Pro-Hamas Protesters at Stanford University Indicted on Felony Charges

Pro-Hamas Protesters at Stanford University Indicted on Felony Charges

It boggles the mind that there are ‘pro-Hamas’ people on American college campuses.

Algemeiner reports:

Stanford University Pro-Hamas Protesters Indicted on Felony Charges

A Santa Clara County, California grand jury has indicted, on federal charges of vandalism and trespassing, nearly a dozen pro-Hamas students who commandeered then-school president Richard Saller’s office in June 2024.

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, anti-Israel activists associated with the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) raided Saller’s office, locking themselves inside using, the Stanford Daily said at the time, “bike locks, chains, ladders, and chairs.” The incident was part of a larger pro-Hamas demonstration in which SJP demanded that the university adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as the first step to its eventual elimination.

Twelve students in total had participated in the action, including one non-student, but the 12th student has reportedly become a “cooperating witness,” having agreed to tell on his friends in exchange for evading criminal penalties. The remaining 11 are accused of causing some $300,00 in damages to Saller’s office and the administrative building in which it is located. As such, “Stanford is demanding restitution,” according to an email the group’s lawyer, Jeff Wozniak, sent to the Daily for publication on Thursday.

“The legal team supporting the 11 have demanded a dialogue with the university, but so far no response has been received,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, SJP maintains that the group acted morally, if not lawfully, telling the Daily, “Students acted to break through indifference, to force attention on an injustice that holding signs outside an office could never achieve.”

Before occupying Saller’s office, the anti-Israel group assembled a collection of tents on White Plaza — widely referred to as a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment.” Despite living there for several weeks, the university declined to negotiate terms with its members, a rebuff SJP called “gravely insulting to Palestinians and pro-Palestinian students on campus.”

Refusing to be ignored, SJP raided Saller’s office with other students, forming a human chain and covering security cameras with tin foil. SJP then reiterated its terms, demanding that no criminal charges be filed against its members and that any disciplinary proceedings currently underway be terminated.

Saller and his provost, Jenny Martinez, said that was a step too far, noting that the president’s office was not the only building which SJP attempted to storm and occupy.

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