Support for October 7 Attack, Glorification of Terror Mark 2024 Nakba Day Events

Nakba Day commemorations across the United States, already charged events, were compounded this year by a sharp rise in anti-Israel activity tied to the Israel-Hamas war that was triggered by the October 7 mass terror attacks. Nakba Day (“catastrophe” in Arabic) is commemorated annually on May 15 by Palestinians and their supporters worldwide to mourn the events related to the creation of the State of Israel, including its impact on Palestinians, and to advocate for the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees.

Historically, Nakba Day events in the U.S. have frequently been marked by antisemitic and inflammatory language. More than fifty Nakba Day events took place nationwide this year from May 11 to May 19, 2024, in person at protests and rallies and online via webinars, teach-ins and other gatherings. As in past years, this year’s Nakba Day events again featured support for terrorism and violence against Israel, extreme anti-Zionism and significant antisemitism.

Notable trends at this year’s Nakba Day events included the glorification of prominent terrorists and terrorist group leaders —   among them figures who were directly involved in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. Protesters and speakers at Nakba Day 2024 events endorsed Hamas’s actions as “justified,” while outrightly dismissing reports of rape and systemic sexual assault suffered by Israeli women at the hands of Hamas-led terrorists during the unprecedented assault. Other common rhetoric included the demonization of Zionism and Zionists, including by making comparisons to Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, and by invoking classic antisemitic tropes about supposed outsized Jewish power and influence.

Protests

Multiple largescale Nakba Day protests were held in New York City, including in Brooklyn on May 11. At the protest, a speaker affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) echoed historic antisemitic tropes about alleged Jewish control over political affairs when they criticized politicians who accept campaign contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), stating: “They are beholden to us; not AIPAC, not the Zionists.”

Other anti-Zionist messages included a sign held by a protester that read “Zionism is to Judaism as the KKK is to Christianity.” Demonizing “Zionists” and “Zionism” — a widespread practice among anti-Israel protesters — in effect demonizes Jewish people, since the vast majority of Jewish people identify in some way with Zionism (support for Israel’s existence in the Jewish ancestral homeland).

Protesters also carried a flag depicting Ghassan Kanafani — the former spokesperson for the US-designated terror group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) — with a caption in Irish Gaelic that, translated to English, read “Revolution Until Victory.”

Nearby in Queens, NY on May 15, protesters chanted “Say it loud, say it clear; we don’t want no Zionists here” at a march organized by Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL), a frequent sponsor of anti-Israel protests in the New York area. Protesters also carried a sign that bore the logo of Samidoun (an international anti-Israel organization that advocates for the release of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted terrorists, and that is designated by Israel as a terror group tied to the PFLP) and the images of Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the architect of the October 7  attack; Mohammed Deif, leader of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing); and Abu Obaida, spokesperson for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

The same sign depicting Sinwar, Deif, and Obaida was displayed at another WOL-sponsored New York City protest in Brooklyn, NY on May 18. Protesters also carried a PFLP flag and posters with messages that included “Support Palestinian Resistance, By Any Means Necessary”; “Globalize the Intifada” (a reference to two historical periods in the late 1980s and early 2000s during which Palestinian terrorists committed deadly attacks against Israelis); and “Boycott, Strike, Resist” (with inverted red triangle imagery alongside the word “Resist” as an apparent nod to Hamas).

As they marched, protesters chanted, in Arabic: “Palestine, free, free; Zionists, out, out!”

Anti-Israel protesters at a Nakba Day event in Brooklyn, NY on May 18, 2024 display a sign depicting Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades leader Mohammed Deif, and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades spokesperson Abu Obaida. (source: YouTube)

Terror group-affiliated individuals were also glorified at a Nakba Day protest in Orlando, FL on May 11, where protesters carried a banner depicting PFLP terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled — who is often venerated by anti-Israel protesters — holding a gun alongside the message “Nakba 76: Liberate, Resist, Return.” A joint statement released by the protest’s organizers — including local chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), Code Pink, Al-Awda, and others — demanded the “complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea” and endorsed the “right to resist by any means necessary.”

In New Orleans, LA on May 18, a banner prominently displayed at the front of the march and in the background during speeches also featured Khaled, as well as imprisoned PFLP Secretary-General Ahmad Sa’adat. Protesters chanted “Say it loud, say it clear; We don’t want no Zionists here.”

Support for terrorism and extreme anti-Zionist messages were also shared at many other Nakba Day protests across the country. At a Nakba Day protest on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, MI on May 15, a speaker praised recent student-led encampments and spoke about protesters’ goal to “dismantle” so-called “Zionist” institutions. She stated: “Because of these encampments [on college campuses nationwide], people are finally starting to understand how Zionism is tied to all of these institutions, and we have pledged to dismantle every single one of them.”

