‘Somebody is radicalizing our students’: NYPD finds weapons, ‘Death to America’ poster in pro-Hamas encampment

When the NYPD entered a building protesters occupied, it found ‘gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on terrorism.’

By Jack Elbaum, The Algemeiner

Anti-Israel protesters who occupied an academic building at Columbia University had signs that read “death to America” and “death to Israel,” a New York City Police Department (NYPD) official said on Friday.

“Pencils, books, laptops — those are the tools of students and what you expect to find on a college campus,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry wrote on X/Twitter. However, when the NYPD entered Hamilton Hall — which encampment protesters took over — to remove the occupiers, it found “gas masks, ear plugs, helmets, goggles, tape, hammers, knives, ropes, and a book on TERRORISM [sic].”

Additionally, the NYPD found a poster that read “death to America,” “death to Israel,” and “long live the intifada” — the last of which refers to a violent Palestinian uprising.

“Continue to peacefully and lawfully protest,” the deputy commissioner emphasized, “but know that if you engage in illegal conduct, the NYPD will hold you responsible and hold you accountable — someone has to.”

In a statement to reporters a day earlier, Daughtry drew attention to the broader trends driving the activity seen on college campuses across the country. “Somebody is radicalizing our students,” he said. “We will find out who that is.”

Meanwhile, Chief of Patrol John Chell said it was particularly notable to observe the “complete hatred for Israel that was being spewed and the hatred for the NYPD being spewed by the youth of this school.” He described it as “upsetting as a father and as New York City people.”

While speaking with reporters, NYPD officials said the materials were found during a raid at New York University and the New School, not Columbia. But Friday’s post said it was from Columbia.

These revelations by the NYPD came amid a wave of anti-Israel protests on university campuses, many of which have featured students removing the American flag and replacing it with Palestinian flags. At George Washington University, employees cut the rope to the flag pole in the middle of the night after demonstrators hoisted a huge Palestinian flag and defaced a statue of George Washington. On Friday, reportedly with the support of the school, a massive American flag was unfurled on a building right next to the encampment.

For over two weeks, university students have been amassing in the hundreds at a growing number of schools, taking over sections of campuses by setting up “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and refusing to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, calling for the destruction of Israel, and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.

After American flags were taken down on a campus in New York City and the NYPD put it back up, Mayor Eric Adams said, “It’s despicable that schools would allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.”

“Blame me for being proud to be an American,” he added. “We’re not surrendering our way of life to anyone.”