About 25 protesters gathered outside the Hillel house at the University of Oregon in Eugene on the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre — the deadliest attack on Jewish civilians since the Holocaust — and chanted "Glory to the martyrs of the Al-Aqsa Flood." Inside, Israeli flags hung in the windows. Candles sat on the windowsills.
The candles were for the 1,200 people Hamas slaughtered. The chants were for the people who did it.
The group, led by an outfit calling itself the Anti-Imperialist Front, didn't limit itself to slogans. They distributed materials describing Hillel — the largest Jewish campus organization in the country — as "a Zionist organization which serves as a propaganda hub and recruitment branch." Their pamphlets accused Hillel of deliberately conflating Zionism with Judaism "when they call themselves a 'Jewish Cultural Organization.'" The chants included "Hillel off campus" and "No more IDF on campus."
Someone burned an American flag near the front porch of the Hillel house, according to The College Fix.
Jonathan Greenblatt, president of the Anti-Defamation League, called the protest "targeted harassment." The ADL's Pacific Northwest chapter said that "calling for Hillel's removal from the @uoregon is an abhorrent intimidation tactic." There wasn't much ambiguity left to work with. When your demand is to ban a Jewish student group and your chant praises the killers of 1,200 Jewish civilians, the "we're just anti-Zionist" framing requires a level of credulity that even a freshman orientation couldn't produce.
The usual defense in these situations is that the protesters are criticizing Israeli government policy, not Jewish students. That argument has a shelf life, and it expired the moment the crowd started glorifying a massacre that targeted a music festival and farming communities — not military targets, not government buildings. The October 7 attack killed families in their homes. The protesters knew what "Al-Aqsa Flood" referred to. They chose that phrase on that date at that location.
The Anti-Imperialist Front's own pamphlet gives away the game. They didn't object to a specific Israeli policy or military operation. They objected to Hillel's existence on campus. A Jewish cultural organization is, in their framing, a "propaganda hub" that must be removed. The demand isn't reform. It's erasure.
What the University of Oregon hasn't said is worth noting. No statement from the administration condemning the glorification of terrorism at a campus building. No public comment on whether burning an American flag on the porch of a student organization's house constitutes intimidation. The silence sits where a policy should be.
Three years after October 7, 2023, the protesters at the University of Oregon stood outside a Jewish student center and cheered the attackers by name. The university's response, as of this writing, has been nothing.
