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Raissa DeSmet
Raissa DeSmet signed an anti-Israel petition during Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists. Israel launched the war after the October 7, 2023, terror attacks.
Hamas murdered approximately 1,200 Israelis, injured thousands and kidnapped hundreds more that day. For more information, see the Canary Mission page on Hamas.
Raissa DeSmet signed the February 26, 2024 petition, which accused Israel of committing a “genocidal campaign” during its war against Hamas in Gaza.
The petition was addressed to 12 United States senators representing the Northwestern states, and every individual who signed it was “a university or college faculty member, instructor, or academic fellow residing in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, or Wyoming.”
As of April 2025, Raissa DeSmet was listed as a teaching professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell (UW Bothell).
UW Bothell is located in Bothell, Washington.
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.”
