Radical activists helped train student activists on US campuses, according to a report by Wall Street Journal.
The report details the ways in which US student groups received training from various veteran activists, including some former Black Panthers, on methods of protest and how to handle disputes.
One student was quoted as saying, “We took notes from our elders, engaged in dialogue with them, and analyzed how the university responded to previous protests.”
The decentralized nature of the anti-Israel student movement makes cross-group organization more difficult, but the students' training may have helped them achieve their current success.
Some of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters called for a "day of resistance" as soon as the war broke out.
Some SJP chapters have been suspended by universities, including the one at Columbia.
Organizing with pro-terror groups
Some students received training from activists in Samidoun, an organization that was recently banned in Germany due to supporting the October 7 massacre. Samidoun has been considered a terrorist organization in Israel since 2021.
Samidoun has links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The PFLP was responsible for several of the worst terror attacks in Israel in the 20th century and the worst terror attack in Israeli history before October 7.
During the “Resistance 101” session, students were told, "There is nothing wrong with being a member of Hamas, being a leader of Hamas, being a fighter in Hamas. These are the people that are on the front lines defending Palestine.”
Some tools they were taught were organizational, for example how to raise money via student fundraisers and donations from friends and supporters to buy tents for encampments.
One professor at UCLA told the WSJ that they had organized "self-defense teams" at the encampments, although he claims they were trained in "nonviolent de-escalation."
He says that this generation was far more disciplined than his generation in the 1980s.