BDS News

Stanford Student Threatens to ‘Physically Fight Zionists’ on Campus

Written by Adam Rubenstein

Hamzeh Daoud, a rising junior at Stanford, took to Facebook on Friday afternoon to declare that he’ll “physically fight zionists on campus next year.” Angered by the Israeli government’s passage of its “basic law,” Daoud said that he’ll physically fight zionists on campus “if someone comes at me with their ‘israel is a democracy’ bullshit. : ) and after i abolish your ass i’ll go ahead and work every day for the rest of my life to abolish your petty ass ethnosupremacist settler-colonial state.”

According to other Stanford undergraduates, Daoud is an active member in Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine. One student told me that Daoud “has been one of the most aggressive and prolific anti-Israel figures at Stanford. . . . Now, he’s calling for violence against pro-Israel students. He will be an RA in a dormitory next year, and this is unacceptable, as he could quite literally threaten the safety of the students in the dormitory.”

The national arm of SJP—the group with which Hamzeh Daoud is affiliated—is linked in congressional testimony to some unsavory groups both at home and abroad.

A recent Stanford graduate, who was active in the Israel debate while there, commented to me, “Was this kid ever going to beat anyone up? I doubt it. . . . But it just shows how the rhetoric of the campus left has escalated and escalated until they’re literally threatening physical violence against oh, 90 percent of the Jews at the university, just to signal their commitment.”

Daoud’s public Facebook profile is filled, mostly, with short, anti-Israel video clips—and anti-Israel commentary, which regularly argues for the dissolution of Israel. His LinkedIn profile says that he’s currently an “innovation intern” and a “Stanford in Government Fellow” in Geneva at the U.N.’s High Commission for Refugees.

By Friday evening, a few hours after his initial post threatening violence against other Stanford students, he edited it, changing the word “physically” to “intellectually.”

Stanford University has a well-chronicled past and present on anti-Israel activism. Elliot Kaufman detailed in the June issue of Commentary just how the anti-Israel student movement at Stanford operates.

Read More: The Weekly Standard

Leave a Comment