UT-Austin lawyer co-hosts podcast made in partnership with group that promotes terrorism and praised Oct. 7 attack
One attorney at the University of Texas-Austin School School of Law co-hosts a podcast that's made in partnership with a group that has a history of promoting terrorism and even praised the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel.
One attorney at the University of Texas-Austin School School of Law co-hosts a podcast that’s made in partnership with a group that has a history of promoting terrorism and even praised the October 7, 2023 attack in Israel.
Rhiannon Hamam, supervising attorney at the UT-Austin School of Law Ginni Mithoff Program was one of 57 people who were arrested during anti-Israel protests at the University of Texas at Austin in late April. All charges were dropped by the Travis County attorney’s office, according to the Texas Tribune. All protesters were initially charged with criminal trespass.
According to the report, students arrested were banned from campus, and can only come on campus for “academic reasons.”
While arrested students were banned from campus, Hamam is still listed as an employee of the Ginni Mithoff Program. The Ginni Mithoff Program exists to help students “engage in pro bono work to increase access to justice, build their lawyering skills, and develop a lifetime commitment to providing legal services to those in need.”
Hamam co-hosts the Popular Cradle Podcast, which is made in partnership with the Palestinian Youth Movement.
According to data collected by NGO Monitor, the Palestinian Youth Movement has a history of promoting terrorism.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the Palestinian Youth Movement proudly took to Facebook and wrote “PALESTINE LIVES! THE RESISTANCE LIVES!”
”In the past several hours, the resistance in Gaza stormed the illegitimate border fence, reentering 1948 Palestine for the first time in many of our lives,” the group wrote. “With these developments come new equations in the Palestinian struggle, and a shifting of the ground beneath our feet, the reverberations of which we can only begin to imagine. Gaza, the cradle of our resistance and the lifeblood of our struggle, is pushing us closer to the hour of liberation than ever before.”
The Palestinian Youth Movement also has a reading list, which contains articles written by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.
Included in the reading list is an interview with Ahmad Saadat, who serves as secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In the interview, which the Palestinian Youth Movement promoted, Saadat said that the “Palestinian intifada was a model for popular resistance,” stating that violence should be used against Israel in the fight for Palestinian liberation.
”What is necessary, then, is the creative combination and integration of all legitimate methods of struggle enabling us to deploy each type or method of resistance according to the specific conditions warranted by different political junctures. On the wider, national level, we need a unified political program that, first and foremost, provides the means to put resistance into practice. And we need political stances and discourses that are similarly united around resistance,” Saadat said.
In June 2023, NGO Monitor notes, the Palestinian Youth Movement called for the release of Walid Daqqqah from Israeli prison, who was sentenced to life in prison for the kidnapping and subsequent murder of an Israeli soldier.
Freedom or Martyrdom: Walid Daqqah’s fate is in our hands
The Palestinian Youth Movement calls on the international community to demand the immediate release of Walid Daqqah and expose the illegal nature of his imprisonment.https://t.co/XEWKOfBmVI— Palestinian Youth Movement (@palyouthmvmt) June 24, 2023
Campus Reform reached out to Hamam and the University of Texas-Austin for comment.
