‘Death to Zionism’: Students for Justice in Palestine Parrots Hamas Propaganda as Civil War Looms in Gaza

National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), a primary organ of the student anti-Zionist movement in the US, has appeared to call for executing Muslim “collaborators” working with Israel in retaliation for the death of Palestinian influencer Saleh Al-Jafarawi during a brewing conflict between the Hamas terrorist group and a rival clan, Doghmush, in Gaza City on Sunday.

“Saleh’s martyrdom is a testament to the fact that the fight against Zionism in all its manifestations — from the [Israel Defense Forces] to its collaborators — must continue,” the group said in a statement posted on social media. “In the face of hundreds of thousands of martyred Palestinians these past two years alone, collaborators and informants maintain their spineless disposition as objects of Zionist influence against their own people.”

The statement went on to volley a series of unfounded charges alleging that anti-Hamas forces are “exploiting Gaza’s youth for money” and pilfering “desperately needed aid to the killing of their own people in service of Zionism.” NSJP concluded, “Death to the occupation. Death to Zionism. Death to all collaborators.”

Despite NSJP’s characterization of Doghmush as a “collaborator” of Israel, sources from Gaza have reportedly denied any affiliation. The group has for years held ties with radical Islamist groups, including allies of al-Qaeda, and has participated in anti-Western terrorism. However, it has also clashed with Hamas within Gaza.

Hostilities escalated as Hamas began implementing components of a ceasefire with Israel over the weekend, when Doghmush members allegedly killed two Hamas fighters. The incident, according to the BBC, prompted the deployment of Hamas fighters into the streets of Gaza, some of whom concealed their identities by appearing in civilian clothing.

Reporting of the Hamas-Doghmush conflict suggests that the issue between the groups is not about support for Israel as NSJP argued but over the future of the governance of Gaza, of which Hamas terrorists forcibly seized control nearly two decades ago. Experts told the BBC that the situation is ripe for civil war, a possibility for which Hamas is preparing by proactively waging a propaganda campaign which depicts Doghmush as advancing Israeli security objectives in the region.

“We cannot leave Gaza at the mercy of thieves and militias backed by the Israeli occupation,” Hamas told the outlet in a statement. “Our weapons are legitimate … to resist occupation, and they will remain as long as the occupation continues.”

NSJP later parroted Hamas’s characterization of Doghmush, a point which social media users pointed to as cause for a federal investigation.

“Why is this group operating in the US?” wrote Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia, a nonprofit advocacy group, on the X social media platform. “They love Hamas and want anyone who opposes them dead.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, NSJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, has publicly discussed its strategy of using the anti-Zionist student movement as a weapon for destroying the US.

“Divestment [from Israel] is not an incrementalist goal. True divestment necessitates nothing short of the total collapse of the university structure and American empire itself,” the organization said in September 2024. “It is not possible for imperial spoils to remain so heavily concentrated in the metropole and its high-cultural repositories without the continuous suppression of populations that resist the empire’s expansion; to divest from this is to undermine and eradicate America as we know it.”

The tweet was the latest in a series of revelations of SJP’s revolutionary goals and its apparent plans to amass armies of students and young people for a long campaign of subversion against US institutions, including the economy, military, and higher education. Like past anti-American movements, SJP has also been fixated on the presence and prominence of Jews in American life and the US’s alliance with Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

On the same day the tweet was posted, Columbia University’s most strident pro-Hamas organization was reported to be distributing literature calling on students to join the Palestinian terrorist group’s movement to destroy Israel during the school’s convocation ceremony.

“This booklet is part of a coordinated and intentional effort to uphold the principles of the thawabit and the Palestinian resistance movement overall by transmitting the words of the resistance directly,” said a pamphlet distributed by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), an SJP spinoff, to incoming freshmen. “This material aims to build popular support for the Palestinian war of national liberation, a war which is waged through armed struggle.”

Other sections of the pamphlet were explicitly Islamist, invoking the name of “Allah, the most gracious” and referring to Hamas as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.” Proclaiming, “Glory to Gaza that gave hope to the oppressed, that humiliated the ‘invincible’ Zionist army,” it said its purpose is to build an army of Muslims worldwide.

“We call upon the masses of our Arab and Islamic nations, its scholars, men, institutions, and active forces to come out in roaring crowds tomorrow,” it added, referring to an event which took place the previous December. “We also renew our invitation to the free people and those with living consciences around the world to continue and escalate their global public movement, rejecting the occupation’s crimes, in solidarity with our people and their just cause and legitimate struggle.”

Middle East experts have long suspected that foreign agents are conspiring with SJP chapters.

In July 2024, then-US National Intelligence Director Avril Haines issued a statement outlining how Iran has encouraged and provided financial support to the anti-Israel campus protest movement and explaining that it is part of a larger plan to “undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.” Haines also confirmed that US intelligence agencies have “observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.