In a manner not witnessed for more than five decades, America’s university campuses are being rocked by swelling protests against Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza. But where Republican-led states have deployed police to tamp down some of the tumult, Democrat-led states appear willing to let angry youths take over campuses.
Dozens of campuses nationwide are in turmoil during what is supposed to be graduation season. At this point, Columbia University appears nonfunctional. Student protesters have taken over and university leaders appear too timid to restore order. As this column recently explained, there is a serious risk that this campus activism might morph into something uglier, perhaps a wave of domestic terrorism, just as happened in the wake of 1960s campus radicalism.
There’s plenty of ugliness already on display. Overt antisemitism is commonplace among the protesters amid high-volume calls for violence against “Zionists,” “colonizers,” and “white supremacists.” If you look closely, you can also see campus protesters wearing the paraphernalia of the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement, better known as Hamas. Protesters at Princeton University held high the flag of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while at the University of Pennsylvania, the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine was waving.
Unlike in Europe, this is all protected as free speech. Still, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the PFLP are all listed as designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the U.S. government. The FTO list is subject to regular review and 20 terrorist groups have been removed, either because they opted for peaceful politics over violence, or have simply disbanded. Under Federal law, FTO members and representatives cannot be admitted to this country. Any American financial institution that discovers it has FTO assets must report that at once to the Treasury Department. Most significantly, “material support” for a designated FTO is a crime, which is defined under 18 U.S.C. § 2339 as: “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel, and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”
In plain English, giving money or gifts or direct support to an FTO is illegal. People get prosecuted for this. Foreign corporations can likewise be prosecuted by the Justice Department for material support to an FTO. Of direct relevance today, after an FBI investigation that lasted over a decade, in 2008, five leaders of a U.S.-based fake Muslim charity called the Holy Land Foundation were convicted of funneling $12 million to Hamas to support terrorism against Israel. They received prison sentences ranging from 15 to 65 years.
Therefore, while it’s not a crime to wave the Hamas flag while chanting “Death to the Jews!”, it’s very much a crime to support Hamas or any other FTO more directly by fundraising or assistance in any capacity. Passing the hat around among the angry nonbinary Zoomers to collect cash for “martyrs in Palestine” may seem innocent, but if the funds thereby collected wind up in the hands of Hamas or Hezbollah or the PFLP, well, the FBI may have some questions for you. And the federal prison system may ultimately have a bed for you.
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Universities, too, need to be more careful. If their assets in any capacity are found by the Justice Department to have materially assisted foreign terrorists, campus administrators could face awkward inquiries. It’s already clear that there’s shadowy financing and logistics behind the campus protests, which are remarkably well organized with similar tents and camping gear. The whiff of George Soros and related left-wing dark-money donors has already been detected.
There may be more to this murky story than that. The possibility of foreign support for the campus protests, America’s own intifada to use the language of the protesters, is real and demands thorough investigation. The longer this spring’s campus tumult goes on, the more it becomes a counterintelligence and counterterrorism problem as much as a merely political one. It’s dangerously easy for angry campus words to translate into violent off-campus deeds, particularly when there may be a hidden hand manipulating events.
John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.
