Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of WithinOurLifetime (WOL), leading a pro-Hamas demonstration in New York City on August 14, 2024. Photo: Michael Nigro via Reuters Connect

Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of the radical anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime, has come out strongly against Ukraine in its defensive war with Russia, derisively labeling the country a “Western-backed project” that is comparable to Israel.

“Sorry, but Ukraine is nothing like Palestine,” Kiswani posted on X/Twitter on Friday. “Palestine is a people fighting against settler colonialism. If anything, Ukraine is more like Israel — a Western-backed project propped up for geopolitical interests & sustained by empire.”

She went on to argue that “people need to stop forcing comparisons between Ukraine and Palestine. They are not the same struggle, not the same history, and not the same reality. These false parallels only distort the truth and erase the unique brutality of zionist [sic] settler colonialism.”

Adding that she “actually feel[s] bad for” the Ukrainian people, Kiswani argued that “their leadership, especially [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, sold them out, propped up Azov Nazis, and let the West use Ukraine as a pawn.”

Kiswani’s comments came on the same day that US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance got into a heated argument with Zelensky in front of the media at the White House. During the in-person meeting, Trump and Vance called on Kyiv to express greater gratitude for US support and move in good faith toward ceasefire with Russia, despite a lack of clear security guarantees from Washington.

The leading anti-Israel activist’s social media posts also came before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Zelensky, who is Jewish, a “pure Nazi” and a “traitor to the Jewish people.”

Kiswani also objected in her comments to what she sees as Ukraine’s pro-Israel stance, writing, “I’m not saying Ukraine is just like Israel, but highlighting ridiculous comparisons to Palestine. But if you don’t like that tell it to Zelensky who praised Israel and called it an inspiration for Ukraine. He even said Ukraine should become a ‘big Israel.'”

She added that Ukraine is “using Zionist tactics in its war strategy.”

Kiswani went on to point out that the “Palestinian resistance” is not aligned with Ukraine.

“Funny how people with red triangles in their bios [are] coming at me for this when the Palestinian resistance has rejected alignment with Ukraine, which is backed by the same imperial powers arming Israel. Solidarity should be rooted in reality, not projection,” she wrote on Sunday in a follow-up to her original thread.

The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which rules Gaza, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”

Kiswani and her group Within Our Lifetime (WOL) have been at the forefront of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism since Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages during their invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, a massacre that started the war in Gaza.

On Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the biggest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, WOL organized a protest to celebrate the prior day’s attack, which it described as an effort to “defend the heroic Palestinian resistance.” Kiswani notably refused to condemn Hamas and the Oct. 7 massacre following the atrocities.

Then, in Apil 2024, Kiswani refused to condemn the chant “Death to America” and organized a mass demonstration to block the “arteries of capitalism” by staging a blockade of commercial shipping ports across the world in protest of Western support for the Jewish state. That same month, she was banned from Columbia University’s campus in New York City after leading chants calling for an “intifada,” or violent uprising.

The following month, Kiswani led a demonstration in Brooklyn, New York in which she lambasted the local police department, claimed then-US President Joe Biden will soon die, and called for the destruction of Israel.

That proceeded the activist saying she does not want Zionists “anywhere” in the world while speaking in defense of a person who called for “Zionists” to leave a crowded subway car in New York City.

WOL, which planned a protest last year to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 massacre, was also behind demonstrations at the Nova Music Festival exhibit, which commemorated the more than 300 civilians slaughtered by Hamas while at a music festival.

The latter protest prompted widespread condemnation, including from Biden and even progressive members of the US Congress who are outspoken against Israel.

US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, posted on social media that the “callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism – plain and simple.”