WATCH: Hundreds chant slogan at anti-Israel rally held at MIT
Hundreds of protesters at an anti-Israel rally held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology chant "one solution, intifada, revolution" in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Israel this month. (Liyam Chitayat)
Israeli students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they are "terrified" to be on campus after participants at a campus protest chanted "one solution, intifada, revolution" at a rally supporting the devastating Hamas terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis in Israel.
MIT students Liyam Chitayat and Lior Alon told Fox News Digital in interviews that after they contacted MIT’s administration to report the calls to violence being chanted from the protest and for concern for their own safety, they’ve yet to receive a substantial response.
Chitayat, a 19-year-old pursuing a Ph.D. on a prestigious scholarship and who previously served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), describes the rally cry as a call for the murder of Jews and the demolition of Israel.
"Intifada is not a call for resistance. Intifada is the name of acts of bombing and killing civilians in Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It's the name of taking civilian lives in terrorist attacks in Israel. That is what intifada means. That is how it's defined," she said.
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Liyam Chitayat is 19-year-old Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Liyam Chitayat)
Historically, what’s called as the First Intifada was a deadly series of attacks and protests carried out by Palestinians against Israelis during the 1980s. The Second Intifada occurred in the early 2000s as at least 1,000 Israelis were killed by terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinians using suicide bombers on busses and shooting civilians in the streets, bars and restaurants in cities like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
Chitayat, who majored in biology and chemistry in her undergraduate studies, was the recipient of a research award named after a man who was murdered during the intifada. She also lost two friends and classmates to an intifada attack a year ago.
The recent protest rally at MIT was held by several student groups, including MIT Coalition Against Apartheid. That group issued a statement the day after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, saying they "hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence."
"We unequivocally denounce the Israeli occupation, its racist apartheid system, and its military rule. Colonization is inherently violent, aimed at erasing and replacing indigenous peoples. We affirm the right of all occupied peoples to resist oppression and colonization," the statement reads.
"I think there are things in life where you actually have to witness them to believe they exist," Chitayat said. "And [the] rally was one of those things. I just saw a group of over 100 students standing there and making the lives of people who are lost in one of the most horrifying terrorist attacks into a game of identity politics."
"I have friends on the front lines, and I also have friends who have been in the villages where the most heinous terrorist attacks known to modern history were committed," Chitayat said, referencing the Oct. 7 massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists in the deadliest attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust.
Chitayat described the initial devastation and dealing with the loss "alone," away from her home country and feeling unable to help 6,000 miles away. But now, she’s angry.
"My feelings are shifting a lot more towards anger because their blood hasn't even dried yet, and our campus is allowing, promoting, funding organizations that are calling for murder of Jews actively on campus, calling for demolition of Israel. And I wish I would have known that, I’m not sure if I would have come here," Chitayat said.
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This view shows smoke in the Gaza Strip as seen from southern Israel on Oct. 18, 2023. (Reuters)
Chitayat, who was raised in a single-parent home, said it had been her dream to attend MIT since she was 12 years old.
"I love science and I love art. I've been sort of enamored by all the things that nature has created around us from a very young age," she described. Showing exceptional talent and academic capabilities, she was accepted at 12 years old into a university in Israel.
After earning admission into top universities, including Harvard, Chitayat was granted an early release from the IDF. She chose MIT, she says, because she felt it was more open-minded and wasn’t conducive to "glorifying real world crisis into one-sentence spoken word acts."
"Since the age of 12, my dream was to get to the exact spot that I'm standing in right now. Two months ago, when I came here, was one of the most magnificent points in my career where I really felt like I could do it as someone who comes from a background that isn't traditionally in academia, as someone who really fought hard to get here," she said.
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But now she fears for her safety on campus after feeling "personally targeted and persecuted" by students who cheer for "the death of my people, my community as the only solution."
"I don't know what type of education or desensitization these 20-year-olds have been through, to think that the rape, mutilation and parading of women's innocent bodies through the streets is resistance? How decapitating babies is resistance? How taking elderly women, shooting them, broadcasting it live on their own Facebook accounts, is resistance?" Chitayat stated, referencing some of the brutal details of the Hamas attacks.
MIT president Sally Kornbluth in an Oct. 10 statement condemned the Hamas terror attacks, saying "[t]he brutality perpetrated on innocent civilians in Israel by terrorists from Hamas is horrifying. In my opinion, such a deliberate attack on civilians can never be justified."
On Oct. 21 after the anti-Israel protest, Kornbluth made a subsequent statement. "I have communicated my staunch support for free speech repeatedly in the past, and I stand by those principles. We defend that right as the best path to knowledge and learning; a university cannot function without it,"she said.
"But I have also been abundantly clear that individual targeting, harassment, or calls to violence are unacceptable. And some of what has been said and done on our campus alarms me. Indeed, some individuals in our community – Jews, Muslims and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians – have let us know that they feel fearful and concerned for their physical safety," Kornbluth continued.
"I won’t repeat the ugly words and actions community members have shared with me — dehumanizing name-calling and overt shunning of Muslim and Arab students in the dorms and laboratories; mass chanting of phrases that harken back to past antisemitic horrors or violent attacks on Israelis – as it would be adding fuel to the fire. But make no mistake: We cannot let MIT become a place where we treat each other this way," she added, noting that the school is "working to ensure the safety of our community in practical ways, through coordination and added patrols."
Lior Alon, an Israeli post-doctoral student at MIT, said the "intifada" chants were an escalation from a rally simply supporting a political view of the Middle East conflict.
Lior Alon said the "intifada" chants were an escalation from a rally simply supporting a political view of the Middle East conflict. (Lior Alon)
"This is not even related to what happens in Israel. That is calling for a terror attack here. A huge group of people calling out loud for terror attacks," Alon said.
Alon said he called MIT police to report the calls for violence, and they suggested that if he were "offended" he should file a report with the school, leaving Alon in disbelief.
"As a person that lived through two intifadas, that knows what it means for an entire country to be afraid to ride the bus or to go out to the street or to hang out in public because of terror attacks," Alon said.
Alon argued that maybe 99% of the students calling for terrorism are just "stupid kids" who don’t know the weight that the phrase carries or what it means.
"But we only need one stupid person with a gun," he said.
Alon, a formal naval officer for years in the Israeli military and fought several battles in Gaza, says he is "truly afraid" to walk on campus in light of the anti-Israel protests.
"I'm terrified," he said.
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Alon says that he wrote to MIT President Kornbluth, who replied that she was sorry that he felt the way he did and that they were "working on" the issue, but so far, no additional communication has been made.
Alon said that he had hoped MIT administrators would alert the FBI and Department of Homeland Security of the potential terror threat.
