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by Dexter Van Zile
The Middle East Forum Observer
Parents and families who are sending children off to college this fall need to be on guard. The Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), a radical left-wing organization infiltrating more than 100 U.S. college campuses, is planning a national student strike in support of Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for brutal attacks on Israeli civilians. Set to unfold in the coming academic year, this planned strike aims to strong-arm universities into divesting from Israel and to protect pro-Hamas activists from facing consequences for their extremist activities on campuses.
This alarming development follows the disruptive protests led by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) last year, indicating an escalation in coordinated efforts to legitimize terrorism and undermine support for Israel. The YDSA’s embrace of Hamas, known for its violent tactics and genocidal ideology, represents a dangerous shift in campus activism. Parents and families preparing to send their children to college this fall must be on high alert against these impending pro-terrorist campaigns that not only endanger Jewish students but also seek to subvert fundamental values of the United States and Western civilization.
These impending pro-terrorist campaigns not only endanger Jewish students but also seek to subvert fundamental values of the United States and Western civilization.
The YDSA announced its declaration of war on Israel and its supporters in the U.S. by passing a resolution, titled “Towards a National Student Strike for Palestine,” at its annual conference on July 20. The goal of the planned strike is to force colleges and universities to divest from Israel and prohibit the punishment of any misdeeds perpetrated by pro-Hamas activists on college campuses. The resolution, which passed by a vote of 75 to 69 with five abstentions, also calls on local YDSA chapters to organize “Palestine Committees” that will train students on how to organize an anti-Israel campaign on their college campuses.
Another resolution urging local YDSA chapters to impose anti-Israel litmus tests on candidates for student government and candidates for Congress was passed by a much narrower margin of 73 to 72, with four abstentions. The delegates passed a third pro-Hamas resolution declaring that there is only one way to bring an end to the Israel-Palestinian conflict: “Intifada! Revolution!” This resolution passed with 91 percent support of the body. Given that thousands of Israelis have been killed under the banner of two intifadas over the past three decades, this YDSA is not uttering a slogan but calling for violence against Jews throughout the world.
These resolutions indicate that the YDSA, which said almost nothing about “Palestine” at its 2023 conference, has embraced the cause of pro-Hamas activism in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre — one of the worst acts of violence against Jews (and women) since the Holocaust. Nearly every one of the statements of YDSA members running for office at the convention affirms pro-Hamas activism. For example, Sean Bridge, a self-described “Self-identified Genderqueer Transfemme White Person” from the University of Cincinnati, declared that “Palestine is the issue of our time” and called on YDSA activists to be “clear eyed on Palestine” and to get as many YDSA chapters as possible to campaign “to get their universities to divest from Genocide.”
By attacking Israel, YDSA activists are making a mistake similar to one made by anti-Shah activists in Iran in the 1970s, warns Saeid Golkar, associate professor of political science and public service at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.
“They have forgotten that anytime Islamists get power, they go after the Marxists and socialists first and foremost, because they are atheists,” Golkar said. “They hate them more than Christians and Jews.”
Islamists and socialists can work together for the short term, however, Golkar said, because they both share hostility toward Israel whose success as an outpost of modernity and capitalism in the Middle East incites envy on the part of Islamists in the region and anger on the part of socialists in the West.
“The only thing that brings these two groups together is their enmity toward liberalism,” he said.
The YDSA is an offshoot of the Democratic Socialists of America, a pro-Hamas political organization that received $5.7 million in revenue in 2022, which it uses to provide extensive training to its activists who have played a significant role in violent pro-Hamas protests since October 7. An internal YDSA document indicates that local chapters sometimes receive funds from the DSA itself and also rely on student fees administered by the local chapters to fund their activities.
By passing the student strike resolution, the YDSA is sending a message that it is following in the footsteps of, and maybe even supplanting the efforts of, Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that has fallen under intense scrutiny since it disrupted campus life at colleges and universities throughout the United States during the 2023-2024 academic year. In late May, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability demanded that the SJP provide information about where it gets its funding.
At Columbia University in New York City, activists allegedly confined campus staff against their will and caused a huge amount of damage to school facilities through vandalism.
“The Committee is particularly concerned that organizations promulgating pro-Hamas propaganda and engaging in illegal activities at institutions of higher education might be receiving funding or other support from foreign or domestic sources which support the aims of Hamas or other foreign terrorist organizations,” the letter from the Congressional committee’s chairman to the SJP’s executive director states. (Neither the DSA nor the YDSA has responded to inquiries about funding and how they expect to pay for activism associated with the impending student strike.)
The SJP fell under scrutiny after establishing an effective monopoly of force on dozens of campuses last spring. The group did this by setting up pro-Hamas encampments from which activists harassed and sometimes assaulted their fellow students, faculty, and nearby residents. At Columbia University in New York City, activists allegedly confined campus staff against their will and caused a huge amount of damage to school facilities through vandalism. People, Jews especially, who did not ascribe to the SJP’s ideology were denied access to public buildings and resources at numerous schools; they were driven from libraries, cafeterias, student union buildings, and even campus bookstores.
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In sum, colleges and universities that took money from families (and public coffers) to educate young people did not hold up their part of the bargain by letting the SJP and its allies run amok on the quads. Thankfully, the SJP is on everyone’s investigative radar, but that doesn’t mean the problem of campus craziness is going away. The YDSA has made it clear that it will attempt a repeat of what happened this spring — if campus administrators let them.
Parents, be warned: Your children are at risk.
Dexter Van Zile, the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, serves as managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism.
