On January 6, 2026, Border Police and IDF forces carried out a raid on Birzeit University in the West Bank following riots involving hundreds of suspects, which included stone- and rock-throwing from rooftops toward the forces. Eleven people were injured during the IDF operation, including from live fire. The response from some students on Israeli campuses came the following day, when students from the Hebrew University held signs in Hebrew and Arabic reading: “Standing in solidarity with Birzeit” and “Security and academic freedom for all.” At Tel Aviv University, a protest took place featuring a sign written in Hebrew, Arabic, and English stating: “Everyone has the right to life, the right to education, and the right to a future,” alongside people lying on the ground dressed in black to simulate dead bodies.

Solidarity protests on campuses in Israel are presented as a universal struggle for academic freedom and human rights. However, they ignore the fact that for many years Birzeit University has served as a central hub for student organizations identified with Palestinian terror groups, such as Al-Kutla al-Islamiya, affiliated with Hamas, and a cell linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both designated terrorist organizations by the United States, Canada, the European Union, and Israel. Over the years, Birzeit has also become a hotbed of militant Palestinian national activity and has functioned as a stronghold for hostile activity against Israel. Terrorists who are admired by students there have emerged from the university, such as Yahya Ayyash, known as Hamas’s “Engineer,” who orchestrated a series of suicide bombings against Israel and was assassinated in the 1990s. He is joined by Marwan Barghouti, who served as head of the student union at Birzeit University in the 1980s and was convicted in 2004 of five murders and of leading Fatah’s armed wing, the Tanzim.

On September 8, 2025, an electrical engineering student from Birzeit University was one of the terrorists involved in the shooting attack at Ramat Junction in Jerusalem, in which six Israelis were murdered. In response to his killing by Israeli security forces, the university’s student union published a statement glorifying the terrorist, while simultaneously issuing a harsh condemnation of the Birzeit administration for failing to express solidarity or declare a day of mourning. On July 21, 2024, the activity of a terror cell composed of members of Al-Kutla al-Islamiya from the university was thwarted; the cell had planned significant attacks and the transfer of funds to Hamas operatives in the West Bank. On December 8, 2023, about two months after the Hamas massacre of October 7, Birzeit University’s X (Twitter) account published: “On this day, 36 years ago, the First Intifada began in the Jabalia refugee camp and later spread throughout all of Palestine; it serves as a perfect example of national unity in the face of oppression.” On September 24, 2023, security forces arrested eight students who had been hiding at Birzeit University and were planning to carry out an imminent attack.

Twice in a row, in 2022 and 2023, the Hamas student cell won the student union elections. During the May 2023 elections, Hamas and Fatah student cells ran campaigns attempting to demonstrate who was more extreme toward Israel. Hamas’s campaign emphasized the involvement of its operatives in Gaza and in carrying out attacks against Israel. Hamas students mocked the Fatah cell and criticized the Palestinian Authority’s security coordination policy with Israel under Mahmoud Abbas. Conversely, Fatah students boasted that activists from the Lion’s Den and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, had taken part in attacks against Israel.

In January 2022, Birzeit University was shut down for several weeks after Palestinian Authority security forces raided student dormitories, conducted searches, and arrested several students identified with the Hamas student cell. Naturally, this did not prompt those Israeli students to protest the supposedly violated rights of Palestinian students.

In December 2021, marking the 34th anniversary of Hamas’s founding, Al-Kutla al-Islamiya held several events resembling military parades, complete with Hamas flags, while students on campus dressed as militants. At a university gathering, a cell activist praised “the body parts that flew through the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv”, the very cities where Israeli students later protested in solidarity with Birzeit. That same week, another Al-Kutla al-Islamiya event was not dispersed by the Palestinian Authority, and when campus leadership prevented students from holding an event indoors, they responded by breaking doors on campus.

Prof. Beshara Doumani, president of Birzeit University from 2021 to 2023, went on to become the founder of the Center for Middle East Studies at the prestigious Brown University, where he promotes “Palestine Studies” programs that invite radical professors from Birzeit University, an institution that encourages students toward antisemitism, terror propaganda, and denial of Israel’s right to exist. Some Brown students responded to the October 7 attack with statements expressing joy over the murder of Israeli civilians, and the center rejects academic freedom in favor of a radical agenda.

Even before October 7, the West Bank was one of the bloodiest arenas. During the two years of multi-front warfare in 2024–2025, approximately 11,219 attacks originated from the West Bank and Jerusalem, while 2,317 attacks were thwarted by Israeli security forces.

Universities profoundly shape public life by cultivating values, leadership skills, and human capital that influence politics, economics, and communities. They produce leaders and are meant to foster productive public discourse. Yet in the West Bank, universities such as Birzeit and Nablus appear to symbolize internal tensions within Palestinian society and power struggles between its various factions, which often manifest in armed attacks that also penetrate within the Green Line.

The open support by Israeli students and professors for students from Birzeit University,

a center of extremism that serves as a hotbed for anti-Israel and antisemitic activity, ignores the history of student and university declarations supporting terror through campus military parades and student involvement in terrorism. Protesters adopt a narrative of “academic oppression” in opposition to IDF preventive actions intended to stop bloodshed. This represents a moral collapse that whitewashes history and disregards the threat at the doorstep.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)