NYU Encampment Organizers Invite Protesters to Join Pro-Hamas Resistance Network

Resistance News Network functions as an unofficial mouthpiece for Hamas and other terrorist organizations

Anti-Israel protest organizers at New York University encouraged their followers to get “plugged into” a Telegram channel that routinely promotes Hamas and other terrorist organizations.

A Telegram chat channel created by NYU protest organizers referred their followers to the “Resistance News Network,” an account which advertised communications from Hamas’s commander in chief Mohammed Deif, who advertised the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel, and encouraged people to take up arms.

“Eyes on Gaza, eyes on Rafah, eyes on students everywhere. Make sure you’re plugged into Resistance News Network,” the NYU Encampment Updates account wrote, linking to the channel. The organizers’ promotion of the radical channel was first observed by Jewish Insider and confirmed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The Resistance News Network has a pinned post at the top of their feed that features a video announcing the Al-Aqsa Flood which resulted in 1,200 Israelis dead and hundreds held hostage.

“BREAKING: The commander-in-chief of the Martyr Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, Mohammed Deif, announces the Al-Aqsa Flood battle in a historic speech: ‘They attacked the stationed worshippers and desecrated Al-Aqsa, and we have previously warned them,’” the account wrote.

The Telegram channel’s “posts include the explicit promotion of U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), often providing English translations of communiques and propaganda from groups such as Hamas and its Al Qassam Brigades, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Ansar Allah (the Houthis), Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Hezbollah,” the Anti-Defamation League notes.

This comes as anti-Semitic tent encampments have sprung up on college campuses around the nation, beginning with Columbia University.

NYU Students for Justice in Palestine and Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which endorsed the encampment, did not return requests for comment.

Student protesters at NYU and Columbia claim to be part of an anti-war movement that rejects hate toward Jews and celebrates Judaism. Columbia Law students told Jewish students that the police presence on campus made them feel “unsafe.”

One protester, though, held a sign that read “Al-Qasam’s next target” in front of Jewish students holding the Israeli flag, in reference to Hamas’s military wing that conducted the Oct. 7 attack.

Protests unraveled into violence when pro-Hamas agitators attempted to burn the flag. The group of Jewish students was assaulted, splashed with water, and followed by protesters, according to one of the students.

“Public safety was nowhere to be found. Columbia has lost its campus,” one of the targeted Jewish students said. “This is why Jewish students don’t feel safe. Because they are not.”

Anti-Israel student groups have also rallied behind Iran, which backs Hamas, after it launched an unprecedented missile attack against Israel, saying it was justified.

“Iran wasn’t attacking Israel. It was responding,” Berkeley Bears for Palestine wrote in a post. The post was accompanied by a second claiming that Iran attacked Israel because it refused a Gaza ceasefire.

George Washington University Students for Justice in Palestine similarly blamed Israel for the Iranian attack, claiming that the Islamic Republic “is retaliating, not instigating a conflict.”