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Pro-Hamas Student Group That Cheered Oct. 7 Massacre Wants to Defend Harvard in Legal Fight Against Trump

An “Apartheid Wall” erected by Harvard University’s Palestine Solidarity Committee. Photo: X/Twitter

A pro-Hamas student group whose campus activism heightened scrutiny of antisemitism and far-left extremism at Harvard University has filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit the school filed to halt the Trump administration’s confiscation of its taxpayer-funded grants and contracts.

Legal counsel for the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC), provided by the controversial Palestine Legal nonprofit, submitted the document on Monday to the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, The Algemeiner has learned. Endorsing Harvard’s push for a summary judgement in its favor, the court filing argues that the school’s alleged neglecting to restrict antisemitic demonstrations did not violate the civil rights of Jewish students.

“The expression of views critical of Israel — even where it personally offends — is not actionable harassment under Title VI [of the US Civil Rights Act],” wrote Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath. “Defendants have not specifically alleged what actions they believe created a severe or pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students in violation of Title VI — or what educational programs or activities were limited or denied by such acts.”

Sainath continued, comparing Jewish Zionists to segregationists who defended white supremacy during Jim Crow, while comparing anti-Zionists — who have been trafficking racial slurs and epithets about African Americans on social media during the Gaza war — to the civil rights activists of the 1960s.

“Many white parents who supported segregation were discomforted — even frightened — by the prospect of Black children attending schools with their children. But advocacy for the rights of Black Americans to live as equal citizens was not anti-white any more than advocacy for the equal rights of Palestinians is anti-Jewish,” Sainath charged. “In fact, it is opposition to equal rights of Black people that is discriminatory, just as opposition to equal rights for Palestinians is discriminatory.”

The PSC’s entrance into Harvard’s historic legal fight with the Trump administration comes 20 months after it prompted worldwide outrage and condemnation for endorsing Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel in a statement which alleged that “millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison.”

Mere hours after images and videos of Hamas’s atrocities — which included sexual assaults, abductions, and murders of the young and elderly — spread online, the campus group said, “The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”

Those remarks triggered a cascade of events in which Harvard was accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism and important donors suspended funding for various programs. Additionally, the school’s first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist. Her tenure was the shortest in Harvard’s history.

More incidents followed over the next several months. In one notorious episode, a mob of anti-Zionists — including Ibrahim Bharmal, editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review — were filmed following, surrounding, and intimidating a Jewish student. A pro-Hamas faculty group also shared an antisemitic image depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David, containing a dollar sign at its center, dangling a Black man and an Arab man from a noose.

Meanwhile, Harvard acted disingenuously to deceive the public and create a false impression that it was working to combat antisemitism, according to a shocking report issued by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce. One section of the report claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult it in key moments, including when Jewish students were harassed and verbally abused. So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being part of what the committee described behind closed doors as a public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.

The slew of incidents made Harvard University the face of campus antisemitism and a major target for a surging conservative movement, led by US President Donald Trump, which blamed elite higher education for declining civic patriotism, the rise of antisemitic violence across the US, and the spread of “woke” ideologies which undermine faith in liberal, Western values. After Trump won a historic second, non-consecutive term in office, the school was, within a matter of months, pummeled by a volley of punitive measures, including the confiscation of some $3 billion in federal funds.

“Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart,” Trump said in April, writing on his Truth Social media platform. “The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER and HATE [sic]. It is truly horrific. Now, since our filings began, they act like they are all ‘American Apple Pie.’ Harvard is a threat to democracy.”

In suing the administration to stop the actions, Harvard said the Trump administration bypassed key procedural steps that must, by law, be taken before sequestration of federal funds is enacted. It also charged that the administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding” — an argument it supported by pointing to the funding freeze being connected to Trump’s calling for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat,” a wishlist of conservative policy reforms.

Now, PSC is defending Harvard by arguing that the very policies which set off what is arguably the most tumultuous period in Harvard’s history should be preserved. Drawing more comparisons to unrelated political conflicts, Sainath called for both ruling in Harvard’s favor and rescinding the university’s recent adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

“Though the university purports to be addressing antisemitism, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism via a politicized definition does not make it so, any more than it would be an act of anti-Russian discrimination to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or anti-Hindu discrimination to protest India’s human rights violations in Kashmir,” she concluded. “Indeed, it is only Palestinians on campus, and those advocating on their behalf, who are constrained from engaging in political critiques of their own peoples’ subjugation, dispossession, and killing.”

Other entities have come rushing to Harvard’s defense by citing different reasons for restoring Harvard’s federal funding that stayed clear of Palestine Legal’s arguments seemingly justifying calls for a genocide in Israel. In another amicus brief, attorneys Daniel Cloherty, Victoria Steinberg, and Alexandra Arnold stressed on behalf of two dozen American colleges and universities — including Brown University, Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Dartmouth College — the importance of the federal government’s role as a benefactor of higher education.

“For over 80 years, the federal government has invested heavily in scientific research at US universities,” the attorneys wrote. “This funding has fueled American leadership at home and abroad, yielding radar technology that helped the Allies win World War II, computer systems that put human on the Moon, and a vaccine that saved millions during the global pandemic.”

They added, “Broad cuts to federal funding endanger this longstanding, mutually beneficial arrangement between universities and the American public. Terminating funding disrupts ongoing projects, ruins experiments and datasets, destroys the careers of aspiring scientists, and deters investment in the long term research that only the academy — with federal funding — can pursue, threatening the pace of progress and undermining American leadership in the process.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Pro-Hamas Student Group That Cheered Oct. 7 Massacre Wants to Defend Harvard in Legal Fight Against Trump first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War

Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.

Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.

“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”

GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’

Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.

“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.

“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.

“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.

After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”

RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL

Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”

Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.

“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”

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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests

A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco

Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.

People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.

“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”

Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.

On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.

Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.

On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.

“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.

Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.

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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan

Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.

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