Interview with Nikki Haley: Palestinians Must Break Away from Hamas for Peace Opportunity

SDEROT, ISRAEL — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley called for Gazan Palestinians to “separate themselves” from the terror organization that governs them in an interview with The Daily Wire after touring several sites where Hamas massacred civilians on October 7.

“It’s not that we don’t want good for the Palestinians, but the Palestinians have to separate themselves from Hamas because they’ve been indoctrinated themselves,” Haley said. “What we’ve seen is an entire generation that thinks their job is to murder the Jewish people and we can’t let that happen.”

“It wasn’t just Hamas that did this,” Haley said while standing at the site of the former Sderot police station, which was destroyed after being taken over by terrorists. “Thousands of Palestinian citizens came in and participated in the robbing and murdering of these people.”

There have been reports that Palestinian civilians, children, and U.N. employees took part in the attack after Hamas breached the Israel-Gaza fence. Haley’s comments came just after she finished touring Kibbutz Nir Oz where 25% of the 380 residents were either taken hostage or murdered, the site of the Nova massacre, a military base near the Gaza border where female soldiers were taken hostage and killed. Her former counterpart in the U.N. who is now a member of Knesset, Danny Danon, accompanied her on her tour.

WATCH: Nikki Haley Tours Scenes Of Hamas Terror Attack, Says Hamas Must Go

Haley also called for American universities to stop accepting “Arab money.”

“We should not be taking Arab money into any of our universities, we should not be taking any foreign money into our universities,” Haley said, while standing at the site of the former Sderot police station, which was destroyed after being taken over by Hamas terrorists.

Haley criticized colleges and called for revocation of tax-exempt status at academic institutions where antisemitic threats against Jewish students are not successfully being addressed.

“You can look at what’s happening on American campuses: those kids are not safe,” Haley said. “That is not a situation I want my kids in. I wouldn’t want anybody’s kids in and those colleges owe it to the kids there and to the future students.

“One thing is free speech, but threats and intimidation, that’s very different,” she added.

U.S. colleges and universities receive about $55 billion from foreign sources, with one-fourth ($13.1 billion) coming from Arab individuals, institutions, and governments, according to a May 2024 study by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. The biggest foreign donor to U.S. universities is Qatar, a country with close-ties to Iran and the home to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman pointed out that foreign governments are not allowed to own radio and TV stations, yet fund our universities.

“Why then do we allow foreign governments to give money to our universities, funds that are used to set up Middle Eastern, Asian studies and other programs which can be designed to fit the desired narratives of the donors,” Ackman tweeted. “Notably, these foreign governments concentrate their ‘gifts’ to our most elite institutions where they can influence our next generation of leaders — judges, politicians, members of the media and more.”

Haley said she is in disbelief by rhetoric coming from college students and activists that denies or downplays the severity of Hamas’ attack on Israeli civilians.

“You can’t pretend this didn’t happen,” Haley said. “Everywhere you go, someone knows someone who was murdered. Everywhere you go, you see where cars were burned, where people were brutalized, police officers here in this town were killed.”

Haley said Americans should sympathize by reflecting on how they felt after September 11, 2001.

“We were in shock, then we went through great sadness and then we went through anger of making sure it never happened again,” Haley said. “Just imagine if we had gone through all of that and then people told us it didn’t happen [or] it was America’s fault.”

“It’s like stabbing someone in the back after they’ve already been shot,” she added. “We need to be with them. We need to stand with them. We need to believe them.”

Haley said her time touring the Nova site with survivor Tali Biner made her think of her own daughter who is also a nurse in her 20s.

“We talked to a survivor, who talked about what she heard, what she saw, how she hid, how so many people hid under dead bodies,” Haley said. “The fact that she heard so many women mutilated and raped and even men. I mean, it’s so much that happened.”

“That wasn’t easy for her to tell me her story of what she heard, what she saw and what she experienced,” Haley added. “She’s doing that because nobody believes her. It’s a horrible thing to do to a victim, and it’s victimizing them all over again.”

Haley also visited the post with a photo of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of eight hostages held captive in Gaza.

Last week former president Donald Trump said Haley would  “absolutely” be on his “team in some form” going forward after she pledged to vote for him. In a press conference after her tour, Haley said she doesn’t take the intense rhetoric used by the campaigns personally.

“I’ve always been able to take the emotion and the personal part out of politics because that is the only way you can do the right thing,” Haley said. “This is about America. It’s about a strong America, it’s about a strong Israel. It’s about having the backs of our friends.”

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