Footage of Jewish author David Horowitz’s tense exchange with a Muslim student in California has resurfaced on social media, amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Back in 2010, Horowitz—who the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as “a driving force of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-Black movements”—was a guest speaker at an event held at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
The clip, which showed a student refusing to condemn Hamas, has resurfaced on X, formerly Twitter, in the days following the Palestinian militant group’s attack on Israel on Saturday that left hundreds dead. Hamas said the attack was retribution for worsening conditions for Palestinians under Israeli occupation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently declared: “We are at war.” Since Saturday, Israel has carried out attacks against Hamas, launching “Operation Swords of Iron.” Israel has been pummeling the sealed-off and densely populated Gaza Strip with airstrikes.
David Horowitz
Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant organization that the U.S. considers a terrorist group alongside Hamas, on Sunday launched a barrage of mortar shells into Israel. The Israeli Defense Forces fired artillery into Lebanon. No casualties were reported on either side.
In a video clip that has resurfaced since the conflict began, Horowitz is shown being approached for a question by a member of UCSD’s Muslim Student Association (MSA). Horowitz was invited to UCSD by the student group Young Americans for Freedom.
The student told Horowitz that in reading his literature, she wanted to know about his take on the MSA, which at the time was in taking part in its Justice in Palestine Week, an event she suggested the writer had referred to as “Hitler Youth Week.”
Requesting clarification from Horowitz on his previous statements regarding the MSA, the student asked for “the connection between MSA and Jihad terrorist networks, because last I checked, we had to do our own fundraising and we never get help from anyone.”
Horowitz responded by asking the student if she would “condemn Hamas here and now.”
After Horowitz described Hamas as a “genocidal organization,” the student asked him: “Are you asking me to put myself on a cross?”
As Horowitz then sought to explain what he had written about MSA, the student interjected: “I don’t think you understood what I meant by that. I meant, if I say something I’m sure that I will be arrested, for reasons of Homeland Security. So if you could please just answer my question.”
“If you condemn Hamas, Homeland Security will arrest you?” Horowitz asked.
“If I condemn Hamas,” the student clarified, “because your question forces me to condemn Hamas. If I support Hamas, I look really bad.”
“If you don’t condemn Hamas, obviously you support it. Case closed,” Horowitz responded, sparking scattered applause in the venue.
Horowitz then went on to say that he had a similar experience at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), “where there were 50 members of the Muslim Student Association sitting right in the rows there. Throughout my hour talk, I kept asking them ‘Will you condemn Hezbollah and Hamas?’ None of them would.”
He then said that he told the president of the MSA’s UCSB chapter at the time: “I’m a Jew. The head of Hezbollah has said that he hopes we will all gather in Israel so that he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally.”
Raising his voice, Horowitz then asked the student before him: “For it or against it?”
“For it,” the student responded after pausing and leaning toward the microphone, prompting an audible reaction from attendees.
“Thank you coming and showing everybody what’s here,” Horowitz said, before pointing to the student’s Palestinian keffiyeh and calling it a “terrorist neckerchief.”
As the student attempted to follow up with another statement, Horowitz cut her off, telling her: “You don’t get to make a speech.”
Captioning the clip, which has been viewed more than 10 million times, an X user wrote on Tuesday: “Time to resurface this harrowing exchange between David Horowitz and a student at the University of California San Diego in 2010.”
The video caught the attention of former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who wrote: “Wow. Watch to the end.”
Newsweek has contacted the MSA’s UCSD chapter via email for comment. Horowitz’s representatives could not be reached for reaction.
Per a letter sent to UCSD campus newspaper The Guardian shortly after the event, the student in question clarified her position on Hamas: “My opinion of Hamas is not as simple as condemn or condone, for it or against it.
“I firmly believe that the killing of civilians, even as collateral damage regardless of creed, politics, sexuality, nationality or ethnicity is one of the highest crimes in the eyes of God and is morally reprehensible and abhorrent.”
The student continued that Horowitz “was not invited to present any argument or engage in constructive dialogue—rather, he was brought because of his reputation for racism and hatemongering against Arabs and Muslims.”
“The voices of the Palestinian people have been silenced by the mainstream media for too long, and I refuse to silence my own voice to appease the twisted politics of the pro-Israel communities on and off campus,” the student added.