Digital Couriers: How U.S. Anti-Israel Activists Amplify Terror Propaganda on Mainstream Platforms

Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, analysts from the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) have tracked how some U.S.-based anti-Zionist activists and groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters, are amplifying propaganda from Palestinian Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) and others to promote support for the “resistance” — a euphemistic reference to the various terrorist groups responsible for violent attacks against Israel, including  Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hezbollah, and the Houthis (Ansar Allah).

This circulation, on Telegram and mainstream social media platforms such as X and Instagram, fuels a broader, dangerous shift since October 7: the increased normalization of rhetoric and messaging from terror organizations that overtly encourage acts of violence against Israel and Jewish people.

This shared material, which openly praises violent actions and actors, comes at a time of heightened danger for Jews worldwide with increased incidents of deadly antisemitic attacks. American Jews specifically have been navigating an unprecedentedly high threat landscape, marked by record levels of antisemitic incidents across the U.S.

The dissemination of FTO material exacerbates these threats in two ways:

• Active propaganda circulation: Protestors and activists are not merely praising the activity of terror groups; they are actively sharing their official propaganda, disseminating communiqués, videos, and other materials directly onto mainstream platforms.
   
• Rhetorical normalization: This propaganda spread functions to normalize the eliminationist goals and terrorist tactics espoused by groups like Hamas and the PFLP within certain activist circles in the U.S. It blurs the line between legitimate political protest and explicit endorsement of terrorism and antisemitic violence.

This normalization is driven by a broader anti-Zionist ecosystem in which Zionists and Israelis are cast as inherently evil and any physical harm targeting them may be justified and legitimized. Those who share FTO propaganda are aware of its violent nature and origins yet exhibit no concern about pushing materials from groups responsible for killing scores of civilians. It represents an acceptance of violence against civilians as a legitimate viewpoint.

This development builds on a more widespread, established trend noted by COE since October 7: a substantive increase in open expressions of support for terror groups by some in the anti-Israel movement and the incorporation of FTO branding—such as Hamas and PFLP flags, logos, and images of leaders—into protests, merchandise, and digital content. Alongside the pervasive use of the Hamas-associated inverted red triangle imagery in vandalism and the slogans and chants exalting Hamas’s military wing, these adoptions of terrorist iconography go beyond mere solidarity, transforming symbols of mass violence into celebrated emblems.

And while the direct spread of official terror propaganda is not as ubiquitous, its notable increase since October 7 is a disturbing signal of a more radicalized frontier in activist and information networks.

Global Reach, Impact, and Pipeline

The migration of terror propaganda from extremist channels and networks to the mainstream demonstrates the ways in which terror groups achieve impact and influence in accessible online spaces, extending their reach and ideology into U.S. public discourse with the help of anti-Israel activists and networks.

Propaganda that originates in the official channels and on the platforms of the terrorist groups is often translated into English and amplified by intermediary channels.

Resistance News Network (RNN) — a radical antisemitic, anti-Zionist, English-language Telegram channel with over 150,000 subscribers (as of November 2025) that openly promotes violence against Israel — is among the most popular and critical of these intermediary accounts. RNN plays a key role in getting translated terrorist content into the hands of American activists, while also creating and packaging its own content glorifying terror attacks and other violence. Many U.S. anti-Israel groups, including student groups, and activists follow RNN and share its posts, facilitating the widespread dissemination of terrorist propaganda to a domestic audience.

In May 2025, for example, RNN posted a piece of propaganda originally published by Hamas’s military wing on Telegram in support of a Houthi missile attack at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, which injured several people. The caption included a quote from Hamas’s late spokesman Abu Obaida who applauded the attack. This RNN post, with its violent imagery was re-shared by the New York-based Bronx Anti-War Coalition, an anti-Zionist group that has frequently co-organized anti-Israel rallies in the New York City area.

(Screenshots/ Telegram/X)

A composite image showing a Hamas poster praising a Houthi missile attack (left) shared by the Bronx Anti-War Coalition via RNN, an Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades poster (middle) shared by an extreme anti-Zionist activist credited to RNN, and an RNN post of a Hamas poster depicting a Hamas member with an image of a blown up Israeli tank lauding the “resistance.” 

A few months later, in August 2025, RNN posted a graphic from the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a Palestinian terror organization, with a message in Arabic that the channel translated to “Wait for the inferno of our explosives.” This post was then shared by extreme anti-Zionist activist Calla Walsh on X, where she has over 60,000 followers.

RNN administrators also regularly share RNN-branded posters that incorporate symbols like the red inverted triangle imagery associated with Hamas, which are then re-shared by U.S.-based groups. In July 2024, for example, an RNN-branded poster titled “Zionism’s final days” in English and Arabic was reposted on Instagram by the extreme anti-Zionist group Teaneck for Palestine. The poster depicts Theodor Herzl in his famous pose leaning on the balcony of a Basel hotel where the Fifth Zionist Congress was held in 1901, with a red triangle overlaid above his head, and an unraveling spider web in the foreground (a likely reference to a comment from an infamous 2000 speech by Hassan Nasrallah, the late leader of FTO Hezbollah, who said Israel was “weaker than a spider’s web”). The RNN caption praises the “resistance” — a euphemistic reference to the various terrorist groups responsible for violent attacks against Israel — that has “brought about the final days of zionism [sic].”

