‘Radical Muslim’ Yale Professor Defends Hamas Attack on Israel, Students Call for Her Termination

A self-proclaimed “radical Muslim” Yale professor has been met with calls for termination in response to her social media posts, which appeared to justify the recent terror attacks carried out on Israel by Hamas.

Zareena Grewal, an associate professor of American studies, ethnicity, race, migration, and religious studies at Yale University, has come under fire for her controversial posts on X, formerly known as Twitter. After Saturday’s attack on Israel that resulted in a death toll of more than 1,300 people, Grewal called the bleeding country a “murderous, genocidal settler state.”

“My heart is in my throat,” Grewal posted soon after news of the Hamas attack broke. “Prayers for Palestinians. Israel is a murderous, genocidal settler state, and Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

Hamas, a fundamentalist Islamist militant group with control over the Palestinian-inhabited Gaza Strip, launched the biggest attack on Israel in the last 50 years, leaving 3,000 wounded and taking at least 150 hostages. 

WATCH: Video Shows Hamas Rockets, Paragliders, Terrorists Streaming into Israel

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades via Storyful

Grewal advertises her job at Yale and identifies as a “radical Muslim” on her X account, which is now private. Further posts show the professor gushing at the news that terrorists had committed violent acts against civilians.

“It’s been such an extraordinary day!” Grewal wrote alongside news coverage of the attack.

In response to a call for peace from journalist Rachel Shabi, Grewal doubled down on her extreme rhetoric.

“Civilians are civilians are civilians, doesn’t matter where,” Shabi wrote about the unarmed men, women, and children who were harmed by Hamas. 

“Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard,” the Yale professor retorted.

In yet another post, Grewal said that “no government on earth is as genocidal as this settler colonial state” in reference to Israel.

In response to these posts, Yale student Netanel Crispe organized a Change.org petition on Tuesday called “Remove Zareena Grewal from the Yale Faculty for Promoting LIES and VIOLENCE.”

“She has unequivocally proven that she has no right being in her current role or in the field of education if she considers war crimes against civilians to be acts of resistance,” Crispe wrote.

“Condoning violence, advocating for a terrorist organization, and historical revisionism and inaccuracies are all ideas that run contrary to the values of Yale University,” he added before pleading for signatures.  

As of Thursday afternoon, more than 33,000 people have signed the petition to call for Grewal’s termination from Yale.

While the professor has yet to respond to the backlash publicly, her posts have garnered plenty of critical comments on X. 

Despite the blowback, Yale has defended its employee’s right to free speech.

“Yale is committed to freedom of expression, and the comments posted on Professor Grewal’s personal accounts represent her own views,” university spokesperson Karen Peart told student newspaper Yale Daily News.