israel to stop what they claimed was a “GENOCIDE” happening in Gaza. USF officials have said that the school invests with fund managers and not with specific companies.
The entire hunger strike overlapped with two and a half weeks of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, during which Muslims fast daily from sunrise to sunset.
On March 18, 2024, the day the hunger strike began, Modha spoke [01:06:49] at a USF Board of Trustees meeting.
Modha said [01:07:00]: “...In the past decade, there has been an overwhelming amount of student pressure demanding USF to divest from genocidal cooperation. In 2014, the USF chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine collected over 10,000 signatures calling for divestment...Even today USF says that your investments are not based on politics, but this is political, you are far too comfortable accepting blood money.”
Modha later claimed [01:08:04]: “Your attempts at censorship show that USF recognizes their complicity in this genocide…If you care about the health and safety of your students, you will divest. You will call for a permanent cease-fire. You will establish a student oversight committee of your future investments and publicize your investment portfolio. Free Palestine.”
A March 18, 2024, a local news article reported that the hunger strikers “have demanded that USF no longer invest in companies including Northrup Grumman Corp., Boeing, and others they say are supplying Israel’s war effort.”
On April 3, 2024, USF Hunger Strike for Palestine changed [slide 5] its name to USF Divest Coalition on Instagram.
On the same day, the USF Divest Coalition posted on Instagram that “While our demands were not met,” they were “encouraging strikers to break their strike.”
They wrote: “We will ensure our community is not complicit in genocide, and divestment is inevitable.”
USF Divest Coalition also wrote [slide 2] that a reason for ending the hunger strike was because of “multiple hospitalizations” and “fatal health warnings.” They also wrote [slide 3] that they will be “helping organize 4 more hunger strikes on campuses…”
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.
