FIRST ON FOX: Anti-Israel radicals have protested outside of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz’s Texas home more than a dozen times in recent weeks, with the agitators reportedly tied to the Students for Justice in Palestine group occupying college campuses nationwide, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
Cruz’s home in Houston has been the target of 14 protests since February, including a protest on Friday when one suspect was arrested. Cruz’s office said that the senator remains resolute in his support of Israel, while brushing off the protesters’ tactics of “harassment or intimidation.”
“Senator Cruz will continue to stand with Israel and support Israel’s right to defend itself and utterly eradicate Hamas. No amount of harassment or intimidation by terrorist supporters will change that,” a spokesman for the senator said.
Student agitators have infiltrated college campuses nationwide in recent weeks, including radicals on Columbia University’s campus taking over the campus’ Hamilton Hall building, while schools such as UCLA, Harvard and Yale are working to clear student encampments where protesters demand their elite schools completely divest from Israel.
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The protests follow terrorist organization Hamas launching war in Israel on Oct. 7, which initially fanned the flames of antisemitism on campuses in the form of protests, menacing graffiti and students reporting that they felt as if it was “open season for Jews on our campuses.” The protests have now heightened to the point where Jewish students have been warned to leave campus for their own safety.
An anti-Israel demonstrator holds a flag on the rooftop of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York City on Tuesday, April 30, 2024. Anti-Israel student demonstrators barricaded themselves into the Hamilton Hall building at Columbia on Tuesday after the school began suspending students who defied an order to clear their encampment. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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The protests are associated with groups tied to far-left organizations backed by dark money and liberal mega-donor George Soros, Fox News Digital previously reported. Namely, the National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) has had a large presence amid the protests on Columbia University’s campus, as well as on the campuses of UCLA, Tufts and the University of Texas at Austin in Cruz’s home state.
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was confronted by a raucous crowd of anti-Israel protesters outside his Houston home this weekend for a second time. (Getty Images/Ted Cruz)
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The NSJP is a national group with at least 200 chapters across the U.S and regularly compares Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to Nazi Germany and the Jim Crow era in the United States and accuses Israel of genocide, Influence Watch reported. NSJP’s origins stretch back to 1993 on UC Berkeley’s campus, according to NGO Monitor.
Demonstrators gather on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin on Thursday, April 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. Students walked out of class on Wednesday as protests over Gaza continue to sweep college campuses around the country. (Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
The national chapter celebrated Hamas’ initial attack on Israel in October, describing it as an “historic win for the Palestinian resistance,” the New York Times reported in October.
“This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors,” the group continued at the time.
The NSJP operates under a fiscal sponsor called Westchester Peace Action Committee Foundation, which previously received a six-figure donation from a nonprofit bankrolled by the Soros network, Fox News Digital previously reported.
The group and its affiliates have been banned or censured by universities for their support of Hamas, including Brandeis banning the group following calls “for violence against Jews,” while Rutgers University suspended the group in December, as did Case Western in March.
The protesters outside of Cruz’s home in recent months are tied to Students for Justice in Palestine, law enforcement told the senator, Fox News Digital has learned.
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Anti-Israel protesters outside of Sen. Ted Cruz’s home in Houston this month. (Ted Cruz/Twitter )
The Houston Police Department confirmed to Fox News Digital that law enforcement have repeatedly responded to Cruz’s home over the protests this year but outlined that the police department can only publicly confirm there have been assemblies outside the residence, not identify specific groups the protesters are affiliated with.
Student protesters gather in protest inside their encampment on the Columbia University campus on Monday, April 29, 2024, in New York. Protesters of the war in Gaza who are encamped at Columbia University have defied a deadline to disband with chants, clapping and drumming. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)
One protester was arrested on Friday evening, according to law enforcement. Cruz posted on X that evening that protesters were clanging cowbells and yelling for two hours on his street. Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris County Constable’s office for additional details on the arrest but did not immediately receive a reply.
“This is America in 2024, and this is a result of the sickness that has taken over our universities. This is a result of cultural Marxism that has infiltrated and seized control of the faculty and the administration.”
“So, this is going on right now. It’s nearly 11 pm. Pro-Hamas protestors have been screaming and cursing for 2 hours. Banging cowbells & blowing whistles,” Cruz posted on Friday.
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“When a neighbor who has small kids asked an officer to do something, the protesters screamed that she was a “f—ing b—-!”
Cruz has previously been the ire of liberal protesters working to stage demonstrations outside his house in Houston’s Royal Oaks neighborhood, including in 2021 when 60 to 70 climate activists gathered. This year, the protesters have assembled on a near-weekly basis, condemning Cruz for supporting Israel, Axios reported.
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“The point is to show that he does have constituents that don’t align with his very bigoted views. … We don’t support him being AIPAC-funded and his allegiance to a foreign government,” one regular protester told Axios Houston in March.
Protesters have staged 14 demonstrations outside of Sen. Ted Cruz’s Texas home since February. (Ted Cruz/Twitter)
Cruz has meanwhile slammed the protests raging on college campuses as the result of “cultural Marxism” that has spread within universities.
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A student protester pulls up a crate filled with food and supplies from a balcony of Hamilton Hall on the campus of Columbia University on Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in New York. Early on Tuesday, dozens of protesters took over Hamilton Hall, locking arms and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building. Columbia responded by restricting access to campus. (AP Pool Photo/Mary Altaffer)
“This is America in 2024, and this is a result of the sickness that has taken over our universities,” Cruz said Monday to Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “This is a result of cultural Marxism that has infiltrated and seized control of the faculty and the administration. These are violent protesters that are threatening the lives and the safety of Jewish students. Let me ask you something, Sean. Where is Joe Biden tonight? Where is the attorney general tonight? Where is the FBI tonight? Where is the governor of New York tonight?”
Fox News Digital’s Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.