Who is behind pro-Palestinian protests in the US?

(NewsNation) — Columbia University and several other universities across the United States are continuing to warn of potential outside agitators as students hold protests calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and a divestment from Israel.

The demand has its roots in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, a decades-old campaign against Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. The movement took on new strength last month as the Israel-Hamas war surpassed its six-month mark and stories of suffering in Gaza sparked international calls for a cease-fire.

Campus protests turn violent

Pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses have since turned violent since their peaceful beginnings, and there have been over 1,000 arrests.

In the early morning hours of Wednesday, California law enforcement agencies started clearing protesters from an encampment on the University of California, Los Angeles campus after violent clashes broke out overnight between the pro-Palestinian protesters and counter-protesters.

The Los Angeles Police Department arrived on campus, donning riot gear and gas masks, after a request from the university for assistance.

The violence broke out after counter-protesters reportedly attempted to dismantle the encampment on UCLA’s campus, NBC News reported. This set off a chain reaction of violent encounters, including one person being dragged and beaten in the early hours of Wednesday, the report said.

The clashes escalated after the university declared the protest “unlawful and violates university policy,” urging demonstrators to leave encampments on campus.

Many universities have canceled commencement events, moved the remainder of the semester to online learning and even threatened expulsion for students participating in the encampments.

While several school groups are supporting the pro-Palestinian movement, there are also several organizations apart from them that are behind the movement, calling for the same changes students nationwide are.

In April, a group called Within Our Lifetime held a protest outside the walls of Columbia and called for resistance by “any means necessary.”

Chanting, “Columbia, you will see, we are all SJP. Columbia, you will learn, refugees will return,” the demonstration illustrated the scope of pro-Palestine protests taking place beyond college campuses.

In response, the school increased its security measures and would not allow anyone without a school ID to pass through the university’s gates.

Protesters barricade in Hamilton Hall

However, during the overnight hours into Tuesday, protesters barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall on campus. The barricade prompted a police response Tuesday night in which nearly 300 people were arrested on campus. Police cleared 30 to 40 people from inside the building.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday that police have identified organizations and people with a history of escalating situations. Though people who entered Hamilton Hall included students, Adams insisted that “it was led by individuals who were not affiliated with the university.”

“There is a movement to radicalize young people. And I’m not going to wait until it is done to acknowledge the existence of it,” Adams said.

A tent encampment on the school’s grounds was also cleared.

Who is behind these protests?

Within Our Lifetime is just one of a vast network of organizations that have coordinated protests that have blocked highways, delayed trains and shut down parts of college campuses across the country for the past few months.

The NYC-based pro-Palestine group is led by Nerdeen Kiswani, a 29-year-old who founded the group nearly a decade ago to build a community for young people who want to raise awareness about the Palestinian cause.

The grassroots movement included localized efforts to coordinate protests and events through encrypted apps like Telegram, WhatsApp, and Instagram.

“I just support the Palestinian people as a whole, and I believe that we have the right to resist,” Kiswani told NBC. “If they’re mad at it, they can talk to Biden, they can talk to the secretary of state, they can talk to the elected officials who keep funding wars abroad, who keep funding death and killing in our name, with our tax dollars.”

While the group was not directly associated with the protests on college campuses, their objectives remain intertwined.

Among the most enthusiastic and active pro-Palestine organizations are Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). These are just some of the groups that make up the network of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist organizing bodies across the country.

Who is funding the movement?

Several pro-Palestine organizations are operating around the country, including Within Our Lifetime, and do not have public tax filings, according to an NBC investigation.

Instead, they use a progressive New York-based nonprofit group called Westchester People’s Action Coalition Foundation (WESPAC) as their fiscal sponsor to collect and process online donations. Tax law allows nonprofit groups with a 501(c)(3) status to collect money on behalf of smaller organizations.

Other groups have been funded by major U.S. foundations. IfNotNow has received $100,000 in the past five years from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The organization’s stated goal is to “end U.S. support for Israel’s apartheid system.” The fund also awarded close to a half-million dollars to Jewish Voice for Peace, another Palestinian rights organization, over the same period.

At some schools, including UCLA, counter-protests in support of Jewish students have taken shape, escalating campus tensions. A GoFundMe called “Bruins for Israel” has raised over $81,000 as of Monday to bring a “huge screen and big, loud speakers” to Dickson Plaza for the demonstrators, according to the Daily Bruin — more than double the fundraiser’s goal of $26,000. 

Connections to terror?

Amid the recent wave of demonstrations both on and off college campuses, Jonathan Schanzer, a former Treasury Department official, said that the organizing parties are not organic but cultivated by potentially dangerous groups.

“They’re extremely organized. There are a lot of the Islamist-leaning groups that I think many of us have come to expect here,” Schanzer told NewsNation. “These are not spontaneous. They are not necessarily organic. They are cultivated by groups that have an axe to grind.”

Back in November, Schanzer called for a more aggressive investigation of ties between pro-Palestinian groups in the U.S. and terrorist organizations in his testimony to Congress.

“Individuals who previously worked for Hamas charities are now a driving force behind the large pro-Hamas demonstrations taking place in major cities across America,” said Schanzer, citing Hatem Bazian, a longtime lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, as an example.

Bazian founded the national branch of SJP to focus on campus-based activism and later launched AMP.

Schanzer claimed Bazian and his organizations are part of a network that is “providing training, talking points, materials and financial support to students intimidating and threatening Jewish and pro-Israel students on college campuses.”

“You are guilty because you passed by someone who was eating a shawarma, who is connected to somebody who lives in Gaza, who knows somebody who might be a member of Hamas,” Bazian said. “That’s basically where we are at.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.