Students for Justice in Palestine at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania reposted a video on Instagram on Monday showing an effigy of an Israeli soldier being set on fire and promoting a protest in Philadelphia on Oct. 7.
The video, which Swarthmore College told JNS appears to have originated with a Philadelphia-based group, shows gasoline being poured on the legs of an effigy dressed in an Israel Defense Forces uniform with an Israeli flag patch as a Palestinian flag waves over the flames. The words “Long live Al-Aqsa Flood” appear on the screen, referring to Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 massacre.
“The Zionist entity and its collaborators will never know peace,” the group Shut Down D&Z wrote in the post accompanying the video. The group also promoted a rally at Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.
The official Swarthmore SJP account, which has since deleted the repost, was not promoting protests on the Swarthmore campus, according to the college.
“It’s important to emphasize that the college is committed to cultivating an environment free of intimidation, harassment and discrimination,” a spokesperson for Swarthmore told JNS. “We have not only publicly condemned antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination within our community, but we have also taken measures to enhance our response to reports of bias on campus and support members of our community in need.”
Swarthmore revoked SJP’s official affiliation in 2025. As a result, the group is prohibited from accessing college funds and other resources, scheduling or hosting events on campus or having other student organizations co-sponsor or act on its behalf.
The college previously condemned its SJP chapter in October 2024 after it shared a message glorifying the first anniversary of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks.
“We expected that this week’s one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 would elicit a range of emotions and reactions across the campus community and that people would process it in different ways. We also expected some would mark the occasion with protests and acts of dissent,” the college stated at the time. “What we didn’t expect, however, is that members of our campus community would celebrate Oct. 7, a day of unimaginable violence and the death of so many innocent people.”
In May 2025, police dismantled a pro-Palestinian encampment at Swarthmore and arrested nine people, including a current student and a former student. The group, dubbed the “Swarthmore 9,” later pleaded no contest to summary noise violations in June 2026.
Swarthmore told JNS that it supports freedom of expression and peaceful protest but will hold individuals accountable for conduct that violates college policies or disrupts campus operations.
