On Thursday, April 23rd, the Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter at Rutgers is hosting Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers at the Rutgers New Brunswick campus as part of their self-proclaimed “Israel Week”—5 days of events dedicated to celebrating the genocidal Zionist state and its ongoing terror campaigns in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and broader West Asia. This event is part of a national tour called “SSI Triggered: From Combat to Campus”, where IDF soldiers, who are former SSI members themselves, are invited to college campuses to shamelessly recount their experiences committing genocide in Gaza to student audiences, glorifying their crimes against humanity and encouraging college-aged individuals to similarly choose a path of depravity.

By allowing organizations like SSI to host an IDF soldier on campus, Rutgers legitimizes all forms of Zionist violence, demonstrating gross neglect of its students from affected regions and particularly Palestinian students whose lives are shaped by decades of Zionist terror. Rutgers shows that its response to unceasing, despicable violence and inhumanity is not condemnation but positive representation of its very perpetrators. To permit the forces which call for the death of families in Palestine and broader West Asia to exist on Rutgers is to cultivate a culture of complicity and hostility towards entire populations.

We demand the following:

1. Rutgers must cancel the “SSI Triggered: The Tour” event

2. Rutgers must apologize to all affected students who are grieving the loss of their families, land, and people at the hands of the Zionist state

3. Rutgers must not allow IDF soldiers and those directly involved in Zionist war crimes on campus