University hosts speakers denying Hamas rapes, praising terrorism while under anti-Semitism probe

Anti-Israel professors praised Palestinian terrorists as “resistance” fighters and downplayed the rape of Jewish women at a University of California, Berkeley panel on Tuesday.

UC Berkeley’s Department of Gender and Women’s Studies hosted the speakers who defended terrorists during a public virtual panel titled, “Feminist and Queer Solidarities for Palestine.” The Department of Education (ED) is currently investigating UC Berkeley over alleged antisemitism, though the school professes a “commitment to” Jewish students’ dignity.

University of Venice, Italy, scholar Walaa Al Qaisiya discussed the importance of “armed resistance” against Israel in the first of three solo presentations.

“Palestine continues to demonstrate to the world that in the face of disposition, there is ongoing sumud, steadfastness,” Al Qaisiya said. “By staying put on one’s land in the face of genocidal killing, there is an aspiration for shahada, living martyrdom, by resisting indigenous subjects.”

Qaisiya pointed to Leila Khaled, a convicted terrorist who hijacked civilian planes in 1969 and 1970, as an example of Palestinian feminism.

“For the colonized and majority of the world’s oppressed subjects, Khaled and her comrades in the Palestinian liberation movement point us to the significance of standing firmly with the plight of the oppressed,” the Palestinian professor said.

Khaled belonged to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP), a terrorist group that joined Hamas in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that killed more than 1,100 people and ignited the current Israel-Hamas war. PFLP seeks to abolish the Jewish state and has repeatedly killed civilians throughout its history.

Al Qaisiya noted as an inspirational quote Khaled’s statement, “We are ready to pay blood and flesh to liberate this land.” She said Khaled has been “branded as a terrorist by Zionists and imperialists to this day” for the plane hijackings, during which her team threatened passengers with grenades and shot and injured a flight attendant.

The professor also quoted PLFP founder George Habash on the “right” to violently attack Israel.

Days before the event, Berkeley’s plans to host the speakers drew concern when Berkeley law professor Stephen Solomon wrote in The Wall Street Journal that it signaled a “hostile” campus environment for Jews. The Trump administration announced its antisemitism probe at Berkeley and other schools the day after on Feb. 3.

Solomon criticized an event description that mentioned “debunked” claims of mass rape by Hamas, prompting Berkeley to delete it before the Tuesday talk.

The university told Solomon the rape statements reflected the perspective of just one scheduled panelist. That turned out to be Western Washington University professor Nada Elia, who discussed “undocumented, unsupported” stories of Hamas raping numerous women during the Oct. 7 attacks.

“These arguments, including the feminist mantra, ‘we believe women,’ are being used to perpetuate the accusations of a systematic pattern of gang rape of Israeli women by Hamas militants, in the absence of any irrefutable evidence or, for that matter, of women coming forward,” Elia said during her presentation.

Israel obtained more than 1,000 testimonies about sexual assault during Hamas’s attacks by December 2023 alone, including mutilation and gang rape, often before Hamas murdered the victims. The United Nations has also acknowledged evidence that such atrocities took place and condemned them. Since the war broke out, freed Israeli hostages have described being sexually abused in Hamas captivity.

Elia said there may have been “isolated instances” of women violated on Oct. 7 but that Israel is guilty of widespread sexual abuse of Palestinians, citing some historical and recent allegations.

Elia also described Hamas terrorist attacks in passing as “resistance attacks.”

Al Qaisiya likewise said Oct. 7 rape claims are racist attacks meant to portray Palestinians as a “terrorist subspecies” and give “moral and critical cover” for Israel. She compared the trend to the murder of Emmett Till, a black teenager killed in segregated Mississippi in 1955 after claims he had whistled at a white woman.

University of Illinois, Chicago professor Nadine Naber, the third speaker, declared that it is “radical” to say “Palestinian women are human beings” at the event’s start before she and the others gave their full presentations.

“It’s our belief that anyone who cares about ending gender-based violence should never silence a woman’s experience of sexual violence,” she said in her opening. Naber never challenged Elia’s narrative about Hamas rapes, instead criticizing Israel during her presentation.

Berkeley professor Paola Bacchetta directs the school’s gender studies department and moderated the panel, beginning with a “land acknowledgment” to Native Americans and lengthy introductions for each speaker that lauded their contributions to feminist and “decolonial” theory in academia.

Bachetta and the three speakers did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

“Thanks for your email, but considering the genocide currently taking place in Palestine I am not able to conduct business as usual,” reads an automated email from Al Qaisiya’s address to the DCNF. “You can expect delays in my responses.”

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