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

Pro-Hamas activists across the US are gearing up to hold an array of demonstrations on Tuesday celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.

Over the past week, many anti-Israel groups announced that they would be organizing events commemorating the “martyrs” of Gaza. These events will ostensibly celebrate the anniversary of the murder of roughly 1,200 individuals and kidnapping of 251 hostages during the onslaught, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. In many of the announcements, however, the organizers have accused Israel of launching a “genocide” in Gaza and called for an end to what they called the colonization of “occupied Palestine,” using the date of Oct. 7 to castigate Israel rather than honor the Israeli victims.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activists at the prestigious Stanford University are holding a vigil to “mourn” the loss of life in “Palestine and Gaza.” Likewise, the Yale University group Yalies 4 Palestine is holding a demonstration to mark “two years of genocide.” And anti-Israel activists at the University of Michigan have likewise organized a “week of action” for the Oct. 7 massacre. 

“Join us in community as we mourn and remember our martyrs from Palestine and Gaza. As we mark two years of the start of the brutal and ongoing genocide in Gaza, let’s come together and hold space,” SJP Stanford wrote on Instagram.

SJP, one of the most prominent anti-Israel organizations, has routinely called for the eradication of the Jewish state.

Amid pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on antisemitism, US universities have more aggressively penalized anti-Israel protesters that break campus rules and engage in targeted harassment of Jewish students. A Santa Clara County grand jury in California, for example, recently indicted several Stanford students on felony charges for vandalizing campus facilities during a 2024 anti-Israel demonstration. 

Leo Terrell, chair of the US Department of Justice Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, lambasted Stanford on X, urging the university to shut down the planned event. 

“Seriously?! Some of our supposed ‘best and brightest’ students are celebrating ‘martyrs’ who gang-raped women before murdering them, slaughtered babies and entire families, and still hold 48 hostages?” Terrell wrote on X/Twitter.

Even educators in US K-12 schools are planning to celebrate the massacres. Philly Educators for Palestine, a subgroup of the Racial Justice Organizing Committee, which was formerly a caucus of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, has co-sponsored a rally honoring the “resistance” fighters in Gaza. 

“Oct. 7 marks two years since Palestinian resistance fighters bravely broke out of the prison that the Zionist regime has turned Gaza into,” the promotion reads. 

“Now more than ever, we must reject all normalization with the Zionist regime, uplift indigenous Palestinian resistance, and honor the martyrs,” it continues. 

Activists are also planning on holding celebratory demonstrations on the streets of major cities such as New York City and Sydney, Australia. Anti-Israel outfits such as Within Our Lifetime (WOL) are calling on their supporters to “honor” Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. 

“Honor the martyrs of Gaza and all of Palestine. For 77 years, Israel has waged genocide against the Palestinian people, and for the past two years, Gaza has endured a new stage of that genocide while the world has watched it unfold live on our screens,” WOL wrote in a statement. 

Leadership for WOL has repeatedly expressed support for violence against Israel and terrorist groups such as Hamas. Nerdeen Kiswani, the founder of WOL, has called for the expulsion of Zionists from all public spaces and has for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

Behind Enemy Lines, another leftist organization responsible for orchestrating anti-Israel protests, plans on holding large demonstrations in several major cities such as New York and Chicago. 

“On Oct. 7, 2023, the Palestinian resistance in Gaza shattered a murderous status quo that was slowly killing them. They righteously broke through the apartheid wall and took the fight to their enemies. Since then, the Palestinian people have continued to resist annihilation by whatever means are at their disposal. It’s way past time for those of us in the US to join the people of the world in doing whatever it takes to bring this genocide to an end,” Behind Enemy Lines said in a statement.