DSA blocked from visiting West Bank school raided by Israel over terrorism ties

The Democratic Socialists of America said Tuesday that Israel stopped the group from attending a conference with a Hamas-linked West Bank university.A delegation that included DSA leaders and left-leaning European politicians tried to enter the region from Jordan on Monday for the “Second Ramallah Congress” at Birzeit University, according to news reports and statements from those involved. The school has a troubled history related to Israel’s security: Israelis have repeatedly raided the campus for decades over suspected ties to terrorism and arrested or convicted members of Hamas’s student organization there.The Israeli military did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment. Israel has not explained why it turned away the left-wing visitors at the West Bank border. “DSA leaders were interrogated by Israeli officials and held in detention for more than eight hours,” the socialist group said. “They were interrogated about being members of DSA, whether DSA supports [the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement], and if they were there to witness the apartheid and genocide.”Birzeit University’s event would have introduced delegates to “Palestinian academics, students and civil society organizations” and showed them local farmland, according to the DSA.Palestinian student supporters of the Islamic group Hamas take part in a pre-election rally for the student council at Birzeit University on Tuesday, April 14, 2009, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen) Israel sees campus as jihadi hotbed Israel most recently raided the university twice between September and October to tear down its so-called Martyrs Monument, according to multiple reports. The display honored deceased students such as Fadi Washaha, a previously convicted militant killed in a scuffle with Israeli soldiers in 2021. A Birzeit University student was also arrested in simultaneous raids, according to Arab officials and media outlets.The reports followed a harsher raid on the campus in January, stopping what the Israeli military called a “gathering in support of terrorism.” The operation escalated with gunfire in response to alleged rioters.Birzeit University raised security concerns as early as 1985, as Israel shut down one of its campuses over plans to open an exhibit in honor of a leftist Palestinian armed group, officials told the press at the time. Israel also claimed to have disrupted Hamas-related attack plots by its students in 2023 and 2024, along with recruitment and funding networks a few years prior, according to Israeli media. Hamas’s youth advocacy arm, the Islamic Bloc, won control over Birzeit University’s student council in 2022 and was repeatedly linked to the alleged terrorist activity.International scrutiny over the school became so prevalent that Harvard University froze a research partnership with it in March 2025, the Harvard Crimson reported.Birzeit University organized the second and first Ramallah Congress with Progressive International, a global activist coalition that itself expresses sympathy for violent extremist causes.Progressive International promotes a manifesto on its website from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine despite the group’s history of killing civilians. The coalition also called Hamas’s 2023 massacre in Israel a “resistance operation.”The DSA did not say which Palestinian figures and organizations the delegates intended to interact with.DSA CANDIDATE INTERNED AT HAMAS ‘GREENHOUSE’ SCHOOL INFAMOUS FOR TERRORIST RECRUITMENT“Palestinians face terror and violence by the Israeli occupation forces and illegal settlers in the West Bank every day,” the DSA said Tuesday. “While the Israeli government has prevented DSA from bearing witness to this injustice, we remain committed to anti-Zionism while fighting for Palestinian liberation and an end to Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide.”The socialist organization has dozens of endorsed candidates and ballot initiatives on the ballot in the November midterm elections.