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Edited by: Fern Sidman
Manolo De Los Santos, the 35-year-old executive director of The People’s Forum (TPF), a Midtown-based nonprofit, has become a central figure in the wave of anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, as was reported on Monday in the New York Post. His life and career are marked by a deep commitment to radical activism, influenced heavily by his extended stays in Cuba and his roots in the Dominican Republic.
Born in the Dominican Republic and relocated to The Bronx at the age of five, De Los Santos’s journey into activism began early. His initial visit to Cuba in 2006 with the progressive religious group, Pastors for Peace, marked the beginning of a long-term engagement with the socialist state, according to the Post report. Over the years, he has traveled back to Cuba, including a trip as recent as March, to protest the US blockade, which has been in place since 1962.
As the leading voice of TPF since 2018, De Los Santos has been a polarizing figure. His public statements and actions have frequently sparked controversy, especially given his recent descriptions of the October 7 Hamas attack as “heroic” and his calls for Israel to be “erased from history,” as per the Post report. De
Los Santos’s advocacy extends beyond the confines of TPF. His history of participating in disruptive protests in New York City, often accompanied by provocative, incendiary rhetoric, paints a picture of a man whose methods and statements are on the extreme, as was indicated in the Post report. His stance against “US hegemony” and support for the “defeat” of the “US empire” align with his broader anti-establishment philosophy, reflecting a consistent pattern of promulgating a Marxist agenda.
This radical approach has not only made De Los Santos a figure of admiration among certain left-wing circles but also a subject of intense scrutiny and criticism. His refusal to engage with mainstream media, demonstrated by his recent decline to speak to The Post, adds to the aura of a staunch radical unwilling to moderate his stance for broader appeal.
Speaking at a public gathering, De Los Santos declared, “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel, when the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism in our lifetime,” the Post report said. This statement, captured in a now-viral video, has sparked a firestorm of criticism and condemnation.
The severity of De Los Santos’s language prompted Ritchie Torres, a Democratic Representative from South Bronx, to denounce his speech as akin to “Nazi rhetoric,” as was noted in the Post report. Torres’s condemnation extended to urging Goldman Sachs to sever its philanthropic connections with TPF, which he linked not only to these inflammatory comments but also to associations with the Chinese Communist Party, the report added.
The specific reference by De Los Santos to the “final blow” to Israel mirrors historical extremist rhetoric, particularly disturbing given the context of ongoing violence in the Middle East, where, as Torres noted, “Thousands of Israelis were massacred, maimed, mutilated, abducted, raped, and tortured at the murderous hands of Hamas,” according to the information contained in the Post report.
Following the backlash, De Los Santos affirmed that he framed the criticism as a “propaganda trick by the apologists for genocide.”
