Police have been called in to many colleges and universities after they say some of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators have crossed the free speech line by calling for violence. NBC6’s Ari Odzer spoke to a victim of terrorism for his perspective.
In recent days, police have broken up protest encampments at several universities around the nation.
Law enforcement agencies were called in to take action for several reasons, including colleges being concerned that pro-Palestinian demonstrators had crossed the line of permitted free speech by advocating violence.
The college protests have had a profound impact on Daniel Miller. When he was 18, doing a semester abroad in Israel, Miller survived a suicide bomber attack during the first intifada. He was sitting at a café in Jerusalem.
“I locked eyes with someone, I heard him scream, 'Allahu Akbar,' and I saw him explode right in front of my face, and that’s an image I see every night when I go to sleep,” Miller explained.
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Five people died that day, and 189 were injured, so Miller knows he’s extremely lucky to be alive. Now he’s astounded to see American college students on social media videos chanting support for intifada, at various schools, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and MIT.
“These are educated kids who are siding with terrorists, and personally it outrages me to a level I can’t even describe,” Miller said. “The post-traumatic stress I experienced after the bombing has come back, full force.”
Miller wonders if they even understand what the intifada period in Israel was like.
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“So when they’re calling for a global intifada, they’re calling for men, women, and children to be killed as they were on October 7th, raped, burned in ovens, to be beheaded again, Hamas has promised that given the opportunity, they would do it again, and again, and again until we’re all killed,” he said.
“I spend a lot of time hugging my son,” Adam Halley said.
Halley is one of 39 victims of the October 7th Hamas terror rampage who have signed on as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, filed in Florida, against Students for Justice in Palestine, known as SJP, and its parent organization, American Muslims for Palestine. SJP boasts on its website that it has organized protest encampments at colleges all over the nation.
When Hamas slaughtered hundreds of unarmed revelers at the Supernova Dance Festival, Halley’s son, Ethan, took cover in a bomb shelter. Thirty-one people jammed into it, but Hamas terrorists fired machine guns into it and tossed grenades inside. Twelve people survived, but five were taken as hostages into Gaza. Ethan hid under dead bodies and is now dealing with physical and mental trauma. His dad is speaking on Ethan’s behalf.
“I think that what’s going on in American college campuses is despicable, I think it aids and abets Hamas and the other terrorist organizations, I think they are basically spokespeople and PR for the terrorist organizations,” Adam Halley said.
The lawsuit claims that SJP has been assisting Hamas for years, and therefore, shares liability for the October 7th attacks.
“They promoted the ideology of Hamas,” said Nitsana Leitner, lead attorney in the lawsuit.
How does she differentiate between protected free speech rights in the United States and supporting a terror organization?
“The help and assistance that these students provided Hamas is not protected freedom of speech, there is a limit to where the freedom of speech gets to,” Leitner responded.
Miller has spent 27 years trying to recover from his encounter with Hamas. He builds Lego projects for therapy, and tries to help other victims.
“I just met with someone from October 7th, and his one question to me was, does this ever go away? Does this ever get easier, he hasn’t slept in weeks, every night is just nightmares of seeing his ten friends being killed and the truth is, it doesn’t ever go away,” Miller said.
Because of the protests, Miller said for the first time in his life, he doesn’t feel safe in the United States. He wonders why, if they’re really concerned with the plight of civilians in Gaza, the demonstrators have never called on Hamas to surrender and release the hostages, which would end the war immediately, instead of glorifying the murders of hundreds of people during the intifada.
We reached out to American Muslims for Palestine for a response to the lawsuit, but as of this writing, we have not yet received a response.
