Katherine Franke
Katherine Franke’s Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia University (Columbia), Justifying Hamas War Crimes & Support for Terrorists
Katherine Franke has justified Hamas war crimes, expressed support for terrorists, promoted violent protests and spread hatred of Israel and anti-Semitism.Franke showed support for the pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia in April 2024.
Israel banned Franke from entering the country in April 2018 while Franke was serving as the chair of the board of trustees of the anti-Israel organization Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). Franke was deported back to the United States alongside CCR executive director Vincent Warren.
Franke served as chair of the board of trustees of CCR from October 2018 to July 2021.
From August 2020 to May 2021, Franke was a member of the steering committee of the academic advisory council for the anti-Israel group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
On October 12, 2023, Franke tweeted that she was “honored” to have joined the board of directors of the anti-Israel organization Palestine Legal.
As of March 2024, Franke was listed on the Columbia Law School (Columbia Law) website as a professor of law specializing in gender and sexuality law and racial justice.
As of the same date, Franke was also listed as the founder and director of Columbia’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law and an executive committee member at Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender (ISSG) and the Center for Palestine Studies.
Franke received a doctorate in law from Yale University (Yale) in 1998. Franke also graduated from Northeastern University (Northeastern) School of Law with a JD in 1986.
Justifying Hamas Terrorism
Franke was listed as the first signatory in an October 30, 2023 statement written during Israel’s war against Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attacks. The statement, which Franke promoted online, called [p. 2] the terror attacks a “military response” against Israel by “an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation.”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 Franke 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 Franke 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.”
On October 15, 2023, Franke gave an interview, in which she defended [00:03:29] Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as a student group that expressed support for the idea of “Palestinian sovereignty or dignity.” Franke’s defense of SJP came eight days after the group expressed [slide 2] “full solidarity” with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attacks.
Franke retweeted an October 9, 2023 tweet that said: “As the United States marks #IndigenousPeoplesDay, historian Rashid Khalidi lays out why Palestinians’ struggle against settler colonialism has reached an inflection point…”
The tweet included a video in which Columbia anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi said [00:00:48]: “You cannot expel three-quarters of a million people in 1948 and not expect the return of the repressed…You cannot expect that not to lead to a reaction. The reaction will be violent.”
The modern State of Israel was founded in 1948.
On the day Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, Franke retweeted an October 7, 2023 tweet by anti-Israel professor Noura Erakat that said: “#Gaza has been under a naval blockade & land siege for 17 years...Any shock in response to this multi scale attack reflects an expectation that those Palestinians die quietly and a complicity in their strangulation.”
Israel and Egypt implemented a UN-approved [pp. 39–41] joint blockade of the Gaza Strip in 2011 to stop Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets. Hamas went around the blockade by smuggling weaponry through tunnels under the Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt.
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.
Support for Terrorists
On October 4, 2015, Franke tweeted: “...Palestinian resistance 2 Israeli policy isn’t ‘Islamic terrorism’ - it’s anti-colonial resistance.”In October 2015, there was an upsurge in violence across Israel incited by Palestinian political and religious leaders. The wave of stabbings, known as the “Knife Intifada,” was characterized by young Palestinians throughout the country stabbing and attempting to stab Israeli civilians. The attacks were incited by Palestinian leaders propagating the libel that Israel intended to desecrate the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
On November 18, 2021, Franke moderated a panel at Columbia’s Center for Palestine Studies titled: “Conflating Human Rights Advocacy with Terrorism.” The panel was held in response to Israel’s designation of six Palestinian NGOs as terrorist organizations.
In October 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Defense declared six Palestinian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to be “terror organizations” operating “as an arm” for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The groups were accused of funneling donor aid to militants and employing senior PFLP members, “including activists involved in terror activity.” PFLP is designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the United States, the EU, Canada, the Gulf Cooperation Council, Australia and Israel.
During the panel, one of the speakers suggested [01:04:34] that it might be “the time to try and challenge the U.S. terrorist designations of some Palestinian organizations, specifically the PFLP or others.”
Franke concluded the panel by saying [01:09:56]: “...one of the ways that I think we could subvert the strategy is for each of us to make a contribution to all six…organizations, see the terrorism designation as a kind of seal of approval…we have over 100 people on this call and that will undermine what they’re doing, I think, in really significant ways.”
On November 19, 2021, Franke tweeted: “One of the best ways we can resist the Israeli government’s attacks on these organizations is to treat this designation as a summons to the international community to support them…”
Promoting Violent Protests
On May 25, 2018, Franke tweeted in reference to the March of Return: “Important read: Carnage in Gaza threatens to revive analogies between Israel and apartheid South Africa...”
Anti-Semitism and Hatred of Israel
On January 18, 2024, Franke tweeted: “Wow. So much for ‘never again,’” in response to a tweet that said the head of Israel’s Holocaust museum refused to condemn statements from Israeli figures that called for a strong Israeli response in Gaza following Hamas October 7, 2023 terror attacks.The phrase “Never Again” is often deployed as a general declaration against genocide, invoking the Nazis’ war of extermination against the Jews.
In a November 25, 2023, tweet, Franke rejected as “dangerous untruths” the notion that the phrases “decolonization” and “from the river to the sea” imply a “Jewish genocide.”
