A national student organization that advocates for Palestinian rights is facing allegations that it mobilized supporters on American college campuses to promote a “unity intifada” and defend the deadly Hamas terror attack against Israel last October, according to a strategy document cited in a new federal lawsuit.
The 33-page “day of resistance toolkit” from National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) provides instructions for organizing campus protests and portrays the Hamas violence as a legitimate “resistance” that students should help “normalize” through disruptions, sit-ins and other actions.
The previously unpublished materials emerged as evidence in a landmark case filed last week in New York accusing NSJP and its parent organization, American Muslims for Palestine, of providing material support and resources to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.
The toolkit, issued just one day after Hamas’s October 7th attack that killed over 1,200 Israelis and took soldiers hostage, refers to the militant group’s assault as a “historic win for the Palestinian resistance” and claims “total return and liberation to Palestine is near.” It declares students have “an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization.”
“National Students for Justice in Palestine is calling for a national day of resistance from the student movement for Palestine liberation on college campuses across occupied Turtle Island (so-called U.S. and Canada) and beyond,” the document states. “We must continue to resist directly through dismantling Zionism, and wielding the political power that our organizations hold on our campuses and in our communities.”
NSJP promoted the Hamas operation as “a prolonged war for liberation” in which “the Palestinian people have the right to resist colonization and oppression.” It claimed “settlers are not ‘civilians'” and termed Gaza “the cradle of resistance.”
The toolkit encouraged students to organize protests on October 12th by attending webinars on “how to organize a protest,” contacting NSJP for consultations, and leveraging sample graphics and hashtags distributed by the group. An NSJP database would track and publicize all planned campus events.
The legal complaint alleges the materials show NSJP and AMP are key “collaborators and propagandists for Hamas” by rallying support through inflammatory rhetoric that casts terrorist attacks as legitimate resistance.
“Within hours of the massacre, NSJP answered Hamas’s call to action for ‘mass mobilization,’ including by disseminating a toolkit to its affiliates on campuses across the United States, with materials that appear to have been created even before the attack, echoing Hamas’s terminology on how to advance and support their goals, including ‘armed struggle’ and ‘confrontation by any means necessary,'” said Arsen Ostrovsky, an attorney involved in the case.
The revelations have sparked condemnation from some lawmakers who view the campus activism as openly aligning American students with a designated terror organization under the guise of supporting Palestinian rights.
Rep. Tom Emmer, the House Majority Whip, told the Washington Free Beacon that by their “own admission, they’re not just standing in solidarity with this pro-Hamas, anti-Semitic movement—they ARE the movement.”
While NSJP and AMP have not directly commented on the litigation, they have previously insisted their campus activism opposes the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians but does not endorse violence or extremism.
The lawsuit comes amid heightened scrutiny over anti-Israel sentiment and allegations of rising anti-Semitism on college campuses nationwide. It will test the legal boundaries of speech rights and activism around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.