Hamas captors cruelly taunted Israeli hostages with news stories and photos of antisemitic protests at Columbia University — and bragged about having an “army” of propagandists to spread their hate, according to new court papers.
Freed hostage Shlomi Ziv claimed he was shown disturbing images and stories of the protests that engulfed the Upper Manhattan campus last year while he was in captivity in the Gaza Strip.
“With the news report on, his captors told him, ‘You see, we have our own people everywhere,” a court filing from Thursday said. “They then told him that Hamas has an ‘army’ operating out of Gaza that focuses specifically on media and sending Hamas propaganda and messaging throughout America.”
The shocking allegation was revealed in an amended lawsuit filed against a slew of anti-Israel groups in Manhattan federal court for “aiding and abetting Hamas’ continuing acts of international terrorism and violations of the law of nations” following the terror groups Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel that left 1,200 dead and hundreds kidnapped.
Ziv, who is a plaintiff in the suit, was held in captivity for 246 days before he and four others were rescued in an Israel raid in June 2024. He claimed he was shown Al-Jazeera stories and pictures of the Columbia protests and that his captors “bragged about having Hamas operatives on American university campuses.”
Filed on behalf of former hostages, the families of slain hostages, and former Israeli military personnel drawn into the Jewish State’s counter-offensive against Hamas in Gaza, the suit claims the Ivy League school’s protest organizers are essentially an arm of the terror group that impacted their lives.
“The associated defendants acted as Hamas’ foot soldiers in New York City and on Columbia’s campus and enacted [protest organizer’s] plan to disrupt Columbia’s operations to assist Hamas,” the suit said.
The lawsuit, originally filed March 24, names several campus groups, including Within Our Lives, United for Palestine, Columbia Students for Justice In Palestine, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Columbia-Barnard Jewish Voice For Peace, and individual group founders or leaders.
Ziv, an Israeli citizen, was working security at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7 when he was kidnapped. He and other hostages were starved and beaten “almost every day,” their doctor said.
The Manhattan campus has been a hotbed for anti-Israeli demonstrations that have terrorized Jewish students — including some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit who were enrolled at the school.
The school is among dozens of colleges and universities in the US that have seen pro-Palestinian protests, and anti-Israeli encampments following the Oct. 7 attack.
Last week, students burned their diplomas in protest on the Columbia campus, two weeks after masked student protesters stormed into the Butler Library at the school.
Last year, a mob of students took over Hamilton Hall on the campus and had to be forced out in a wild NYPD raid, leading to several arrests.