Student groups at California State University in Long Beach are facing backlash for a “sickening” pro-Palestinian rally poster featuring a paraglider after Hamas terrorists used the aircraft to launch their deadly invasion in Israel.
The La Fuerza Student Association shared a poster for the “Day of Resistance: Protest for Palestine” event featuring a drawing of protesters carrying a Palestinian flag, with a paraglider in the corner.
“Join us and CSU Students United Against Apartheid tomorrow at the Central Quad from 1:30 – 4:30,” La Fuerza wrote in a caption of the Tuesday event.
“We will be rallying and marching in support of the Palestinian liberation and against Zionist occupation in Palestine,” the group said.
“FROM PALESTINE TO THE PHILIPPINES, STOP THE US WAR MACHINE,” it concluded.
The event drew backlash online, where critics slammed the poster as “sickening.”
“This is sickening that no one has taught them better,” one user wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Another added, “how can a university student be so completely out of touch with the reality of Saturday’s slaughter?”
Follow along with The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel
It is just the latest in a number of student organizations throughout the country that have expressed their support for terrorists who invaded Israel on Saturday and kidnapped and killed civilians.
The Students for Justice in Palestine is also planning a National Day of Resistance for its campus chapters to be held on Thursday, and at least six SJP chapters have announced they will be holding campus events on that date: Arizona State University, University of Arizona, Butler University, University of Louisville, University of Binghamton and the University of Virginia.
At least two other chapters, at Michigan State University and University of Mary Washington, are convening events at off-campus locations, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The national group previously described Hamas’ massacre of Israelis as “a historic win for Palestinian resistance,” and called for “not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors,” the ADL reports.
Its National Day of Resistance Toolkit now pledges to bring that “spirit of resistance” to US college campuses — encouraging chapters to use tactics like protests and demonstrations, or to use “a sit-in, disruption or educational event.”
Some chapters have also released their own statements in support of Hamas, including the SJP at University of California, San Diego, which reposted a message from the Palestinian Youth Movement following the invasion, saying, “The resistance lives.”
SJP at California State University Sacramento also shared a post that read, “As Muslims, we have a religious obligation ordained by Allah SWT to support the liberation of Palestine by any and all means necessary.”
And at Harvard, 31 student groups said they were holding Israel “entirely responsible for” Hamas’ actions.
The groups claim Hamas’ attack “did not happen in a vacuum,” and the Israeli government has forced Palestinians to live in an “open-air prison for over two decades,” according to the letter obtained by The Post.
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” they wrote in a letter.
“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” the groups claim.
The letter has since been condemned by former Harvard University president Larry Summers.
“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” Summers, the former Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton who later went on to advise President Barack Obama in the White House, wrote on his X social media account.
“The silence from Harvard’s leadership, so far, coupled with a vocal and widely reported student groups’ statement blaming Israel solely, has allowed Harvard to appear at best neutral towards acts of terror against the Jewish state of Israel.”
“Instead, Harvard is being defined by the morally unconscionable statement apparently coming from two dozen student groups blaming all the violence on Israel,” he wrote, adding: “I am sickened.”
The Post has reached out to Harvard administrators for comment.
