Jack Halberstam

Jack Halberstam’s Participation in the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia)

Jack Halberstam [Judith Jack Halberstam] spoke at the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024. Halberstam has also justified Hamas terrorism and spread anti-Semitism online.

Jack Halberstam is a Columbia professor who posted on Instagram in April 2024 that Halberstam stood “with the students who protested and were punished” at Columbia for their participation in the encampment. Halberstam also expressed support for the anti-Israel professors Katherine Franke, Joseph Massad and Mohamed Abdou whose pro-Hamas and anti-Israel remarks were discussed in Congressional hearings on campus anti-Semitism.

In May 2024, Halberstam posted on Instagram the illustrated cover of the May 20, 2024 New Yorker magazine showing graduates in cap-and-gown receiving their diplomas with their hands in zip-tie handcuffs behind their backs, escorted by police.

Halberstam wrote: “...‘Class of 2024’ says it all…prison for the courageous students who applied theory to practice and risked all for justice in Palestine; disciplinary hearings for many of those who renamed Hamilton Hall as Hind Hall; investigations into faculty who held classes at the encampment.” Halberstam also wrote: “...you are wiser than your elders, braver than your teachers, smarter than the Zionists, and more screwed over than any other generation. Be angry, be fierce, be wild…”

On April 30, 2024, participants in Columbia’s second pro-Hamas encampment forced their way into the university’s Hamilton Hall, barricading themselves in the building and taking three Columbia custodians hostage. Protesters also vandalized [00:00:55] and destroyed university property inside the hall. A police raid on Hamilton found knives, gas masks, ropes and literature that read: “...DESTROY zionist business interests everywhere!...DEATH TO AMERICA!...”

Also in May 2024, Halberstam was featured in an Instagram post from FSJP-CBT (Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine-Columbia Barnard Teachers) with a quote from Halberstam that said: “THE ENCAMPMENT FOR GAZA WAS MORE THAN AN EXERCISE. IT WAS A SHOW OF SOLIDARITY. A MESSAGE FROM YOUNG PEOPLE TO THEIR ELDERS. A LESSON IN PEACE AND JUSTICE. AND YET. THE STUDENTS WHO CREATED THIS LOVELY EXPERIMENT WILL BE SUSPENDED, EXPELLED AND DOXED. THEIR ONLY COMFORT RIGHT NOW IS KNOWING THAT THEY ARE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY AND SEEING CLEARLY NOW THAT THIS WORLD, THE WORLD OF ADMINISTRATORS AND BUREAUCRATS, FASCISTS AND WHITE SUPREMACISTS, MUST BE COMPLETELY DISMANTLED.”

The Columbia encampment was in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University

On April 17, 2024, Columbia students and anti-Israel activists set up a pro-Hamas “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the university's main lawn. Many participants were arrested and the encampment featured multiple violent incidents, including taking over a campus building and taking a university worker hostage.

Activists protested Israel’s war against Hamas and demanded that Columbia “divest from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation…”

The action had reportedly been planned for months and was organized by the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition. The encampment was also organized by Columbia’s banned pro-Hamas activist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the university chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Activists reportedly received training from National SJP and other anti-Israel organizations.

Among the encampment leaders was Columbia student Khymani James who had said [00:00:25]: “Zionists…They are nazis!... They’re supporters of genocide! Why would we want people who are supporters of genocide to live?... Be glad, be grateful that I am not just going out and murdering Zionists.” Aidan Parisi, another encampment leader, responded to Columbia’s demand to disband the encampment by declaring online that: “COLUMBIA WILL BURN.”

The encampment was forcibly dismantled at the directive of Columbia’s president and administration. The NYPD [New York Police Department] entered the area, cleared the encampment and arrested more than 100 protestors, approximately 80 of whom were Columbia students. The students were charged with trespassing and suspended from Columbia indefinitely.

