UT Austin remains silent on staff lawyer who co-hosts podcast with group that praised Oct. 7 attack, promotes terrorism
The University of Texas at Austin is staying silent on a staff lawyer who co-hosts a podcast with a group that praised Hamas' October 7 attack against Israel and promotes terrorism.
The University of Texas at Austin is staying silent on a staff lawyer who co-hosts a podcast with a group that praised Hamas’ October 7 attack against Israel and promotes terrorism.
Campus Reform reported that Rhiannon Hamam, supervising attorney at the UT-Austin School of Law Ginni Mithoff Programm, 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. Campus Reform has given UT Austin several opportunities to comment on Hamam’s link to the anti-Semitic extremist group, but hasn’t received a response.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-TX) have both called on UT Austin to remove Hamam from her position.
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
Cruz told Campus Reform that it’s “deeply disturbing” that UT Austin employs Hamam.
“It is deeply disturbing to see that the University of Texas, a renowned academic institution, employs an attorney who participated in the openly antisemitic campus protests at UT, was arrested for criminal conduct, and participates in a podcast alongside a radical group that openly celebrated the cowardly October 7th attack on Israel,” Cruz said. “Jewish students across the nation are being subjected to violence and fear for their safety while they attend class, and Texas should be leading by example by removing such employees.”
Van Duyne previously described Hamam’s actions as “abhorrent” in a comment to Campus Reform.
[RELATED: Sen. Ted Cruz blasts UT Austin for employing attorney who hosts podcast with ‘radical group’ that celebrated Oct. 7 attack: ‘Deeply disturbing’]
”Just as I condemned the antisemitic words and actions of faculty at Cornell University, my alma mater, so too do I condemn Rhiannon Hamam’s bloodthirsty ideology and support of terrorism,” Van Duyne said. “The actions and abhorrent nature of faculty such as Hamam are one more reason why many in Congress continue to pursue avenues to restrict or remove federal funding from universities who shield and tolerate these barbarians on campus.”
Hamam was also one of 57 people arrested during anti-Israel protests at UT Austin in late April. She was initially charged with trespassing, which was later dropped by the Travis County attorney’s office.
