SWC Dismayed By Ivy League Universities Silence Over Student-Led Statements Blaming Israel for Hamas Attack

October 10, 2023

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is calling out both Harvard and Yale for not condemning student-led statements that blamed Israel for the surprise Hamas attack over the weekend.

Authored by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and originally co-signed by 33 other Harvard student organizations Saturday, the statement read: “Today’s events did not occur in a vacuum. For the last two decades, millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison. Israeli officials promise to ‘open the gates of hell,’ and the massacres in Gaza have already commenced…The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.”

Students at Yale University agreed with their Ivy League counterparts over the weekend. Yalies4Palestine wrote in a statement that Palestinians "made history this Saturday morning when they broke down the wall which has imprisoned Gaza for 17 years… The resistance is the consequence of the longstanding and ongoing Zionist colonization."

“SWC notes that Major League Baseball and NBA have expressed solidarity with Israel and the hundreds of Jews murdered, raped kidnapped and decapitated (including babies) by Hamas Terrorists. Why the stone silence from so much of corporate America and University Presidents when Jews have been slaughtered by barbarians?,” stated Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action.

For further information, please email Michele Alkin, Director of Global Communications at malkin@wiesenthal.com or Shawn Rodgers at srodgers@wiesenthal.com, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization. It holds consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the OAS, and the Latin American Parliament (PARLATINO).