The next day, activists created a new encampment. When divestment negotiations with Columbia failed, protesters illegally forced their way into the university’s Hamilton Hall on April 30, 2024. They smashed [00:00:55] through a glass-paneled door, broke security cameras, threw university property out of the windows and unfurled [00:00:01] a banner in the building’s wall that read: “INTIFADA,” a term in Arabic for uprising or insurrection that carries the connotation of violence.

While barricading themselves in the building, agitators kept three Columbia custodians hostage and stopped them from leaving. When the NYPD raided and dismantled the encampment a second time, they arrested more than 100 students, nearly half of whom were reportedly not affiliated with Columbia.

NYPD shared on Twitter photos of objects the police found in Hamilton Hall. These included knives, hammers, gas masks, ropes and a pamphlet that read [video 1]: “...DISRUPT/RECLAIM/DESTROY zionist business interests everywhere! DEATH TO ISRAELI REAL STATE! DEATH TO AMERICA!...LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA!”

Just outside the encampment area, Jewish students were called [slide 2]: “Uncultured a** b**ches!” and were told to “Go back to Europe!” Activists also said [slide 3] to them: “Yahoodim [Jews], yahoodi [Jew], f**k you!” and “Stop killing children!” as they walked from campus to their dorm rooms.

Also just outside the encampment area, anti-Israel activists chanted [slide 5]: “Ya Hamas, ya habib, odrob, odrob Tel Aviv! [Oh Hamas, oh loved one, strike, strike Tel Aviv!]”, a chant that celebrates Hamas rocket attacks against Israel.

An activist just outside the encampment area held [photo 4] a sign that said, referring to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing: “AL-QASAM’S NEXT TARGETS.” Her sign contained an arrow pointing to a pro-Israel crowd.

On May 31, 2024, Columbia SJP announced that its activists had set up a third encampment at the university. At the encampment, protesters reportedly displayed on a big screen a video that portrayed Hamas as a peace-seeking organization and made a sign that contained an inverted red triangle, a symbol in support of Hamas.

Background on Pro-Hamas Encampments

The encampment was one of over 140 pro-Hamas and anti-Israel college encampments set up in North America, and over 20 more globally, in the spring of 2024. The first began on April 17, 2024, at Columbia University. The encampments were unofficially known as the “student intifada,” borrowing a term associated with terrorist violence.  

Protesters harassed Jewish students, blocked Jews from campus facilities and shouted anti-Semitic slogans. They occupied campus grounds, in many cases illegally, caused property damage, violently took over buildings, celebrated terrorism and promoted the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. 

Activists set up encampments to oppose Israel’s right to wage war against the Hamas terror group following October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 people, including 32 American and 8 Canadian citizens. Hamas also kidnapped 252 people, including 11 Americans and the bodies of 2 murdered Canadians. As of May 26, 2024, 125 hostages remained in Hamas captivity.

Jack Halberstam’s Justifying Hamas Terrorism

Halberstam was listed as one of the first signatories in an October 30, 2023 statement written after Hamas killed approximately 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023. The statement called [p. 2] the Hamas terror attacks a “military response” against Israel by “an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”

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. 
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.

The letter that Halberstam signed was titled [p. 1]: “An Open Letter from Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty in Defense of Robust Debate About the History and Meaning of the War in Israel/Gaza."

The letter that Halberstam signed defended [p. 1] Columbia students who had signed on to a statement that described the Hamas terror attacks of October 7, 2023, as a “military action” within the “larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel.”

The letter claimed [p. 2] that the student statement aimed to “recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years.”

The same letter also stated [p. 2]: “...one could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”

Jack Halberstam’s Anti-Semitism

On October 28, 2023, Halberstam posted on Instagram: “We mouth sentiments like ‘never again,’ and yet, when the ‘again’ arrives, the next genocidal mission carried out by racist governments against civilians, toxic nationalism tramples on those fine cliches and retreats into the defensive crouch…”

The phrase “Never Again” is often deployed as a general declaration against genocide, invoking the Nazis’ war of extermination against the Jews.