The anti-Israel protesters who stormed Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall were urged by a radical activist group to rekindle the bloody Black Lives Matter riots of the summer of 2020, a new report says.
At a meeting in Manhattan hosted by the New York City nonprofit The People’s Forum on Monday evening — hours before the infamous building takeover — around 100 mask-wearing activists were worked into a lather by the organization’s executive director, Manolo De Los Santos, who called for a “final blow to destroy Israel” in a viral video earlier this year.
Addressing the group, De Los Santos spewed invective about Columbia’s “Zionist” administration, whom he skewered for wanting “to be more like their masters in Israel,” the Washington Free Beacon wrote.
He urged the crowd, many of them shrouded in keffiyehs, to “give Joe Biden a hot summer” and to “make it untenable for the politics of usual to take place in this country.”
He also referenced bringing back “the summer of 2020,” invoking the widespread violence that besieged major US cities from coast to coast in the weeks and months after the police-involved killing of George Floyd on May 25 of that year.
The riots — infamously couched by CNN as “fiery but mostly peaceful” — caused more than $400 million in damage nationwide, including to more than 450 Big Apple businesses that were looted or damaged.
A few hours after Monday’s meeting convened, dozens of the criminal protesters illegally raided the Manhattan campus building, gaining access through a glass-paneled door one activist smashed with a hammer.
The mob vandalized the historic structure — breaking doors and windows — and blockaded entrances, a university spokesman said at the time. They also hung at least one sign from a Hamilton Hall window emblazoned with the word “intifada,” photos and videos showed.
Cops descended on the Morningside Heights campus late Tuesday after being called in by Columbia President Minouche Shafik, with officers clad in riot gear using a ramp-like setup to gain access to the building through a window facing Amsterdam Avenue.
In all, 44 people were arrested, including two university staff members and 13 “outsiders” who were not affiliated with the school, Columbia said in a press release Thursday.
The presence of these outside agitators was echoed by the NYPD as well as Mayor Eric Adams.
“As the anti-Israel protests began to escalate, it became abundantly clear that individuals unaffiliated with these schools had entered these different campuses and, in some cases, were even training students in unlawful protest tactics, many which we witnessed escalating into violent conduct,” Adams said in a statement after the mass arrests.
One such outside group that has played a hand in numerous anti-Israel protests around the city since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel is The People’s Forum, an organization primarily funded by American businessman Neville Roy Singham, a China sympathizer and donor to socialist causes.
Billing itself as “a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities,” TPF is bankrolled to the tune of more than $12 million in donations funneled through the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund.
A spokesman for the investment banking giant has disavowed any connection to the activist group, emphatically clarifying that contributions made through its charitable wing come from clients’ funds, not the bank itself.
“Goldman Sachs has no relationship with The People’s Forum and does not share its values,” the spokesman told The Post.
In January, South Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) urged Goldman Sachs to “cut ties” with TPF after a viral video surfaced showing De Los Santos at what appeared to be an event in New York City spewing “Nazi rhetoric” and calling for “that final blow to destroy Israel.”
As a tax-exempt non-profit, TPF could lose its charity status under IRS regulations governing 501(c)(3) organizations if it is found to have engaged in “planned activities that violate laws” or “induce the commission of a crime.”
The People’s Forum did not respond to a request for comment by The Post on Sunday.