(Screenshot/Instagram and Telegram)

A July 2024 RNN poster (left) with red triangle imagery shared by Teaneck for Palestine, and a May 2025 Telegram post (right) by RNN with a Star of David at the center of a spider’s web, highlighting Nasrallah’s comment. 

The main RNN Telegram channel, as well as related ones, have also separately shared and translated propaganda from the PFLP and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which are then reshared on Telegram in other affiliated channels.

(Screenshot/Telegram)

This composite image shows an RNN repost of an Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades poster (left) in September 2024, and a post from the PFLP on October 7, 2023 (right). 

RNN first appeared as a Telegram channel in 2022, launching as a “news network” in October that year. Since at least October 2023, RNN has claimed that its accounts have been removed from other social media sites, including Instagram and X. The RNN Telegram channel has been blocked in the EU since August 2024 and in the U.S since November 2025. RNN backup and mirror channels are still accessible.

Snapshot of Amplification

The examples below represent further snapshots of how anti-Zionist accounts further amplify this dangerous content in mainstream spaces.

Support for 10/7, Terror Leaders and Violence

Immediately following the Hamas-led terror massacre on October 7, 2023, some anti-Israel activists began sharing propaganda from terror groups in support of the attack. One of the most egregious instances occurred on October 8, 2023, when the University of Illinois SJP chapter shared a video on Instagram that showed what appears to be a Hamas terrorist filming himself from inside the home of an Israeli family during the October 7 attack. The caption reads “Under the feet of the Mujahideen [those engaging in jihad], on this day,” apparently translating the terrorist’s remarks.

The trend continued, with notable spikes occurring during the anniversaries of the terror attacks. On October 7, 2024, SJP at the University of California, Davis, shared a quote from now-deceased Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida on its Instagram stories venerating the attack: “A year has passed since the most successful and professional commando operation of the modern era.” 

The SJP chapter at California State University, Northridge, also reposted a video from the anniversary speech of Abu Obaida on Instagram, boasting that Hamas will not be deterred by leadership assassinations.

The Bronx Anti-War Coalition has also amplified propaganda directly from Hamas. In March 2025, the group shared a Hamas poster to its Telegram page via the antisemitic Telegram channel Global Resistance News, run by antisemitic former rapper Jonathan Azaziah, who has lived in the U.S. and Canada. In addition to the Hamas poster, Azaziah added to the caption that “the day 'Israel' is wiped off the face of the planet… we will sing; cheer; rejoice; and dance the night away... All over the corpse of the flesh-eating germ called Chosenstan. And we'll be rocking Qassami headbands too--just for good measure!” He added the hashtags #LongLiveTheFlood and #WeAreAllHamas. This caption appeared in full in the Bronx Anti-War re-post.

Similarly, the far-left anti-Zionist “direct action network” Unity of Fields (formerly Palestine Action US) has shared terror propaganda material supporting attacks on a number of occasions and from a variety of terror sources. On the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks, the group shared propaganda from PFLP on Telegram featuring its logo, a lit torch, guns, and the text “7 October World solidarity with Palestine, Palestine liberates the world,” conveying a message of support for the Hamas-led terror massacre that took place a year earlier. 

Unity of Fields routinely engages in calls for violence against those it considers supportive of Israel or Zionism, or “complicit” in Israel’s alleged actions, and promotes aggressive, targeted protests and the defacement of property belonging to Jewish and non- Jewish organizations and individuals. It also explicitly venerates terror organizations and terror leaders.

In July 2025, Unity of Fields shared a memorial post on X from Hamas’s military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, mourning the loss a year earlier of its deceased chief of staff Mohammed Deif, with translated comments from Abu Obaida honoring the "military icon.”

Unity of Fields was particularly enthusiastic over Iranian attacks against Israel during the 12-day conflict in June 2025, posting a video to its X account that originated with Almasirah, a news outlet operated by the Yemeni terror movement the Houthis, echoing calls for a “major world war.”

(Screenshot/Twitter)

Hamas Propaganda Touting Attacks against IDF

The sharing of Hamas posters promoting the terror group’s attacks against the Israeli military has abounded among large segments of anti-Zionist activists over the past couple of years. Often, these posters originate in Hamas channels, with anti-Israel activists eventually discovering them and posting the content on their social media accounts.

In April 2024, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, published a poster in its official Telegram channel (over 363,000 subscribers) depicting an Israeli tank under attack during the Hamas-Israel war and an inverted red triangle, a symbol used by Hamas in its propaganda videos to mark Israeli targets. Hours after its publication by Hamas, RNN posted the same poster image in its own Telegram channel, along with a translated English-language caption citing the Qassam Brigades.

