Rachel Erstad

On February 26, 2024, more than 300 faculty and staff at colleges and universities in six Northwestern states signed an anti-Israel petition during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Israel launched the war after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks, during which 1,200 Israelis were murdered.

The petition twice referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a “genocidal campaign” and it accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing" during the war.

The petition called for "an end to Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip." 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.

The petition "equated" the Hamas terror attacks to Israel's response and it also promoted elements of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. One of the demands made by signatories was to call on the Biden administration to “halt immediately further transfer of munitions and foreign aid to Israel.”

The petition was titled: “History Will Remember This Moment: University Faculty Scholars of Northwest States Advise Permanent Ceasefire, UN Peacekeeping, and a Durable Resolution Based on Justice and Equality in Israel-Palestine.” It was addressed to the U.S. senators from Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

On Saturday, October 7, 2023, thousands of 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.”