RESISTANCE REACHES THE CORE OF THE ZIONIST REGIME | REPRESSION WON’T DIVIDE US | MOBILIZE THE MASSES TO ACHIEVE VICTORY, the recent substack piece by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), indicates where the organized leadership cadre of the pro-Palestine-anti-Israel movement, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is positioning itself in support of Palestinian terrorism. Under the aegis of decolonial theory and anti-imperialism, CUAD advocates political violence in the name of political Islam.

After they were suspended for a pattern of consistently violating policy of student conduct, SJP and JVP took the lead in reorganizing as Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). Not a fringe campus group, CUAD represent some 116 associated student groups on campus and has won broad faculty support in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

There are three key points in the substack regarding CUAD and, by implication, their associates.

[1] CUAD openly supports the terrorist attacks by Hamas on October 7, the recent terrorist attacks in which Israeli civilians in Yaffo were gunned down by Palestinian terrorists; the massive ballistic missile barrage by Iran on Israel.

[2] CUAD supports the murder of Israelis because, in their conception, Israel is a settler-colony and Israelis are settler-colonialists. Feeding off death and destruction, CUAD places great hopes in “the resistance” and what it is accomplishing, “[reaching] deep into the heart of settler-colonial territory, further destabilizing the Zionist regime’s claims to security and control.​​​​​​​”

[3] CUAD embraces what they call “the elephant in the room,” namely Islamic resistance movements. In their synthesis of Lenin and Political Islam, they echo a now infamous talking point by Judith Butler from several years back. In their own words, “Assessing Hamas and Nasrallah as principally progressive forces in an anti-imperialist struggle does not mean that one has to agree with every aspect of the nature of these forces, or that they have always been or always will be principally progressive. These other aspects are secondary to the issue at hand, which is their role in carrying out a national liberation war against their oppressors.”

CUAD and their partners, including JVP, are allies in an unholy camp supporting political violence and anti-democratic forces in the Middle East in the name of Palestinian liberation.