Students walking across Harvard University’s campus on Wednesday saw the faces of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas following the terrorist group’s attack over the weekend.
The “KIDNAPPED” posters were plastered across the Cambridge campus after dozens of Harvard student groups wrote a statement that blamed Israel for the Hamas attacks.
“If you are walking today through the hallways and peaceful paths of @Harvard, look for the faces of babies, elderly Holocaust survivors, teenagers, and men and women who were brutally taken hostage by the inhumane Hamas terrorists,” Israel in Boston, the Consulate General of Israel to New England, posted on Wednesday.
“Remember their names and speak up for them! #StandWithIsrael,” Israel in Boston added.
Pro-Israel students at Harvard put up the posters in the wake of the anti-Israel statement, which sent shockwaves through the campus and around the region.
Ambassador Meron Reuben, the Consulate General of Israel to New England, told the Herald that he has been “quite shocked” by those “happily supporting this kind of murder and butchery in the Middle East.”
“We hope the students see from the fliers that the story is more complicated than they actually think,” Reuben added. “It’s a lot different from the way they seem to have learned about the conflict.
“Hamas is a group of blood-thirsty terrorists, whose only interest is to kill as many Israelis and Jews as they can,” he added. “They’re not interested in peace and living side-by-side with us.”
Meanwhile, student groups that had signed on to the anti-Israel statement are now trying to distance themselves from it. The Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Student Association, for instance, has retracted its signature from the statement.
“We regret that our decision to co-sign the latest PSC statement to call attention to historical injustices against Palestinians, with an earnest desire for peace, has been interpreted as a tacit support for the recent violent attacks in Israel,” the group wrote. “We deplore the attacks that have taken the lives of hundreds of innocent civilians including 10 Nepali students in Israel. We are deeply saddened by this news and mourn the lives that we have lost in the Nepali community.”
Billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard alum, wants Harvard to name the students who signed on to the letter.
“I have been asked by a number of CEOs if @harvard would release a list of the members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas’ heinous acts to Israel, so as to insure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members,” Ackman posted.
“If, in fact, their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known,” he added. “One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists, who, we now learn, have beheaded babies, among other inconceivably despicable acts.”
