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Editor’s note: American campuses are awash in a crisis of Jew hatred. Ineffectual college administrators have taken tentative steps to try and rein in the proponents of terror on their campuses, but they have yet to confront the most obvious source of this poisonous Jew hatred—their own radical faculty who have not only called for an end to Israel but have outright celebrated the barbaric bloodshed of the terror group Hamas.
The Freedom Center is exposing these radical, pro-terror faculty as the Top Ten Hamas Loyalist Professors. We will be publishing one school per day as a series on Frontpage. Noura Erakat, an associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University, is #8 on our list.
#8: Noura Erakat, Rutgers University
As an associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, Dr. Noura Erakat has repeatedly used her academic position and influence to promote the terrorist organization Hamas and to justify their barbaric massacre, mutilation, and rape of innocent Israeli Jews.
In a series of tweets issued on October 7th, a day of infamy in which Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 1200 Israeli men, women and children, and brutalized and raped many others, taking hundreds of hostages, Dr. Erakat raised her voice to defend Hamas’s horrors.
“#Gaza has been under a naval blockade & land siege for 17 years & its 2 mil Palestinians have been subject to 4 large scale offensives,” Erakat tweeted. “Any shock in response to this multi-scalar attack [by Hamas] reflects an expectation that those Palestinians die quietly and a complicity in their strangulation.”
On the same day of horrors, Erakat also tweeted: “Any condemnation of [Hamas] violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation." #Palestine #Gaza #Decolonize.”
In another tweet, she claimed: “Israel does not have a Hamas problem or a Gaza problem, it has a Palestine problem. Even if Hamas were to disappear, Israel would continue its removal and dispossession of Palestinians…”
In yet another post on October 7th, Erakat attempted to justify Hamas’s bloodletting as a “military tactic,” tweeting, “Civilians r taken hostage, soldiers r captured. This is a military tactic. ““Hamas has demanded the release of all Palestinian political prisoners…”
As horrifying as Erakat’s October 7th tweets on behalf of Hamas are, they are hardly without precedent. The professor has a long record of condoning and even celebrating terrorism against the world’s only Jewish state.
In an article written in May 2023, Erakat honored Khader Adnan, a deceased senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another anti-Israel terror organization.
In May 15, 2023, Erakat wrote an article honoring the deceased Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist, Khader Adnan, who was on record encouraging suicide bombings, stating “Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?”
This is the man whom Erakat lauded in her article and in a tweet, writing, “#MustRead thread on #KhaderAdnan. A life of compassion and resistance. A reminder that the best of Palestinian leaders have been killed, imprisoned, exiled.”
Erakat has also gone to bat for another senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Khaleda Jarrar, who has been repeatedly arrested and jailed by Israel for such crimes as calling for the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and involvement in a fatal 2018 bombing attack. Of the woman, Erakat tweeted: “Khaleda Jarrar is a long time #Palestinian leader & an elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council. #Apartheid Israel keeps imprisoning her w/o charge or trial & recently *convicted* her of membership in a political party [PFLP]…”
When Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched yet another major round of attacks against Israel in May 2021, firing over 4,300 rockets at major population centers, Erakat was quick to defend those actions and take the side of the terrorists. “When folks tell you the problem is Hamas rockets, remind them Zionist settler colonial expansionism is the cause, not the effect…” she tweeted.
Erakat has repeatedly demonized Israel and propagated anti-Semitic blood libel tropes about the Jewish people. Writing just two weeks after the slaughter of over 1200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, Erakat tweeted, “Israel has dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb on 2.2 besieged Palestinians & achieved ZERO of its military objectives. / This is not a war on Hamas but a war on Palestinians & particularly children…#Gaza_Genicide.”
In a separate tweet from July 4, 2023, Erakat wrote, “Israel promises the very fascist future that threatens the whole world…no one is safe." #ApartheidIsrael #Fascism #SettlerColonial #DoNotNormalizeApartheid.”
And on May 13, 2022, the professor tweeted, “Our bodies are testimony to the reality of this racist, supremacist Zionist ideology. Its drive for a satellite state for settlement necessitates segregation, removal, dispossession, elimination through & by grotesque violence. Palestinians are among its most brutalized victims.”
Despite this laser-like focus on the alleged “grotesque violence” of Israeli Jews, Erakat has celebrated Palestinian and Hamas violence against Jewish citizens of Israel, repeatedly praising known terrorists and lauding Hamas for its October 7th attack. She deserves to be known as one of the leading Hamas-loyalist faculty members in the nation.
