Cornell University professor calls Hamas terror attack ‘exhilarating’ and ‘energizing’
A Cornell University professor was caught on camera telling students Hamas’ terror attack on Israel — which has left more than 1,400 dead — was “exhilarating” and “energizing.”
The remarks were made at a pro-Palestinian protest by Russell Rickford, an associate professor of history at the top-tier school in Ithaca, New York, and posted online Sunday by a student who called them “shameful.”
The footage of Rickford’s impassioned speech was also shared with The Post by two other tipsters. They declined to say exactly when and where the rally took place, but both said they were shocked by the brazen remarks.
The prof said the coordinated Oct. 7 attack, in which militants broke through concrete walls and paraglided into Israel to indiscriminately murder civilians, “shifted the balance of politics and punctured the illusion of invincibility” of Israel, which has imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip since terrorist group Hamas seized power there in 2007.
“That’s what they’ve done. You don’t have to be a Hamas supporter to recognize it,” he said.
Rickford then claimed many Palestinians who were born into violence and oppression were “able to breathe for the first time in years” in the hours after the brutal massacre.
“It was exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated,” Russell said to a smattering of approval from students, the video showed.
Follow along with The Post’s coverage of Israel’s war with Hamas
- Hamas chief says a ‘truce agreement’ and hostage exchange with Israel is close
- Hamas captives spill secrets about operating from hospitals: ‘We became their human shields’
- How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?
- Israel war live updates: Follow along for The Post’s latest coverage
The crowd then chanted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a common rallying call for pro-Palestinian advocates to eradicate Israel and establish their own state. The phrase is deemed antisemeitc by the American Jewish Committee.
Rickford did not respond to an interview request from The Post and Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
His explosive speech came after a diversity and inclusion director at Cornell University was criticized for calling the Hamas attack a “resistance.”
“F–k your fake outrage at Palestine when you’ve literally been silent about the violence perpetuated by Israel against Palestine every day,” Derron Borders, of the Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, wrote on Instagram the day of the attack.
Borders later condemned the violence, but said it was on par with Israel’s “state-sanctioned violence” against the Palestinian people.
Cornell’s Ivy League rival, Harvard University, made headlines last week when more than 30 student organizations co-signed a letter circulated by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups that held Israel “entirely responsible” for the terror attack.
Harvard’s president defended students’ right to free speech, but several of the groups tried to walk back their support of the missive after business titans threatened to blacklist them from Wall Street.
Nonprofit news watchdog group Accuracy in Media drove a billboard truck around the Cambridge, Mass., campus to dox the students who purportedly signed the letter, labeling them “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
