Harvard student mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators on campus: video

Explore More

Troubling video footage shows a Harvard University student getting aggressively mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the Ivy League campus screaming, “Shame, shame, shame.”

More than a half-dozen demonstrators are seen holding keffiyehs — traditional Palestinian scarves — in the student’s face as they surround him and stop him from getting away, video posted on X show.

The disturbing footage was posted Wednesday but is from an Oct. 18 “Stop the genocide in Gaza” die-in demonstration by the Harvard Business School, according to school officials and media reports.

Scores of students participated in the radical demonstration held 11 days after Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which killed 1,400 Israelis and prompted a swift retaliatory offense from the Jewish state.

According to the Harvard Crimson, the school’s student newspaper, the confrontation at the demonstration was sparked when the accosted student “began to film demonstrator’s faces.”

“Within minutes, he was escorted out by protest organizers, who blocked his camera with their keffiyehs — traditional scarves worn by Palestinians that have come to symbolize Palestinian nationalism,” the newspaper wrote. “Demonstrators yelled ‘shame’ at the disruptor as he left.”

Near the end of the die-in demonstration, another student, identified as Raphael C.S. Maarek, held up an Israeli flag, the student paper reported.

Maarek told the Harvard Crimson that Israeli students on campus have been subjected to “hate speech” — and called on his peers to “learn with each other.”

“We’re not here to do politics. We’re here to learn from different perspectives — to meet people from the Gulf, from Iran, from any other type of Muslim country,” Maarek said.

“We’re not full of hatred. We’re not full of revendications. We’re here to learn with each other, but it’s just not the right setting right now.”

A spokesperson for Harvard University declined to comment on the incident Wednesday.

But in a statement after the incident, Harvard Bussiness School Dean Srikant Datar addressed the “troubling confrontation” that he said “left many of our students shaken.”

“Reports have been filed with [the Harvard University Police Department] and the FBI, the facts are being evaluated, and it will be some time before we learn the results of an investigation,” Datar wrote.

The dean went on to say there was no place on campus for antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of discrimination.

“Now is the time to recommit to our mission with a sense of urgency and purpose,” he said.

The Israeli-Hamas conflict has sparked unrest at several campuses, from City University of New York schools to other Ivy League universities, including Cornell, Yale and Columbia.

ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3R7kGpmaWlfo7K4v46hmKuukaexbr%2FTrpuepqRiurCuwZ6bZpqpYr2zu4ypmKWdo6m2r7XAp2SdnZ2ku7TA0ZqrqKqjYryvecKapKmto2LDqrDEqGY%3D