In Seattle, WA on May 19, Nakba Day protesters distributed fliers that proclaimed that “an end to Zionism is the precondition for peace in Palestine” and “we have a responsibility to fight for an end to imperialism and Zionism.” A speaker denounced “the ethnostate of Israel,” “the dangerous ethno-supremacist ideology of Zionism,” and “the continued complicity of the United States government at every single level.”

Protesters carry a banner referencing the Holocaust while commemorating Nakba Day during a march in Tucson, AZ on May 18, 2024. (source: Instagram)

In Philadelphia, PA on May 18, Nakba Day protesters marched behind a banner displayed at the front of the procession that read “Zionism = Death.” Meanwhile, in Tucson, AZ that same day, protesters chanted “Hey, hey, ho, ho; Zionism has got to go” while carrying a banner that equated the Holocaust and the Nakba.

In Albany, NY on May 17, a speaker invoked Nazis and the Holocaust while denouncing Israel: “The same interests that brought the Nazis to power is [sic] the same interests that keeps Israel alive today. It is the same interests that brought the Holocaust on the Jews and that brings the holocaust on the Palestinians.”

Other protesters carried signs with images equating the Israeli flag to the Nazi swastika flag, alongside the caption “Zionism = Nazism.”

Webinars

As with this year’s in-person Nakba Day protests, virtual Nakba Day events featured similarly extreme rhetoric.

The Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in California hosted a Nakba Day webinar on May 15 about “Genocide, Resistance & International Feminist Solidarities” in partnership with the National Women's Studies Association (NWSA) and Feminists for Justice in/for Palestine (F4JP). 

Rabab Abdulhadi, Brooke Lober, Huwaida Arraf, and other panelists speak on the Nakba Day webinar hosted by Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) at San Francisco State University (SFSU) on May 15, 2024. (source: YouTube)

During the webinar, SFSU associate professor and AMED director Rabab Abdulhadi openly dismissed reports that Israeli women were raped on October 7, criticizing “anti-colonial feminists who rush to actually believe the Zionist myth that there has been mass rape on October 7 by Palestinians.” Abdulhadi further alleged that this “myth” is “part of the Israeli tale in order to kind of figure out, ‘how can we divert attention from what's going on, the massacre that is going on in Gaza, the genocide.’”

Brooke Lober — a lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Berkeley — also attempted to discredit reports of mass rape on October 7. Lober stated that it is necessary to “place Zionist feminism in a history of colonial feminism and in histories of white supremacy that have weaponized the charge of sexual violence in order to advance a racial order.”

Abdulhadi and Lober both spoke further about what they perceive as the incompatibility of Zionism and feminism, with Abdulhadi stating that “there is no place for Zionism in anti-colonial feminism” and lamenting the supposed “domination of Zionism over women's studies.”

Huwaida Arraf, an anti-Israel activist and co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), remarked on the webinar’s theme of “resistance,” noting  forms of “nonviolent resistance” against Israel like the 2010 Freedom Flotilla to Gaza, but making sure to “emphasize that it is not to criticize or diminish the other forms of Palestinian resistance that have been undertaken over decades, including armed resistance.”

In addition to the AMED SFSU webinar, the California-based Solidarity Research Center also hosted a Nakba Day webinar, titled “Student Intifada Panel,” on May 15. During the webinar, moderator Yvonne Yen Liu referred to “the scourge that is Zionism.” Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement co-founder and panelist Omar Barghouti spoke about “Israel’s regime of oppression being an enemy to humanity.” 

BDS movement co-founder Omar Barghouti and other panelists speak on the Nakba Day webinar hosted by the Solidarity Research Center on May 15, 2024. (source: YouTube)

In New York, The People’s Forum hosted a Nakba Day webinar on May 15 where activist and journalist Mona Eltahawy read from an interview with PFLP-affiliated terrorist Leila Khaled, and venerated her and her actions, which included hijacking two civilian airliners in 1969 and 1970.

New York City-based writer and activist Christina Dhanuja, another panelist, delivered remarks that at times echoed the centuries-old antisemitic deicide myth. Dhanuja spoke about how crucifixion has become a part of anti-oppression discourses over the years and how some Palestinians have adopted this rhetoric, commenting that Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish “sees the long decades of Israeli occupation as a drawn-out collective crucifixion. Christ’s suffering is their suffering. Their suffering is Darwish's suffering.”

On the May 15 edition of his “Night School” livestream show, Marc Lamont Hill spoke to University of California, San Francisco Law School professor George E. Bisharat, who equated Zionism with racism and Zionists with racists. “When Joe Biden says I am a Zionist, as he has said repeatedly over the years, I take him at his word. He’s a Zionist. And you know, needless to say, what I hear when he says that is ‘I am a racist,’” Bisharat said.