Illustrative: Anti-Zionist protesters being arrested at Pomona College on April 5, 2024. They had taken over an administrative building. Photo: Screenshot/Students for Justice in Palestine via Instagram

In a disturbing open letter, an anonymous group has claimed credit for storming a Jewish event at Pomona College in California held to commemorate the lives of the children, women, and men murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, or subsequently in captivity in Gaza — a harrowing incident in which security failed to deter the intruders and protect those gathered inside the venue.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, footage of the incident from earlier this month showed the group, whose members concealed their faces with keffiyeh scarves, attempting to raid the room while screaming expletives and pro-Hamas slogans. They ultimately failed due to the prompt response of the Claremont Colleges Jewish chaplain and other attendees who formed a barrier in front of the door to repel them, a defense they mounted on their own as campus security personnel did nothing to stop the disturbance.

“Satan dared not look us in the eyes,” says the note, which the group released on social media, while attacking event guests and Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga. “Immediately, zionists [sic] swarmed us, put their hands on us, shoved us, while Viloga retreated like he did on October 7th, 2023.”

Appearing to threaten murder, the group added, “We let that coward know he and his fascists settler ideology are not welcome here nor anywhere. zionism is a death cult that must be dealt with accordingly [sic].”

First promoted by the “Claremont Undercurrents” social media page, the note is so laden with expletives that The Claremont Independent — the official student newspaper of the Claremont consortium of which Pomona College is a member — declined to publish the entirety of its contents. However, it did publish some of the more virulent comments targeting Viloga, over whom the group obsessed: “Viloga comes from a family of genocidal settlers”; “Viloga served in the zionist [sic] occupational force and is a settler on stolen land”; “Yoni’s fictitious ‘state’ destroyed 92% of Gaza.”

Pomona College, which vowed to find and punish the students responsible for the disruption, denounced this latest action, telling the Independent that “the language shared in a post by Claremont Undercurrents is vile, threatening, and highly disturbing. It has no place on our campus.”

Radical, pro-Hamas student groups continue to convulse higher education campuses across the West.

Earlier this month, National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), a primary organ of the student anti-Zionist movement in the US, appeared to call for executing Muslim “collaborators” working with Israel in retaliation for the death of Palestinian influencer Saleh Al-Jafarawi during a conflict between the Hamas terrorist group and a rival clan, Doghmush, in Gaza City.

“Saleh’s martyrdom is a testament to the fact that the fight against Zionism in all its manifestations — from the [Israel Defense Forces] to its collaborators — must continue,” the group said in a statement posted on social media. “In the face of hundreds of thousands of martyred Palestinians these past two years alone, collaborators and informants maintain their spineless disposition as objects of Zionist influence against their own people.”

The statement went on to volley a series of unfounded charges alleging that anti-Hamas forces are “exploiting Gaza;s youth for money” and pilfering “desperately needed aid to the killing of their own people in service of Zionism.” NSJP concluded, “Death to the occupation. Death to Zionism. Death to all collaborators.”

In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, Israeli professor Michael Ben-Gad has been unrelentingly pursued by a pro-Hamas organization which calls itself City Action for Palestine. It has subjected him to several forms of persecution, including social media agitprop, spontaneous, unlawful assembly at his place of work, and even a petition of their own.

City Action for Palestine is one of London’s most notorious anti-Zionist groups, convulsing higher education campuses across the city with pro-Hamas demonstrations which demonize pro-Israel Jews, attack policies enacted to combat antisemitism, and amplify the propaganda of jihadist terror organizations. Ben-Gad is not its only victim, as the group has targeted Members of Parliament, the Union of Jewish Students, and City University London president Anthony Finkelstein, who is Jewish and the child of a Holocaust survivor.

“Regardless of diverse views on the recent Gaza war and the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we deplore any campaign that seeks to intimidate and drive out lecturers because they are Israeli, Jewish, or members of any other group,” a petition, signed by hundreds of professors calling for a defense of Ben-Gad’s rights, said in response to the hate campaign. “Academics and students have a right to go about their work at any university without facing harassment.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.