What SJP’s Applause for Hamas Street Executions Tells Us

It’s a moment that should shake every anti-Israel protester of the past two years to their moral core — if they still have one.

In Gaza, Hamas is executing Palestinians in the street. No trials. No charges. No due process. Just masked gunmen — sometimes teenagers themselves — dragging other young Palestinians into intersections and shooting them in the back of the head.

Their “crime”? Alleged “collaboration.” No courts. No evidence. Just rumor, grudges, or political motives. A vendetta broadcast to the world as a warning.

And how did Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — a group with over 350 college campus chapters across North America that claims to fight for Palestinian rights —respond?

With celebration.

“Death to the occupation. Death to Zionism. Death to all collaborators,” they posted. No distinction between Israeli soldiers and Gazan teens accused of helping Jews survive. No concern for due process. No objection to Palestinians being slaughtered in the street.

SJP didn’t condemn the executions. They endorsed them.

This wasn’t a rogue chapter. It was the movement speaking with one voice. And it demands a serious reckoning — not only for the universities that host them but for the political culture they increasingly influence.

A Hate Cult Wearing A Human Rights Mask

For years, SJP cloaked itself in the language of justice and human rights. But it marched behind the slogan “Globalize the Intifada” — a call for mass-murder masquerading as activism. The mask began to slip long ago.

It fully fell on Oct. 7, 2023, when SJP chapters across the country glorified the massacre of Israeli civilians, waving Hamas flags and chanting “resistance” just hours after Jewish women were raped, babies were burned alive and entire families were slaughtered.

And now, it’s fallen further.

The same movement that claims to champion Palestinian rights is cheering while Palestinians are gunned down by the terror group that claims to rule them.

This isn’t fringe activism. It’s an ideology infecting the loudest corners of elite academia — and echoing in the halls of political power.

In the U.K., Members of Parliament have parroted Hamas rhetoric and moved to bar Jewish fans from attending soccer matches under the guise of “security.” In Canada, elected officials have marched beside banners calling for Israel’s destruction.

In the U.S., from city councils in Dearborn to congressional offices, slogans once confined to SJP flyers now appear in speeches, op-eds, and policy debates.

From Campus to City Hall

Nowhere is this trajectory clearer than in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — a co-founder of SJP’s Bowdoin College chapter and current New York State Assemblyman — is leading in polls to be the next mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

Just days ago, Mamdani appeared on national television and couldn’t bring himself to say that Hamas — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization — should disarm, even after it posted footage of its own execution squads shooting Palestinian teenagers in the streets.

He didn’t condemn the killings. Not the violence. Not the killers. Not even the glorification of those murders by a group he helped build.

Mamdani has yet to disavow or condemn SJP. He’s offered no apology for its support of Hamas. He hasn’t even said clearly that Hamas should have no role in governing Gaza.

Like SJP, Mamdani openly rejects the idea of Israel as a Jewish state — not just in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”), but anywhere. He rails against Israel’s Jewish identity — despite its full civil rights for all citizens — while ignoring the dozens of explicitly Muslim states where minorities have no rights and civil liberties are nonexistent.

The Moral Inversion

If SJP cared about Palestinians, it would have protested when Bashar al-Assad killed more than 5,000 Palestinians during Syria’s civil war. Or Lebanon barring Palestinians — who’ve lived there for decades — from dozens of professions. Or denounced Kuwait’s expulsion of 250,000 Palestinians in the 1990s.

But they don’t. Because those atrocities didn’t serve SJP’s one consistent goal: the delegitimization and destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t about Israeli policy or disputed borders. It’s about Jewish sovereignty — anywhere in Israel. That’s why their ideology not only endangers Jews but also dehumanizes Palestinians who don’t conform to their extremist agenda.

What could be more dehumanizing than being executed in the street by a fascist regime—while Western activists cheer from afar?

What could be more revealing than SJP’s silence—or worse, its applause?

This Is Not Just a Campus Problem

SJP is not a scrappy protest group. It is a well-funded, well-organized pipeline to political power. Its alumni are now shaping the discourse on Israel, Gaza and the Jewish right to self-determination.

Some, like Mamdani, are already in power. And barring a major shift, he may soon lead one of the world’s most influential cities.

So, we must ask:

What does it mean when a movement that celebrates public executions has its alumni holding public office?

What does it say about our political discourse when so many can’t even say the obvious: Hamas is a jihadist terrorist group that must be disarmed and dismantled?

Draw the Line

Jewish tradition teaches: Ohev hamas, sonei nefesh — a lover of violence is an enemy of life. And yes, in Biblical Hebrew, “hamas” literally means “violence.”

SJP is not a movement for peace. It is a movement in love with hamas — in every sense of the word.

If we cannot draw the line here — at the glorification of terrorism, the executions of teenagers and the moral collapse of public discourse — then that line may no longer exist.

The time to act isn’t after the next atrocity or campus riot. It’s now — before slogans that celebrate murder become policies that excuse it.

Americans don’t have to agree on every aspect of the Arab-Israeli conflict. But they should agree on this: Those who support terrorism and terrorists shouldn’t be anywhere near public office.

Because the cost of silence isn’t just political. It’s moral.

Micha Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the NYPD. He is currently an attorney and is very active with numerous Jewish and pro-Israel organizations, including Stand With Us and the FIDF, and is a national board member of Herut North America.