The poster continued to circulate. In September 2025, it was shared on X by Suzanne Adely, an extreme U.S. anti-Zionist activist who is a member of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) and co-chair of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) International Committee, to her over 3,000 followers.

In July 2025, New York-based anti-Zionist group  StrikeMOMA, a close partner of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), also reposted a Hamas propaganda poster to its Instagram story. The graphic, featuring a quote from Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida, was first posted days earlier on the Al-Qassam Brigades website and Telegram channel (over 377,000 subscribers) on July 4. It had then been reposted in the radical antisemitic Telegram channels Middle East Spectator (over 273,800 subscribers) and Resistance Trench (over 26,800 subscribers), before being shared by StrikeMOMA to its 12,200 followers, for an overall potential reach of close to 700,000 accounts.

In July 2024, City University of New York (CUNY) John Jay College’s SJP chapter (which currently has nearly 1,000 followers) shared a post on Instagram with a graphic from Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades and a message in Arabic translating to "We are coming like thunder, making a time of glory."

In-Person Dissemination of Terror Propaganda

In some instances, anti-Zionist activists have disseminated terror materials in person. In one particularly notable instance in March 2025, anti-Israel activists at Barnard College in New York City distributed a document in English written and circulated by Hamas explicitly justifying its October 7 attack. 

They also offered stickers depicting former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. This distribution occurred in conjunction with other protest activity on campus that also included storming the school’s Millstein Library and staging a sit-in inside.

Another incident occurred in February 2024, when Midnight Books, a self-described “community space and revolutionary bookstore” in Los Angeles, shared with its nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram that it was selling “PFLP shirts” featuring a quote from PFLP’s propaganda manual entitled Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine: “the slogan of our masses must be resistance until victory.” Midnight Books accompanied the post with a photo of the “PFLP shirt,” showing that its backside features individuals armed with guns.

Ideological Trading Cards: PFLP posters

Among the most ubiquitous forms of terror propaganda shared by anti-Zionist activists in recent years have been PFLP posters. Messages on the posters broadly support PFLP’s ideology and vary from outright support for terrorists to support for the working class (PFLP is a Marxist-Leninist group). Regardless of the specific content in the posters, they all serve to normalize the messaging of a terror group that also participated in the October 7 attacks.

In July 2025, student group Columbia4Palestine shared a 1970s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)-made poster to its Instagram page by PFLP member Ghassan Kanafani, alongside a caption quoting the spokesperson, killed in 1972. The text on the poster reads: “Glory to the resistance that destroyed the fascist tanks with their unity.

In October 2025, the SJP-affiliated Students United for Palestinian Equality & Return (SUPER) at the University of Washington shared a post containing a PFLP poster on its Instagram story to its 18,000 followers with text in Arabic reading “Forward, to breaking Palestine’s fast.”  Two months earlier, the SJP chapter at Georgia State University shared a PFLP poster and statement on its Instagram story to its nearly 2,000 followers reading “Workers and free peoples of the world...unite against enemies of humanity.” In the caption, the group wrote: ”today [sic] was may day [sic], also known as international workers day, the PFLP released this poster along with a statement.”

(Screenshots/Instagram)

Individual activists have also posted PFLP propaganda, including Walsh, the extreme anti-Zionist whose activities have included openly praising terrorists and vandalizing an Israeli weapons manufacturer in New Hampshire in November 2023. In August 2025, she shared a PFLP poster on X (62,000 followers) featuring a gun in the foreground of a view of Jerusalem. The accompanying text reads, "They see us as far away.”

In September 2024, Asa Winstanley of the anti-Zionist media outlet Electronic Intifada shared a PFLP poster on X (where he has more than 137,000 followers) glorifying Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of terror group Hezbollah, who had been killed in an Israeli strike a couple of days earlier. 

Disrupting the Pipeline

To protect against this concerning trend of terror propaganda dissemination amid unprecedented levels of antisemitic incidents and a high threat environment, it is imperative that various stakeholders take action.

• Social media companies must rigorously enforce their existing policies, which often prohibit the sharing of content from FTOs. Prompt and consistent enforcement is essential to disrupting the pipeline of propaganda flowing from fringe channels to mainstream audiences. Members of Congress should support and pass the Stopping Terrorists Online Presence and Holding Accountable Tech Entities Act (STOP HATE), H.R. 5681, which would improve transparency around how companies enforce their own policies to disrupt terrorist content on their platforms.
   
• University administrations must also create and enforce rules for members of the campus community, including registered student organizations (RSOs) and faculty groups, and clearly communicate the extent to which certain conduct, including but not limited to the dissemination of terror propaganda, may violate campus policies and/or state and federal law. Administrators must ensure that alleged violations are promptly and thoroughly investigated and that clear and consistent consequences are imposed for any violations, including threats, incitement, and/or the provision of material support of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
   
• More broadly, it is incumbent upon the general public to engage in due diligence when consuming and sharing content online and associating with activist groups and individuals.