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:47] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state. In April 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the chant as antisemitic.
On November 26, 2023, during Israel’s Swords of Iron war against Hamas terrorists, Franke tweeted a photo of an anti-Israel protest and wrote: “Proud to have been 1 among 1,000s at the @jvplive protest today that shut down the Manhattan Bridge in the name of…an end to the genocide in Gaza.”
On November 19, 2023, Franke tweeted: “...international law…applies equally everywhere. To Russia, to the US, and yes, to Israel and Palestine.Please don’t let what Israel is doing become the ‘new normal’, to borrow your phrasing.”
Franke’s tweet was in response to a tweet that quoted U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken as saying: “We can never let the crimes Russia’s committing [in its war with Ukraine] become our new normal... bombing schools and hospitals and apartment buildings to rubble is not normal.”
In a November 25, 2018 tweet, Franke alluded to JVP’s “Deadly Exchange” campaign, writing: “Sometimes people wonder why we connect the dots between the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians and the U.S. government’s militarized policing of its borders. ‘Teargas fired on migrants as US agents close Mexico border crossing…’”
In 2017, JVP launched the “Deadly Exchange” campaign that accused American Jewish organizations of promoting human rights abuses. JVP also released a video that blamed [00:04:04] U.S.-based Jewish organizations for violence that occurs against Black and Brown communities, immigrants and activists in the U.S.
On September 5, 2018, Franke tweeted: “The #Nakba is a structure, not an event: the ongoing erasure of refugees from Mandate Palestine and normalization of their forced exile…”
The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.
On May 15, 2018, Franke tweeted: “We’re part of movements that experience structural racism, persecution & targeted eradication by our government, we stand w/ Palestinians living in their homeland & all over the world in the struggle against settler colonialism, occupation, apartheid, racism, & ethnic cleansing.”
Anti-Israel Campus Activism (FSJP, BDS)
In January 2024, Franke indicated on Twitter that she was a member of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine-CBT (FSJP-CBT). The group describes itself as a “collective of Columbia University, Barnard College & Teachers College faculty, staff and graduate workers dedicated to Palestinian freedom.”On November 15, 2023, Franke participated [photo 2] in a protest to condemn the Columbia administration’s suspension of the campus SJP and JVP chapters for violating university policies. On October 9, 2023, Columbia SJP expressed support for the Hamas terror attacks two days earlier.
The petition said: “We now stand with Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine as well as with Jewish Voice for Peace in calling upon the University to take a moral stance against Israel’s violence in all its forms. We demand that the University divest from corporations that supply, perpetuate, and profit from a system that has subjugated the Palestinian people for over 68 years.”
Support for the Pro-Hamas Encampment at Columbia
On April 17, 2024, Franke posted on X: “@Columbia Bd of Trustees co-Chair says that Columbia is effectively disciplining students who engage in antisemitic protests…Legit student protest is what is being prosecuted, not antisemitism.”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 encampment was also in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
On April 26, 2024, Franke posted on X: “So appreciated the chance to talk about the inspirational student activism at @Columbia on @thereidout tonite!”
On April 27, 2024, Franke posted on X: “This was an enormous amount of work, and I’m so honored to collaborate with Barnard student leaders who were steadfast in demanding that their suspensions were a betrayal of Barnard College’s fundamental values.”
JVP
JVP was founded in Berkeley, California in 1996, as an activist group with an emphasis on the “Jewish tradition” of peace, social justice and human rights. The organization is currently led by Rebecca Vilkomerson and its board members include Israel critics Naomi Klein, Judith Butler, Noam Chomsky and Tony Kushner.
JVP, which generally employs civil disobedience tactics to disrupt pro-Israel speakers and events, consists of American Jews and non-Jewish “allies” highly critical of Israeli policies. A staunch supporter of the BDS movement, JVP claims to aim its campaigns at companies that either support the Israeli military (Hewlett-Packard) or are active in the West Bank (SodaStream).
Although several Jewish groups critical of Israeli policies, like J Street and Partners for a Progressive Israel, make efforts to operate within the mainstream American Jewish community, JVP functions outside. The group is often criticized for serving as a tokenized Jewish voice for the pro-Palestinian camp and is widely regarded as the BDS movement’s “Jewish wing.”
JVP denies the notion of “Jewish peoplehood” and has even gone so far as to refer to its own Ashkenazi (Jews who spent the Diaspora in European countries) leadership as “white supremacy inside of JVP.”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has accused JVP of being “the largest and most influential Jewish anti-Zionist group in the United States,” and said the group “exploits Jewish culture and rituals to reassure its own supporters that opposition to Israel not only does not contradict, but is actually consistent with, Jewish values.”
The ADL also claimed that “JVP consistently co-sponsors rallies to oppose Israeli military policy that are marked by signs and slogans comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, demonizing Jews and voicing support for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.”
According to the ADL website, JVP “uses its Jewish identity to shield the anti-Israel movement from allegations of anti-Semitism and provide it with a greater degree of legitimacy and credibility.”
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
University Website:https://www.law.columbia.edu/faculty/katherine-m-frankeFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/katherine.franke.94
Twitter:https://twitter.com/ProfKFranke
Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/profkfranke/
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-franke-3213b31b/
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